2019.16 Easter Down

This year’s Easter started with a not-so-good Friday: the main Perl 6 server hardware became unresponsive and nobody has been able to figure out what the status is of the server hardware. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be impossible to reach the people in charge of the DNS of the perl6.org domain to get the DNS changed to point to replacement servers.

In the meantime, please use https://perl6.wakelift.de as the temporary replacement for perl6.org, and https://docs.perl6.wakelift.de for docs.perl6.org.

The focus is now on getting things running again. Be assured this event will be evaluated to provide a situation that is more resilient against such an event, specifically during the upcoming Perl Toolchain Summit.

Thank you all for your patience. We hope to be able to resume normal services soon (Reddit comments).

Weekly Challenge

Again, quite a few blog posts because of the fourth Perl Weekly Challenge. These are the blog posts with Perl 6 solutions:

• A weekly challenge of Big Pi’s, Bags and modules by Jo Christian Oterhals (Reddit comments).
• Number of Pi in file – Perl weekly challenge, week 4 by Francis Whittle (Reddit comments).
• Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 4 by Laurent Rosenfeld.
• Perl Weekly Week 4 by Simon Proctor.
• Perl 6 P(i)ermutations by Arne Sommer.

Arne Sommer’s blogpost From Babylon To Pascal with Perl 6 related to last week’s challenge, spurred quite a discussion on Hacker News.

Mohammad S Anwar also would like to invote some Perl 6 gurus for reviewing the Perl Weekly Challenge entries written in Perl 6.

The Perl Conference

The organizers of this year’s American Perl Conference have published their April newsletter, inviting you to register your attendance to any of the workshops that will be given before and after the actual conference.

Problem solving repo

Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev has merged the the result of the first issue in the Problem Solving Repository, which is to be used for working on all Perl 6 issues that require discussion and/or consensus. Even though this change is about the problem solving process itself, it is a good indication on how some issues that are currently classified as bugs, can be settled outside of the context of the implementation of Rakudo Perl 6.

So if you have an issue with some aspect of Rakudo Perl 6 that you could not consider a bug in the implementation, then please add an issue to the Problem Solving repo!

A Language Creators’ Conversation

Bhagyashree R also wrote a blog post about the latest PuPPy meeting in Seattle which hosted Guido van Rossum, James Gosling, Larry Wall & Anders Hejlsberg.

GSOC / GSOD

The Perl Foundation has applied for 4 slots at the Google Summer of Code. Meanwhile an application for the Google SeasonOfDocs, to improve the documentation of Perl 6, has also been done. All thanks to the tireless work of JJ Merelo!

Loops and when to use them

JJ Merelo posted a little explanation of when to use loops.

Learn grammars by commit log

Jeff Goff is exploring a new teaching method: learning by looking at a commit log. His project for creating a grammar for Picat is an example of this.

DIY Cryptography

Arne Sommer explores some ways of looking at cryptography in DIY Cryptography with Perl 6. Which is only intended as a learning resource, not as a production tool.

Scope wrapping

Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer looks at ways of injecting behaviour into methods of core object, and the ability to switch this additional behaviour on/off in a blog post titled “Wrapping a scope” (Reddit comments).

Hosting is archaic

brian d foy responds to the decision of the grant committee to not grant the creation of an interactive Perl 6 course in a blog post titled “We don’t need no stinkin’ hosting” (/r/perl, /r/perl6 comments).

Core developments

• Ticket status of past week.
• Timo Paulssen improved the stability of MoarVM bytecode by adding many more sanity checks, inspired by the results of many fuzzing runs. He also implemented an experimental “heap dump” opcode, to be used by various introspection modules, such as Telemetry.
• Jonathan Worthington fixed an issue with self-referencing structures when doing a --target=parse. He also added a :mixin named parameter to Metamodel::Primitives.create_type.
• Ben Davies fixed an issue with JITting on OpenBSD, and issues with the NQP_HOME and PERL_HOME environment variables.
• Patrick Böker fixed an issue with building on OpenBSD.
• Christian Bartolomäus fixed another long standing issues on the JVM backend.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen added about 20K tests to the Rakudo spectest, testing all aspects of sprintf formatting.
• And quite a few smaller fixes and improvements.

Questions about Perl 6

• Using a Capture like a Slurpy by drclaw.
• zef can’t install depends by chenyf.
• Access JSON::Path numbers only key by Valle Lukas.
• How to determine the absolute path name of the compilation unit of the caller? by Håkon Hægland.
• Weight the ‘randomness’ of the pick routine? by Kane Valentine.
• Print embedded Pod as formatted text with termcap escapes by Håkon Hægland.
• Multiply all values in a %hash and return a %hash with the same structure by Kane Valentine.
• Communication between objects by hythm.
• How to interpolate a variable into a regex-pattern in the regex part of a substitution? by sid_com.
• Creating an enum from its name not value by guifa.
• Substitute: replacement evaluation by sid_com.
• Combining characters using their hexa name by JJ Merelo.
• Altering parameters in Data::Printer by con.

Meanwhile on Facebook

• I can see this by Wendy van Dijk.
• Kibitzers by Jeff Goff.
• How is this possible? by Andrew Shitov.
• Still no? by Jason Doege.
• Picat an interest by Jeff Goff.

Meanwhile on perl6-users

• Lib for non-core, non-installed modules by mimosinnet.
• Re: valid values? by mimosinnet.
• FatRats falling back to Nums by Laurent Rosenfeld.
• perl6.org down and documentation by mimosinnet.
• Why so slow? by ToddAndMargo.
• GTK widget? by ToddAndMargo.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Nightly Docker by The Perl Shop.
• Passing tests in Chrome by The Perl Shop.
• Perl 6 Patterns by Jonathan Stowe.
• Head room by veer 💙.
• Yay! by JJ Merelo.
• Taking shortcuts by JJ Merelo.
• Thanks by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Ideal candidate for the desktop by Kane Valentine.
• CPanel Gold Sponsor by Andrew Shitov.
• Another language by Perlゼミ.
• Negative element by Perlゼミ.
• How is it different? by ポムポムプリン【ひかるん】.
• Next generation by ikubaku.
• Have come further by Perlゼミ.
• Bad brothers by Perlゼミ.
• Good to have distance by Perlゼミ.
• Readinng an intro? by Felipe Sere.
• New CSV record by H.Merijn Brand.
• Ruby now by Atsushi Kajiro.
• Gone bad by 八雲アナグラ.
• 60/40 by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Like Perl 6 by Johannes Schlüter.
• Fewer tricks by Joelle Maslak.
• Different key signing by Perl 6 Alerts.
• Less than a day by JJ Merelo.
• Congratulations, Audrey! by JJ Merelo.
• Less than 8 minutes by JJ Merelo.
• Just around the corner by [mastodon] Hyde Stevenson.
• Overhaul of regex by Chris Rasys.
• Perl 6 at JASYP by JJ Merelo.
• Camelia arrived! by Alexander Kiryuhin.
• Look at execution by 八雲アナグラ.
• At OSPN by 八雲アナグラ.
• Follow by Commit by Jeff Goff.
• Best evaluation by Liam Proven.
• Least harm by B1ff B1ff.
• Feels like Perl 6 by かっこ.
• 6 for 40 minutes by 八雲アナグラ.
• Also has gradual typing by Unix McBeard.
• FizzBuzz got me into it by Aibhstín 🇮🇪.
• Visitor pattern by Jonathan Stowe.
• Sometimes NYI by yes “YAMASHIRO, Jun”.
• None have passed by yes “YAMASHIRO, Jun.
• 32 to 27 by yukicoder最短コード更新お知らせ.
• Just by words? by %20｜1772 (+21).
• 52 to 50 by yukicoder最短コード更新お知らせ.
• 50 to 48 by yukicoder最短コード更新お知らせ.
• Get Practical by Perl Conferences.
• Please add Perl 6 by koorchik.
• Modern programming language by 八雲アナグラ.
• Start with Perl 6! by moznion.
• Have done the challenge by Simon Proctor.
• Just in time by Simon Proctor.
• Hugs for Timo by JJ Merelo.
• Thinking of Perl 6 by whitequark.
• Types of Ranges by %20｜1772 (+21).
• Jupyter kernel by The Perl Shop.
• Zero people can stop me by Danny McClanahan.
• Star in Chocolatey by brian d foy.
• Fun results by eater of cyber.

Perl 6 in comments

• Perhaps slides? by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Even more extreme by roblabla.
• maybe change name? by DyslexicAtheist.
• No impact by olah_1.
• Please elaborate? by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• License for Perl&nsbp;6 by nige123.

Perl 6 Modules

New modules:

• Command Dispatch by Kane Valentine.

Updated modules:

• Log::Syslog::Native, JSON::Marshal, JSON::Class by Jonathan Stowe.
• DB::MySQL by Curt Tilmes.
• OO::Plugin by Vadim Belman.
• JSON::Path by Jonathan Worthington.
• GTK::V3, GTK::Glade by Marcel Timmerman.

Winding Down

A quiet week with a long weekend of good weather. Next week’s Perl 6 Weekly will also be published on Tuesday: this time on account of travel of yours truly back from the Perl Toolchain Summit. See you then!