Pugs

Pugs.hs is back.

(The excellent news from fglock++ that v6.pm is back prompted me to write something about Pugs, too, so here it is.)

During the past month, I've been quietly releasing Pugs and its dependencies on Hackage.

Installation for Pugs is now much simpler than before; see http://svn.pugscode.org/pugs/INSTALL for details.

There has been no action in terms of features, but the internal has been refactored to reduce compilation time, and the individual components has been released as separate packages to reduce maintenance overhead.

Startup time is also greatly improved.  As a consequence, running the full smoke test suite is no longer a multi-hour-long ordeal; it now takes less than 15 minutes on modern machines.

As of the 6.2.13.11 release, the smoke numbers say it passes 17215 tests out of 19260, which is not significantly different from the 6.2.13 release.

Going forward, I think GHC 6.10's Quasiquoting and View patterns are going to be vital for the sanity of Pugs internals, so please expect no Pugs 6.28.* releases before GHC 6.10.1.

And finally, a shameless plug: I'm still looking for ways to make ends meet, so any offers of telecommuting, project-based/part-time jobs would be very much appreciated. :-)

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 08-14 April, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

"The current pugs implementation is just translating to the old form underneath, so it's not surprising it's a bit off. That's the sort of thing that happens when the language designer gives the language implementor whiplash. However, I rather suspect the interpersonal metaphorical meaning was lost on the physicist/comic who decided that the 3rd derivative of position should be called 'jerk'. :)"

-- Larry Wall, in 'What should file test operators return?'

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 01-07 April, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

"developers shouldn't live in fear of $^O"

-- Jerry Gay, in 'Use of English pragma'

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 25-31 March, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

"I don't think that it's possible to make this non-conformity a fatal heresy :-(
(gcc --spanish-inquisition)"

-- Nicholas Clark in '[perl #42110] [PATCH] Returning values from void functions'

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 18-24 March, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

This week saw the introduction of the Perl 6 Microgrants. Read more about them in 'Perl 6 Microgrants. Now accepting proposals.'

YAPC-SA-2007 Hackathon

Here is the report on the 4 days of the YAPC-SA-2007 Hackathon, from April 12 to 15, 2007, in Porto Alegre, Brazil (during fisl8.0).

v6/docs
- added the KindaPerl6 diagram
- added a KindaPerl6 memory layout diagram - with help from #perl6
- added the MiniPerl6 talk (pdf)

MiniPerl6
- started the Perl6-in-Parrot target: desugars MiniPerl6 into p6parrot supported features
- grammar fix: semicolon is optional after a block
- perl5 backend: implemented warn()
- new: mp6-to-AST script
- nferraz started porting Test.pm to mp6

KindaPerl6
- memory management: BEGIN-block side effects are logged
- updated plan, discussed a possible release schedule
- fixed the container proxy algorithm (the implementation needs to be fixed; pugs has the same problem)

v6.pm
- fixed the "fish-operator" =<>
- fixed the quoted-word-operator <...>

Pugs::Compiler::Rule
- ratchet emitter fix, array interpolation now works

misc/pX
- nferraz and fglock started an adventure game implementation (with v6.pm), to be presented by nferraz at the Nordic Perl Workshop.

The network proxy at the conference did not allow commits to pass through, and there will be some delay until all the changes get to the repository.

Thanks to cmarcelo, david_fetter, eden_c, lorn, merlyn, and nferraz for 4 great days!

- Flavio S. Glock (fglock)

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 11-17 March, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

Due to a lack of free time, I will be unable to continue creating the Perl 6 summaries after April. We are looking for a volunteer or group of volunteers to take over the task.

Please contact me if you would like more information about what the job entails (contact information can be found at the end of this post).

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 4-10 March, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

"Q: Can February March? A: No, but April May..."

-- Larry Wall's r14313 log message for a date correction

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 18-24 February, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

"'Course, if someone goes ahead and adds the Y combinator, one must naturally begin to wonder what the YY combinator would be... :-) "

-- Larry Wall

"Obviously it generates a function so anonymous that it can't even refer to itself. I call it the depressed existentialist solipsist operator."

-- chromatic, in 'Y not'

Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 11-17 February, 2007

This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

Remember that the European Perl Hackathon will be held next weekend, from 2-4 March, 2007 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Registration is open until Thursday, 1 March. For more information, please look at the hackathon website.

Allison Randal and Jonathan Worthington will be coordinating the Parrot/Perl 6 portion of the hackathon.