This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists
"> Errrr ... I'm the one who *needs* the tutorial, not the one to
write it.
"That makes you a prime person to capture the questions it needs to
answer! You can't evade the Responsibility Ponies that easily."
-- chromatic, responding to James E Keenan in 'What Skills Do We Need
to Finish Parrot? <http://xrl.us/uqmk>'
Language
[svn:perl6-synopsis] r13570 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/u2zu>
A commit by Larry Wall changed categories to allow multiple dispatch
via the longest-token rule.
[svn:perl6-synopsis] r13575 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/u2zz>
A commit by Larry Wall added `Q//` as a quoting form and removed
`qn//`.
[svn:perl6-synopsis] r13577 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/u2z3>
This commit by Larry Wall affected S04, S05, S06 and S12. It unified
proto processing to implicitly allow re-declarations within a scope.
It works on most declarators, including regex, token, rule and
variables.
Multiple `my` declarations now issue a warning, which may be
suppressed with a `proto` declaration of the variable. The `multi`
keyword is optional in a `proto` scope, and the `unique` keyword
"undoes" an outer `proto`.
recent changes <http://xrl.us/u2z4>
Larry Wall decided to explain what was driving the recent synopsis
changes. For some time, he has been working on a Perl 6 grammar
written in Perl 6; a snaphot
<http://svn.pugscode.org/pugs/src/perl6/Perl-6.0.0-STD.pm> is
available. Audrey Tang noted that Pugs can parse it, but it still
needs to be made to run, and run fast.
Parrot Porters
[PATCH] Update pirgrammar.pod <http://xrl.us/u2z8>
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch with an updated version of
`pirgrammar.pod` and `pirgrammar.html` which contains examples for
most constructs. The documents are still being worked on.
Later, in '[PATCH] update pirgrammar.pod (replaces patch 2/4/2007)
<http://xrl.us/u22c>', he submitted an updated version.
These triggered some discussion in the thread '[PATCH] Updates for
languages/PIR/docs/pirgrammar.pod <http://xrl.us/u22j>'.
Q on Calling conventions; parameter order <http://xrl.us/u2z9>
Klaas-Jan Stol remarked that some Parrot calling conventions are
unclear. He made a list of the order in which checks are done, as far
as he can tell, and asked if it was correct and if cases were missing.
What Skills Do We Need to Finish Parrot? <http://xrl.us/uqmk>
Last week, James E Keenan asked what code remains to be written in
Parrot. Allison Randal replied that IO, Events, Threads, Compiler
tools interface, Object support and Exceptions need the most work.
James then asked about resources for learning PIR. chromatic offered
suggestions.
This week, Allison Randal replied that to date, she hadn't been able
to get the relevant sections of "Parrot Essentials" released, and
proposed that James create a PIR tutorial. She suggested
`docs/imcc/syntax.pod` as an introduction. Klaas-Jan Stol mentioned
that he'd been working on `languages/PIR/docs/pirgrammar.pod`.
James said that he needed a tutorial, and therefore wasn't suited to
write one. chromatic disagreed, stating that inexperience left James
in the perfect position to know what questions needed to be answered.
Joshua Isom seconded, suggesting that James could start a FAQ by
creating at least the questions. Bernhard Schmalhofer suggested adding
questions to `docs/imcc/imcfaq.pod`.
It turned out that Dzema Dmitriy is working on a PIR tutorial to
accompany a PIR bundle for Texmate.
[perl #41453] [BUG] Test failure in t/pmc/object-meths.t
<http://xrl.us/u22d>
In ticket [perl #41453]
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41453>, James Keenan
reported a failure with a text in `t/pmc/object-meths.t`. Allison
Randal identified it as stemming from r16783, and thought that `o =
new 'MyClass', $P0` should call `init_pmc` rather than `init`, even if
`$P0` is null. She asked Leopold Toetsch if the choice between `init`
and `init_pmc` should be based upon the content of the argument.
Leopold replied that that was not his intention; there should be just
one init :vtable which is called, according to PDD03 calling
conventions.
Allison summarized the situation as a feature request which had been
submitted as a failing test. She changed the test to reflect the
current situation (r17026) and submitted the feature request in ticket
[perl #41528] <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41528>.
Prototype object model for Parrot <http://xrl.us/u22e>
Allison Randal worked with Sam Vilain on a prototype object model
written in PIR. She checked it in to `compilers/smop`. The next step
is to implement the prototype at the PMC level, and incorporate much
of the functionality of `src/objects.c`.
Kevin Te replied that he had just started to port `Class::MOP` to
PMCs, and would be glad to help with this port as well.
[perl #41454] [PATCH] add 2 new tests for object method dispatch
<http://xrl.us/u22f>
Sam Vilain noted, in ticket [perl #41454]
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41454>, that inherited
method dispatch was only tested with a simple parent/child class. In
his attached patch, there are tests for three classes in a straight
line, as well as a 4-class diamond inheritance.
[perl #41455] [NEW] and [PATCH]: tools/build/ops2pm.pl refactored
<http://xrl.us/u22g>
James Keenan submitted ticket [perl #41455]
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41455>. It contained
several patches, for test files and related libraries. They were added
to the trunk as r17061 after passing on Darwin and Win32. Later they
were confirmed to also work on Linux.
[perl #41456] [PATCH] add a Super PMC test for addparent-established
inheritance trees <http://xrl.us/u22i>
In ticket [perl #41456]
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41456>, Sam Vilain
submitted a test which checks that if an inheritance tree is created
with `addparent`, it performs just like one made with `subclass`.
[PATCH] Updates for languages/PIR/docs/pirgrammar.pod
<http://xrl.us/u22j>
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch for `pirgrammar.pod` and
`pirgrammar.html` in '[PATCH] Update pirgrammar.pod
<http://xrl.us/u2z8>'.
chromatic remarked that he did not like keeping HTML in the
repository, and wondered if it could be automatically generated
because, unlike other generated files, it does not require `flex` and
`bison` to produce it.
Klaas-Jan wondered if `pod2html` was available for all platforms where
Perl can run. He thought it could be incorporated in the `make`
procedure if that were the case. chromatic replied that it had been
core since at least 5.8.0.
Re: Porting parrot on PDA <http://xrl.us/u22k>
Hakim Cassimally replied to [Aldo Calpini's
post]{http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.perl.perl6.internals/10966)
and expressed an interest in porting to the Nokia N800.
Jerry Gay replied that he'd love to see Parrot ported to the N800 and
suggested a way to start on it.
[PATCH] Updates and fixes for docs/imcc/syntax.pod <http://xrl.us/u22n>
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a number of patches for languages/PIR and
`docs/imcc/syntax.pod`:
* '[PATCH] update docs/imcc/calling_conventions.pod <http://xrl.us/u22b>'
* '[PATCH] Update ASTGrammar for lang/PIR <http://xrl.us/u22m>'
* 'docs/imcc/syntax.pod' * '[PATCH] languages/PIR fix string encoding,
hex and binary numbers <http://xrl.us/u22o>'
* '[PATCH] languages/PIR .globalconst <http://xrl.us/u22p>'
One patch, '[PATCH] Update pirgrammar.pod <http://xrl.us/u2z8>', also
sparked some discussion.
[perl #40706] [TODO] Tcl - implement [close] <http://xrl.us/u22q>
Earlier, Paul Cochrane submitted ticket [perl #40706]
<http://xrl.us/s5sh> where he noted that
`languages/tcl/src/builtin/close.pir` is only a stub.. Nuno Carvalho
reported that a first implementation had been committed in r16933.
There is still some discussion on how to best implement it for Tcl.
Users
Pugs on Windows <http://xrl.us/u22r>
Gabor Szabo reported a 404 error when attempting to download a Win32
binary of Pugs and Parrot. Audrey Tang suggested a different URL.
David Vergin noted that the page Audrey offered linked to a build from
November 2006 and asked if there was a newer build available.
"delete" and maybe a problem with gather <http://xrl.us/u22s>
Gilbert R. R??hrbein wanted to reorder an array so that the elements
are randomly ordered. He noted a problem with `delete` which he wasn't
able to describe, except for stating that it was linked to `gather`.
The code was included.
Compiler
dpkg-buildpacke fails due to outdated 10smoke patch <http://xrl.us/u22t>
Moritz Lenz reported that the current (r15185) revision of Pugs fails
to compile on Debian when `dpkg-buildpackage` is used because the
'10smoke' patch cannot be applied.
Acknowledgements
This summary was prepared using Mail::Summary::Tools
<http://xrl.us/qvno>, available on CPAN.
If you appreciate Perl, consider contributing to the Perl Foundation
<http://donate.perlfoundation.org> to help support the development of
Perl.
Thank you to everyone who has pointed out mistakes and offered
suggestions for improving this series. Comments on this summary can be
sent to Ann Barcomb, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Distribution
This summary can be found in the following places:
* use.perl.org <http://use.perl.org/>
* The Pugs blog <http://pugs.blogs.com/>
* The perl6-announce mailing list <http://xrl.us/qycj>
* ONLamp <http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/>
See Also
* Perl Foundation activities <http://blog.perlfoundation.org>
* Perl 6 Development <http://dev.perl.org/perl6>
* Planet Perl Six <http://planetsix.perlfoundation.org/>
