Perl 6 Summary for 2004-10-18 through 2004-10-23
All~
Last week I received a request to summarize perl6-language before
internals. Frankly, it seems like a reasonable idea. Perl6-internals has
always been first as long as I can remember. So perhaps, it is time to
switch it up. Thus I give you
Perl6 Language
Packrat Parsing
Thomas Sandlass posted a link to an article on Packrat Parsing. It looks
like a promising technique for small programs, all though its memory
requirements may be a bit heavy for large programs. Mr. Sandlass appears
to have been Warnocked, but there are several explanations. First he
posted from google, there has been trouble in the past about such things
getting through. Second, he posted to Perl6 Language instead of Perl6
Compiler.
<http://xrl.us/dndb>
Perl6 Compiler
Perl6 Compiler list troubles
In the last summary, I mentioned that Perl6 Compiler has not yet found
its way to google groups. Leo seems to have had trouble subscribing to
it also... Perhaps this bears investigation?
Parrot
Unununium
Dan and Steve Fink told Jacques Mony that a port to Unununium would
probably require substantial changes to configure.
<http://xrl.us/dndc>
grsecurity interfering with the parrot JIT/build
Apparently our current scheme of mem_alloc_executable and
mem_free_executable is not quite enough to make grsecurity happy. Work
is ongoing...
<http://xrl.us/dndd>
signal.t failure
Will Coleda had problems with signal.t failing while his machine was
under load. Leo pointed out that this is known behavior. Jeff Clites was
a little confused/disappointed that his earlier patches to help solve
this problem had not sufficed.
<http://xrl.us/dnde>
New naming for parrot_interp
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon warned everyone that he was committing a
gianormous change which would effect any pending patches. From the
lack of chaos on the list, I would say that his warning worked.
<http://xrl.us/dndf>
Parrot Forth
Michel Pelletier and Matt Diephouse discussed some of the finer points
of Forth implementations and optimizations.
<http://xrl.us/dndg>
Win32 update
Ron Blaschke gave a quick update on his progress with VC7.1 on Win32.
Looks good and keep on chugging Ron.
Downloading Parrot
Jerry Wiltz asked if help in downloading Parrot (he was starting from
scratch (no Perl or C compiler)) on a WinXP box. Fred the
LastNamelessOne provided a plethora of useful links.
<http://xrl.us/dndh>
The Return of Register Stacks
Miroslav Silovic posted a summary of a design change that he and Leo
were considering. I asked for more details as to how it was different
then something we had moved away from much earlier. Leo provided a quite
nice and thorough explanation. Thanks. Dan observed that this recurring
thread happened nearly yearly, but that the cycle was not quite 12
months. Dan also observed that the timing to coincide with his being
sick was fortuitous. Leo and Dan went back and forth for a while
discussing the implementation and implications of it. I believe that the
end result is that we will have indirect access to registers, we will
not need to have saveall/restoreall pairs around function calls, and Dan
should eventually get better, but not until this is fully thrashed out.
<http://xrl.us/dndi>
<http://xrl.us/dndj>
<http://xrl.us/dndk>
<http://xrl.us/dndm>
<http://xrl.us/dndn>
JIT rework
As a side effect of indirect access to registers the JIT needs to be
rejiggered to account for this. Leo and Jeff Clites went back and forth
working on this with what sounds like good progress being made.
<http://xrl.us/dndo>
<http://xrl.us/dndp>
<http://xrl.us/dndq>
Win32 pernum test fix
Ron Blaschke fixed a test failing because of -0.0. Leo applied the
patch.
<http://xrl.us/dndr>
x86-64 problems fix
Brian Wheeler submitted a patch to fix x86-64. Leo couldn't apply it.
Brian resubmitted. It got mangled on the way. Brian reresubmitted. Leo
applied it. Thanks for perservering Brian!
<http://xrl.us/dnds>
External dependencies
Robert Spier suggested several options on how to simplify the problem of
Parrot and external dependencies. Sadly, Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/dndt>
mod_parrot
Jeff Horwitz is making amazing progress with his cybernetically enhanced
parrot. Oh wait, I mean embedding parrot in to apache. It all looks
really cool and he has been able to use his experience to provide
valuable crituques to us all.
<http://xrl.us/dndu>
<http://xrl.us/dndv>
Python, Parrot, and scoping
Sam Ruby has "been trying to make sense of Python's scoping in the
context of Parrot". Leo, Dan, and Allen Short all rushed to his aid.
<http://xrl.us/dndw>
Resizable*Array implementation
Bernhard Schmalhofer wondered if the Resizable*Arrays should use chunked
allocation. Dan told him: No, the motivation behind them is simple and
fast, thus the chunking would be unwanted overhead. He did mention that
they could do something clever (like chunking) if they got big enough...
<http://xrl.us/dndx>
Register Spilling
In a flash of good news for Dan, Bill Coffman has started to put his
mighty brain to work on the register spilling code. He, Leo, and Jeff
discussed various aspects of it. I look forward eagerly to the results
of getting parrot a really cool spilling algorithm (although not
probably not a eagerly as Dan and his nasty pathological code ;-)
<http://xrl.us/dndy>
C89 spec
Bill Coffman wondered if he could find the C89 spec so that he could
ensure his changes were compliant. Dan suggested using K&R second
edition. Jeff Clites pointed out the "-std=c89" flag for gcc. Michael G
Schwern suggested using C99 spec (which should also contain the C89
spec) as a "frightening accessory this Halloween". Michael frightens me.
<http://xrl.us/dndz>
<http://xrl.us/dnd2>
method_util.c
Leo asked what the state of the functions in src/method_util.c is. He
got Warnocked. I would say that means they should get pitched and see
what happens.
<http://xrl.us/dnd3>
.include 'absolute path'
Matthias Huerlemann created a patch allowing absolute paths in .include
statements. Leo responed that the implementation was not quite right,
but the format of the patch was good.
<http://xrl.us/dnd4>
ICU + Redhat == Pain
Joshua Gatcomb had a fairly log conversation with himself fleshing out a
problem with ICU on Redhat. Leo broke into his monologue to say that it
seemed Redhat specific.
<http://xrl.us/dnd5>
Strange segfault involving string concat
Matthias Hoelzl has a fairly hard to pin down segfault. Leo suggested
trying to you "parrot -G", "--gc-debug", and "-t" to track it down. No
response yet.
<http://xrl.us/dnd6>
pmccache
Leo suggested a small perl task of making something akin to ccache for
pmcs. Jeff Clites jumped on it.
<http://xrl.us/dnd7>
Befunge shall live again!!
Stepan Roh fixed somethings with the Befunge interpreter while
simultaneous accusing befunge of being unimportant. Jerome applied
some of those fixes and admonished Stepan for saying such things. I
remember a time when Befunge fleshed out many trouble some bugs in
parrot and I forsee a future when Befunge will be included in
webservers everywhere through the magic of mod_parrot!
<http://xrl.us/dnd8>
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