Re: Help mechanism in REPL?
On Wednesday, 7 September 2016 17:57:32 PDT Parrot Raiser wrote: > This isn't a request for a feature, merely a thought experiment. We're > still in the phase where it's more important to ensure that existing > features work properly than add new ones. > > How difficult would it be to include a mechanism within the REPL to > select either documentation or an example, (possibly from the test > suite), for a particular command? Selection might be by some control > key combination, cursor positioning, or an alternative to "enter" at > the end of the line. The purpose would be to speed development, by > enabling an inexperienced developer to look up details while testing. > > Syntax errors generate messages which attempt to provide help; could > this provide the basis for a "help" mechanism? Would this be useful? > > Opinions? Well, this sounds like a job for the meta-object protocol (specifically, `.WHY`): https://docs.perl6.org/language/mop#WHY The simplest option for handling this in the REPL is probably to have some sort of automatic handling of Pod sent to sink context, rendering it and sending it to a pager. Then, the user could simply do >> Hash.WHY (LET THERE BE DOCS!) And there would be docs.
Fwd: Ideas for a Object-Belongs-to-Thread threading model
Forgot to send this to the list. -- Forwarded message -- From: Alex Elsayed eternal...@gmail.com Date: Wed, May 12, 2010 at 8:55 PM Subject: Re: Ideas for a Object-Belongs-to-Thread threading model To: Daniel Ruoso dan...@ruoso.com You may find interesting a paper that was (at one point) listed in the /topic of #perl6. The paper is: Combining Events And Threads For Scalable Network Services http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~stevez/papers/LZ07.ps Steve Zdancewic and Peng Li, who wrote it, implemented their proof of concept in Haskell, and I think it would mesh rather well with the 'hybrid threads' GSoC project that Parrot is undertaking. What's more, the proof-of-concept demonstrated that it performed very well, well enough that the threading/event abstractions were never a bottle neck even up to 10M threads (for memory usage, this came out to 48bytes per thread of overhead), and with 100 threads it outperformed NPTL(pthreads)+AIO on IO. It's also CPS based, which fits pretty well.
[RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
While lurking in IRC, I've seen several discussions of what CPAN 6 should look like. Honestly, wayland76++'s idea for packaging seems the best to me. Most of the suggestions so far, especially those based on alien, apt, yum, or other existing package managers have a few major problems: * Alien only converts between a few package formats * All of these suggestions are _heavily_ biased towards binary distributions * These suggestions make automatic packaging for new distros extremely difficult, because they require major changes to multiple projects For example, let's take Gentoo or Exherbo. Gentoo has two package managers, one which is used by most Gentoo users (Portage) and one which is more featureful and advances faster (for various reasons, including more developers) (Paludis). Portage supports binary packages through .tbz2 files with trailing metadata. Paludis does not support these, as they have been deemed ill-conceived and poorly implemented by the lead developer, and is working on its own binary package system. Exherbo uses Paludis exclusively. Both distros are source-based. Paludis has a tool which can import arbitrary trees to merge into the filesystem, but it's generally preferred that it be used only by users, not system packagers. Portage has no such tool. One existing problem for Gentoo is supporting installation of Perl 5 modules. Because all metadata is spread out (and more importantly, /inside/ the tarballs), it is impossible to, say, add a new kind of repository for Perl modules - you'd have to have the full source for every module on your machine. Similarly, the automatic ebuild creator for P5 modules, g-cpan, is forced to recursively download packages, unpack them, and read their metadata before fetching their dependencies. This poses a significant problem for distros which mandate up-front configuration without an interactivity requirement (i.e., Exherbo and to a lesser degree Gentoo). I think that wayland76++'s idea of having a common metadata system with filters to convert that metadata into a distribution package is the best currently-proposed solution, but I also feel that it needs some additional extension. I personally believe that there are a few requirements for a package format that is sufficient for Perl 6: * It must enable packaging for both binary- and source-based distros * It must enable automatic generation of packages for supported systems (although it may well not be capable of it out of the box) * It must permit (or preferably help with) attempts to support new systems * It must be simple to submit packages in the correct format * It must enable the design and building of an automatic testing system My extensions to wayland76++'s proposal are as follows: * Include in the metadata enough information to: * Build a binary package ( deb, rpm, etc) * Create a source build script ( ebuild, exheres, PKGBUILD, etc) * Fetch the source package * Contact maintainer/author/etc with issues * Query stability information * Prod the testing framework (not the actual tests, though) * Separate the metadata from the package * If the metadata is in the source distribution, have CPAN 6 extract it, and put it in a separate tree of just metadata * This enables simple fetching of the entire /metadata/ tree without the entire /source/ tree * Also opens the door to package managers natively supporting this format (Paludis has done this with CRAN and is working on Ruby Gems support) * Have well-documented example filters, and a skeleton-filter-builder script * Enables packaging developers to rapidly roll out support for new systems * Encourage use of pure-P6 filters, so as to enable cross-distro mantainership * Like building Fedora packages on the developer's Debian workstation * Multiple submission avenues * Simple login-controlled FTP * Web submission * PAUSE-like client * Hosted SCM source w/tagging Comments?
Re: [RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
On Friday 29 May 2009 1:51:40 am Mark Overmeer wrote: I would really like to see a split in terminology being used for the various seperate problems. The traditional confusion about what CPAN is: an archive or an install tool. Package manager discussions are in the process AFTER the install tool: to distribute OS changes to be made. In the messages on the list, I see people merge requirements of these very independent tasks. Okay, I will readily admit that there is a real need to have there be a more clear separation between these two separate things which are both called CPAN. I think that package managers are not a CPAN related problem at all. The Perl install tool decides which files it wants to have within some file-system tree and versioned environment, and then package managers distribute those files and meta-data. Here I'll have to disagree, for several reasons. * The structure of the archival system will heavily impact the structure of the install tool * If the archive does not provide sufficient information in a useful format, then it may be difficult or impossible to delegate installation to the local package manager. With the current CPAN architecture for Perl 5, it is impossible for an external package manager to calculate dependencies without first downloading the entire /source/ of all modules in the dependency list *due to a limitation of the archive architecture* Also, there are various different package managers around for Linux distributions, and they tend to be replaced every few years. If you want people to use Perl modules on their Linux systems in a convenient way, you have to distribute each perl module in all of the existing formats. Of course, a tool like alien can be used to simplify the task of creating all these flavors. This feels like a straw man to me. * Package managers are actually relatively stable. The .deb, .rpm, and .ebuild formats (just to name three _big_ ones) have been around for at least 10 years each. * We don't need to provide everything in all formats - If the archive structure makes automated conversion easy, then _each_ _distro_ can just run a cron job to * Sync with the CPAN archive * Automagically build packages for their own distro * Publish those packages (PPA for Debian and Ubuntu, overlay for Gentoo) * Alien is really not a very good solution, as it only works for binary distros, not source or hybrid ones (Gentoo, Exherbo, Arch) and even then only a few binary distros are supported IMO, that discussion should go in the direction of additional services: the CPAN archive distributes what authors publish. The install tools (CPAN.pm/CPANPLUS/successors) make that code fit in specific operating systems. As a service, other people can publish the results of their specific module installation via package-managers to the world, such that those people can use they platform native software management tools. Just like search.cpan.org is an independent additional service on the CPAN archive. And once again we run into an issue: This workflow would require that each end user, rather than using /only/ CPAN(PLUS)? or /only/ their package manager to install, they are forced to use one to generate packages, and then the other to install them! By providing a very open metadata spec, we can make it so that neither the Perl community nor the end-users need to take on that burden. Instead, it would go to the distributions, who are already well-prepared to handle packaging. We'd just be providing the tools and material they need to do so. I personally believe that there are a few requirements for a package format that is sufficient for Perl 6: * It must enable packaging for both binary- and source-based distros * It must enable automatic generation of packages for supported systems (although it may well not be capable of it out of the box) * It must permit (or preferably help with) attempts to support new systems * It must be simple to submit packages in the correct format * It must enable the design and building of an automatic testing system The worst flaws in software design are based on the idea that you can organize the outside world. The Perl community will never be able to push its packaging mechanism into Linux distributions. We may be able to select the ideal packaging mechanism, and then they will wrap that in their own packaging mechanism. As I said above, it doesn't need to. What my mail was suggesting was mainly a very information-rich metadata spec, which would contain enough information that the distros could package the modules without needing much more than that. * For my first point, it merely says that the metadata must contain enough information to run an installation process, which is usually the information needed to build a distro package * The second bulled adds the constraint that this should be doable in an automated fashion * The third bullet adds the
Re: [RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
I believe he is arguing that whatever we end up doing needs to make it easy for an external package-manager to find out what files CPAN6.pm is going to install, and where, and what the dependencies were (both Perl and system libraries). So that the various distributions can make native packages from perl packages automatically (or at least as close to automatically as possible, it gets a little uglier when external libraries are involved). I am completely in agreement here. So if there is program foo that is written in Perl that Fedora wants to distribute, they want to be able to list the dependencies when they make the package for foo. If foo requires a few packages, then they just want to say that and then when foo is installed, pull in those packages and any that those depend on, Agreed. including any non-perl ones that are needed by the perl packages. Here is where it gets sticky. Let's take a perl module which requires the Berkely DB - in fact, requires a specific API version. In Gentoo, you'd specify that with a slot dependency, while on Fedora you'd specify the release. The two distros may well use different names for the package and/or the slot/release specifier. This problem strikes me as intractable - I think the only thing we can do is provide a dependency specifier, clearly tagged as being external to the CPAN 6 archive, with a sensible name that allows a human to intervene and find the correct package for their distro.
Re: [RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
I know that Rakudo is not the official implementation. The problem is that you misunderstood my post. I did not say to distribute PIR to the exclusion of Perl source. You know that I was replying to Larry's comment that he supported the notion of distributing binaries. Surely you didn't think that Larry meant distribute binaries to the exclusion of Perl source, did you? Therefore, my comment is a reply to the binary aspect and the central part of my comment is the problem with modules that require a C compiler. Sorry about that then. * Collision detection - It becomes impossible to prevent another package from overwriting a file installed this way Nothing is impossible. The first method that crossed your mind may not do it, but that doesn't mean that it can't be done. In any case, the drawbacks are no worse than what the current CPAN shell does today. And the current CPAN shell obviously work fairly well. The current system has room for improvement, but any argument that says it can't work is flawed because it is working right this minute and it has been working for years. It may not be impossible, but the only way to achieve that without making ebuilds and letting the package manager handle the package directly (on Gentoo at least) seem to be limited to Support the (non-standardized) VDB database for installed packages internally. Which is a pretty shitty road to go down. Also, the Gentoo developers have flat-out declared that they will not officially support modules installed with the CPAN shell because of these issues, so the CPAN shell actually _doesn't_ work fairly well on Gentoo. It gives you an environment where your install is considered to be out of the control of the package manager and, therefore, a spaghetti mess where you have multiple package managers which overlap and interfere with each other, yet don't have any mechanism for cooperation, synchronization, or communication.
[RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
While lurking in IRC, I've seen several discussions of what CPAN 6 should look like. Honestly, wayland76++'s idea for packaging seems the best to me. Most of the suggestions so far, especially those based on alien, apt, yum, or other existing package managers have a few major problems: * Alien only converts between a few package formats * All of these suggestions are _heavily_ biased towards binary distributions * These suggestions make automatic packaging for new distros extremely difficult, because they require major changes to multiple projects For example, let's take Gentoo or Exherbo. Gentoo has two package managers, one which is used by most Gentoo users (Portage) and one which is more featureful and advances faster (for various reasons, including more developers) (Paludis). Portage supports binary packages through .tbz2 files with trailing metadata. Paludis does not support these, as they have been deemed ill-conceived and poorly implemented by the lead developer, and is working on its own binary package system. Exherbo uses Paludis exclusively. Both distros are source-based. Paludis has a tool which can import arbitrary trees to merge into the filesystem, but it's generally preferred that it be used only by users, not system packagers. Portage has no such tool. One existing problem for Gentoo is supporting installation of Perl 5 modules. Because all metadata is spread out (and more importantly, /inside/ the tarballs), it is impossible to, say, add a new kind of repository for Perl modules - you'd have to have the full source for every module on your machine. Similarly, the automatic ebuild creator for P5 modules, g-cpan, is forced to recursively download packages, unpack them, and read their metadata before fetching their dependencies. This poses a significant problem for distros which mandate up-front configuration without an interactivity requirement (i.e., Exherbo and to a lesser degree Gentoo). I think that wayland76++'s idea of having a common metadata system with filters to convert that metadata into a distribution package is the best currently-proposed solution, but I also feel that it needs some additional extension. I personally believe that there are a few requirements for a package format that is sufficient for Perl 6: * It must enable packaging for both binary- and source-based distros * It must enable automatic generation of packages for supported systems (although it may well not be capable of it out of the box) * It must permit (or preferably help with) attempts to support new systems * It must be simple to submit packages in the correct format * It must enable the design and building of an automatic testing system My extensions to wayland76++'s proposal are as follows: * Include in the metadata enough information to: * Build a binary package ( deb, rpm, etc) * Create a source build script ( ebuild, exheres, PKGBUILD, etc) * Fetch the source package * Contact maintainer/author/etc with issues * Query stability information * Prod the testing framework (not the actual tests, though) * Separate the metadata from the package * If the metadata is in the source distribution, have CPAN 6 extract it, and put it in a separate tree of just metadata * This enables simple fetching of the entire /metadata/ tree without the entire /source/ tree * Also opens the door to package managers natively supporting this format (Paludis has done this with CRAN and is working on Ruby Gems support) * Have well-documented example filters, and a skeleton-filter-builder script * Enables packaging developers to rapidly roll out support for new systems * Encourage use of pure-P6 filters, so as to enable cross-distro mantainership * Like building Fedora packages on the developer's Debian workstation * Multiple submission avenues * Simple login-controlled FTP * Web submission * PAUSE-like client * Hosted SCM source w/tagging Comments?
Re: [RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
On Thursday 28 May 2009 4:04:28 pm Daniel Carrera wrote: * We were mainly looking at Alien as a source of Perl code we could borrow. Ah, I was lumping it in with the previous proposals to actually use .deb as the official P6 package format. My mistake. * The point of wayland76's proposal was to use the local package manager. Whether the local package manager is geared toward binary distributions is a separate issue. Again, my point on the issue of supporting binary/source distros was that wayland76's proposal /would/ be able to handle it properly; the '.deb as official' method would not. At first I liked wayland76's proposal, but now I have a new concern: Most package managers are not designed to hold multiple versions of the same package. As indicated in S11, it is important that a computer can hold multiple versions of the same package. I fear that using the native package manager will make this difficult. This could probably be resolved, but it would probably require distro-specific code. On Gentoo, the way to do it would be with 'slots', which are specifically designed for that use; on Debian, it would seem that the names would have to be distinguished by an identifier, allowing multiple versions.
Re: [RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
On Thursday 28 May 2009 4:22:00 pm Larry Wall wrote: I support the notion of distributing binaries because nobody's gonna want to chew up their phone's battery doing unnecessary compiles. The ecology of computing devices is different from ten years ago. I agree. My ideal situation would be that CPAN6 offers multiple 'heads' - one might be a raw metadata store; another might be a Debian/Ubuntu style PPA provider, possibly building (.deb|.rpm)s when uploaded, or in a distributed CPANTS-like fashion. Most of these package managers have ways of running an installation script at the end, so we could perhaps think of this as downloading an installer rather than the actual software, and the new version of the installer contains or has access to all the versions it knows should be installed, and interacts with the official Perl library installer to install them. This has the potential for greatly angering users and distro packagers: a major reason people use package managers is that they maintain a database of what files were installed, when, and by what package. If you use post-install hooks, many package managers won't have that information, making uninstallation a nightmare. By the same token, it's smart to keep the metadata close to the thing it's describing, so if it's easy to extract up front reliably, that's probably sufficient. Again, agreed. That would fall under the easy to submit well-formed packages requirement in my mail. In fact, it could even still be a Meta.yml file in the source distribution - it could be up to CPAN6 to extract it for external access when the distribution is uploaded.
Re: [RFC] CPAN6 requirements analysis
On Thursday 28 May 2009 4:54:50 pm Daniel Carrera wrote: On the other hand, distributing Parrot bytecode (or PIR, or PASM) seems fine. But I don't know what to suggest for modules that require a C compiler. The problem with that is that Rakudo isn't the Official impelentation, and never will be. Distributing modules as Parrot bytecode would lock out other implementations, something that is very strongly discouraged. Also, I think Larry may have meant the compiled form of whatever the P6 equivalent of XS is, since Perl is largely designed as a scripting (or at least scripting-ish) language and therefore might lose more than it gains by precompiling the /Perl/ code rather than just the C/C++/etc. I suggested something similar to wayland76 a couple of days ago, to solve a different problem. If I remember correctly, he was concerned about the local package manager not knowing which files were installed. Perhaps we should revisit this idea. This is what I proposed: We have our own package manager (e.g. /usr/bin/cpan6 ) that takes a .tgz file with an appropriate format: /usr/bin/cpan6 install Foo-Bar.tgz The RPM Foo-Bar.rpm would contain Foo-Bar.tgz and the rpm install script would simply run cpan6 install Foo-Bar.tgz. When the Fedora user uninstall the module, rpm runs a script which just calls cpan6 uninstall Foo::Bar. The issue with that goes somewhat farther than just the package manager doesn't know what's there. Package managers provide several important features that would be rendered near-useless by that model: * Collision detection - It becomes impossible to prevent another package from overwriting a file installed this way * Linkage checking - If a library interface breaks compatibility, then binaries installed this way will not be detected when sweeping installed packages to fix linkage * Programmatic generation of binary packages for hybrid distributions [1] * Recording the attributes (permissions, etc) of installed packages, so they can be fixed if changed inappropriately * Source-based distributions which give the user the option of enabling/disabling tests selectively lose that ability (Gentoo, Exherbo) [1]: This is a footnote because it'll take a paragraph. In Gentoo (and when their binary package format is stabilized, Exherbo) binary packages are generated by invoking the package manager with specific options. With Portage (Gentoo only), the --buildpkg[[only]?] flag determines this, while with Paludis (Gentoo and Exherbo) it is accomplished by 'installing' to a binary repository. The system you describe makes this model impossible.
