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'
Language
Larry Wall announced the demise of ¥, which was not much lamented.
Thomas Wittek suggested calling it zip and there was some discussion
of whether it is better to use terms like minmax and zip, or to use
symbols like MM and ZZ. Several jokes were made along the way.
[svn:perl6-synopsis] r13699 - doc/trunk/design/syn
A commit by Larry Wall replaced ¥ is replaced by Z.
There was also a change with the XX operator, which became X.
Steve Lukas remarked that Larry Wall had asked for ideas about good
names for various states of write access. He offered a proposal which
involves indicating that the writeability can be described as variable,
constant, or final. Dr. Ruud added a brief comment about the length of
the term variable, which he didn't find to be too long.
[svn:perl6-synopsis] r13703 - doc/trunk/design/syn
A commit from Larry Wall clarified that a named argument may name either a label or a variable.
Blair Sutton asked if the synopsis repository is publicly available, and if it is part of the Parrot or Pugs repository. The URL of the repository was posted.
Parrot Porters
[perl #29994] [BUG] "loadlib $P0, varname" not working correctly
Some time ago, in ticket [perl #29994], Jens Rieks reported an error
in imcc/parser_util.c. Klaas-Jan Stol updated the ticket and noted that
the loadlib op works on windows. However, another error was found: when
loading a non-existent library, no exception is raised.
[perl #41235] [PATCH] Add get_name() Method to Namespaces
Earlier, chromatic created a patch for get_name, which Jerry Gay
forwarded to RT to create ticket [perl #41235]. Jerry wanted to
apply the patch before 0.4.8, but chromatic said that he had been waiting
because Allison Randal wanted a deprecation cycle for the rename of
name() to get_name(). Allison replied that she had made a note
that it was deprecated (r17030) and said that the patch could be applied
after the release.
[perl #41237] [TODO] PMC Class name IDs will require a dot in front
Klaas-Jan Stol reminded people that an issue had not been decided.
Earlier, Jerry Gay created ticket [perl #41237] to address an item in DEPRECATED.pod about PMC Class name IDs. He felt that either it should use one syntax or the other, but not both.
Allison Randal preferred eliminating the dot in classname IDs. Matt Diephouse, on the other hand, liked the dot. Klaas-Jan Stol added that the dot indicates that it is PIR not pure PASM.
Allison thought that if Matt used it to disambiguate between types and local variables, it was a matter of sigils. She asked why put sigils on types instead of putting them in variables, and if a dot was the ideal sigil for types.
[perl #41529] [BUG]: t/perl/Parrot_Distribution.t test failure
In ticket [perl #41529], James Keenan reported that there was a new
failure in Parrot_Distribution.t. Jerry Gay explained that the test
exposes a bug in Parrot::Distribution, which classifies files as Perl
even when they are not. He noted that failing tests had been used as
a reminder of things which needed to be fixed, and this was still used
to some extent, although there was a movement towards RT.
The problem was resolved in r17069.
There was some discussion about the difficulty of identifying the problem. Jerry Gay mentioned that he was working on refactoring Parrot::Distribution.
in PIR, a BigInt is turning into a string against my will -- what am I doing wrong?
Eric Hanchrow reported a problem in r16999. Patrick R. Michaud offered some suggestions for correcting the code in question.
[PATCH] #39615: [TODO] get_outer op not defined in PDDs
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch which adds the description of get_outer()
to PDD20.
[PATCH] updates for docs/faq.pod
Klaas-Jan Stol made some updates to faq.pod which related to ticket
[perl #41312].
Klaas-Jan Stol had a question relating to a fix for [perl #39196]. An anonymous subroutine was unexpectedly being found, and he wondered if that was a bug.
[PATCH] retry pir/pasm updates for lang/pir
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch to replace his earlier one.
A patch by Klaas-Jan Stol made some corrections to languages/PIR.
[perl #41538] readline kills parrot on files missing a final newline
In ticket [perl #41538], Joshua Isom described a problem which could be replicated by creating a small file without a newline at the end. chromatic applied it in r17103.
Q on: #37542: [TODO] core - document behavior of multiple :load subpragmas in same compilation unit
Klaas-Jan Stol responded to ticket [perl #37542] which he claimed
stated that the behavior of multiple subroutines marked with the :load
subpragma in the same compilation unit is undefined. However, Klaas-Jan
pointed out that it is defined and wondered if the ticket could be closed.
Patrick R. Michaud agreed with closing the ticket. Will Coleda explained how Klaas-Jan could update the ticket directly.
Nicholas Clark suggested that release versions of Parrot should have debugging flags off so that it will benchmark nicely. This came from a public discussion of the speed of the Ruby implementation.
Tewk noted that the numbers generated by Cardinal are probably incorrect because the current implementation is very minimal.
Joshua Isom wondered if it was best for the default core to be the slow core. Although this makes testing easier, it gives misleading benchmarks.
[perl #40544] [NEW] Test for DOS line endings in Parrot text files
Earlier, in ticket [perl #40544], Paul Cochrane submitted a test which checks for DOS line endings in the Parrot distribution.
Will Coleda recently noted that some of the problems are related to [perl #41485] and that when he sets the properties in his working copy, the tests succeed. Paul provided an update: he will be do a few commits which update the svn eol property. Because a large number of files will be affected, the update will done in a small time slot.
As of r17102, it was fixed.
[perl #41548] [Tcl] - internals tests failings
Will Coleda reported a failing test in [perl #41548].
[perl #41549] [PATCH] fixes :vtable pragma for .pbc files
In ticket [perl #41549], Alek Storm submitted a patch in response to [perl #40626] and [perl #41364]. Jonathan Worthington planned to commit it.
Klaas-Jan Stol noted that there are some operations which have been
deprecated but which have not been listed in DEPRECATED.pod. He
suggested adding a check which will emit a warning if an operator is
deprecated.
[PATCH] languages/lua lua.pg Grammar fixes
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch for the Lua grammar file.
Aldo Calpini resurrected comments from Dan Sugalski in 2004 which dealt with cross-compiling. In order to submit patches which do not break the existing code, he asked some questions about how people are using cross-compilation at the moment.
Jerry Gay wanted to see some development in this field, and suggested an approach based upon test-driven development for configuration system changes. Joshua Isom remarked that Perl 5's configure is somewhat limited, and Perl 5 may not always be available. While Aldo agreed that Perl 5's configure is a bad way to go, he didn't see anything wrong with using Perl 5 as the tool to build. Allison Randal also indicated that reliance on Perl 5's configure would be a problem. She proposed that Aldo start with a proposal and patches.
chromatic remarked that it would be nice to be able to put data files somewhere and have configure read those instead of probing the system.
[perl #41557] [BUG] addparent established hierarchies don't work with .Super
Sam Vilain reported problems with inheritance which can result in the exception 'object has no parent'. Tests were added in r17031 to demonstrate the issue. This problem was explained in ticket [perl #41557].
[perl #41558] [PATCH] Add ops summary doc generator
In ticket [perl #41558], Shawn M Moore submitted a patch which adds a new utility script to create a summary of all the operators.
[perl #39196] [TODO] tests - need to test addmethod
In ticket [perl #39196], Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch which adds
a test for addmethod.
[perl #41569] [BUG] t/distro/file_metadata.t fails on win32
In ticket [perl #41569], Jerry Gay indicated a problem with a test which fails on Win32.
Preliminary notes for 0.4.9 release
In preparation for the 0.4.9 release, Patrick R. Michaud asked some questions of people who have previously worked on release management. Allison Randal, chromatic and Nuno Carvalho replied.
[perl #41576] [BUG] t/pmc/pmethod_test.t fails on x86_64
In ticket [perl #41576], Patrick R . Michaud reported a failure
with t/pmc/pmethod_test.t.
[perl #38983] [PDD] review PDD01_overview.pod
Patrick R. Michaud reported in ticket [perl #38983] that he had changed the roadmap to refer to PDD01 instead of the 'PLATFORMS' file which doesn't exist. However, PDD01 is still in draft status, so Patrick asked if it can be approved.
[perl #41577] docs/ROADMAP.pod refers to python bytecode translator, pie-thon test suite
Patrick R . Michaud reported in ticket [perl #41577] that there are some points in the roadmap which may no longer be relevant. Allison Randal fixed them in r17210.
[perl #41579] [BUG] t/pmc/ref.t, t/pmc/threads.t file with -C runcore
In ticket [perl #41579], Patrick R . Michaud reported two failing tests. chromatic confirmed that this was not restricted to x86_64.
[perl #41583] Tail calls from within vtable methods broken
Bram Geron reported that tail calls within v-table methods are broken. Ticket [perl #41583] tracks this bug.
[perl #41584] [TODO] Update RELEASE_INSTRUCTIONS with details for updating the website
In ticket [perl #41584], Patrick R . Michaud noted that the release instructions should include a reminder to update the website.
[PATCH] PDD16 NCI update with simple example
Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch which contains a simple example which can be added to PDD16. chromatic applied it in r17164.
[perl #41455] [NEW] and [PATCH]: tools/build/ops2pm.pl refactored
Earlier, James Keenan noted that he had some new patches for tests. They were added in r17061. The patches can be seen in [perl #41455].
[perl #41597] [PATCH] replacing explicit access to $^O in Configure
Aldo Calpini submitted a patch to ticket [perl #41597]. This patch adds an 'osname' key to Parrot's configuration data, which is used in the configure process.
Compiler
Patrick R. Michaud announced the release of Parrot 0.4.9, "Socorro".
cvs-parrot
[svn:parrot] r17107 - trunk/src/stm
chromatic objected to a patch which removed access to a null pointer in
stm/backend.c. He thought that the best solution would be to have the
PMC init() throw an exception.
Allison Randal thought that it made sense to return with no action.
reply_extracted already has the same check, and mark_extracted
should have the check added. Jerry Gay added it in r17159.
Acknowledgements
This summary was prepared using Mail::Summary::Tools, available on CPAN.
If you appreciate Perl, consider contributing to the Perl Foundation 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, kudra@domaintje.com.
Distribution
This summary can be found in the following places:
See Also
