[use Perl] Stories for 2009-08-08
[email protected] Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:01:34 +0000
| Newsgroups | perl.daily.news |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <1249696894.149431-15166-slash-8dkjzd1.ch3.sourceforge.com@use.perl.org> |
use Perl Daily Newsletter
In this issue:
* Building a "useful Perl 6"
* Perl 5.10.1 RC1 released
* New CPAN Distributions for August 7, 2009
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Building a "useful Perl 6" |
| posted by brian_d_foy on Thursday August 06, @23:26 (Perl 6) |
| http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/07/046239 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
The most common question I get from people who aren't generally involved
with Perl 6 development is:
"When will Perl 6 be finished?"
In some ways the wording of this question bugs me a bit, because the word
"finished" implies there's a point at which we all say "We're done" and
development ceases (or at least moves to some other phase). But there
really isn't a "finish line" for Perl 6, there are just stages of
development at which more and more people are able to make use of
whatever is currently available.
So, once we eliminate the notion of "finished", the wording is often
changed to try to make it more tractable, often by asking when there will
be a "stable release", or when the specification will be frozen so an
implementation can be completed, or many other variations on the theme. I
understand the assumptions behind questions like these, but at the same
time part of me thinks "Huh? Those questions don't really fit with the
way things really happen in language development..."
The truth is that language design is an evolutionary process, with the
design and implementation efforts serving to influence and guide further
progress in the other. (See "whirlpool model".)
But there's another important input to the process: "real-world"
application programs. We need to know how Perl 6 is actually being used
in order to finish parts of the specification and implementation. Indeed,
there are parts of Perl 6 (e.g., concurrency) where the specification is
incomplete or underspecified precisely because we need input from people
writing Perl 6 applications.
But this poses a problem of sorts, because if programmers are waiting for
Perl 6 to "finish" before they start using it to write programs, and if
Perl 6 is blocking on feedback from applications and implementations
before it can progress, then we have a deadlock of sorts.
So, we need a way to break the deadlock. To me, one good answer is to
start making releases of Perl 6 that may not implement the entire Perl 6
specification, but that application writers will feel comfortable enough
to start using in their projects. I've started to call these "useful
releases" or "usable releases". While it might not have every feature
described in the Perl 6 synopses, enough features will be present that
can make it a reasonable choice for application programs.
In doing this, I'd like to also refocus conversations to avoid words like
"finished" and "stable", because they have such varied and strong
meanings in this context.
So, here's what the Rakudo Perl project is going to do:
We will make an "official", intermediate, useful and usable release
of Perl 6 (an appropriate subset) by Spring 2010.
Of course, we have to decide what will will be included (and excluded) in
this intermediate "official release". At the Rakudo BOF on Monday we held
a lively discussion about what the release could look like, what needed
to be present, and how it could be packaged. During the hackathons and
days following YAPC::EU we'll be drafting and publishing the more
detailed blueprint for the release. But one of our guiding principles
will be to "under-promise and over-deliver", to make it clear what can be
done with the release, and to make it very clear which parts of Perl 6
are not yet supported in the release.
A short list of things we know will be in the release (that Rakudo
doesn't already have): use of the STD.pm grammar for parsing, laziness,
better support for modules, fewer bugs, better error messages, better
speed. Again, our goal is to make something that is reasonable for people
to start using, even if it doesn't meet all of the requirements for Perl
6.0.0.
We've also had discussions about what to call the intermediate release.
We've considered tagging it as "Rakudo 1.0", but some of us think that
the "1.0" name might tend towards "overpromise". We also considered
things like "0.5" or "0.9", but these come with the message of "not ready
for use", and that's not what the impression we want to make either.
So, yesterday morning I finally got around to thinking about it as
"Rakudo 'whatever'". In Perl 6 the * term is used to signify "whatever",
so that leads to a working name of "Rakudo *" (or "Rakudo Star").
So, the focus of the Rakudo project is to release "Rakudo Star" in Spring
2010 as a useful (but incomplete) implementation of Perl 6. More details
about the features, milestones, and roadmap for this release will be
forthcoming over the next few days.
Pm
P.S.: Several of our "down-under" community members have pointed out that
"Spring 2010" can be a bit ambiguous. I'm using a season (instead of a
month) to leave a month or two of wiggle room, but my intention is April
2010. As we get a bit more detail into the plan, we'll identify a
specific month.
Discuss this story at:
http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=09/08/07/046239
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Perl 5.10.1 RC1 released |
| posted by rafael on Friday August 07, @03:58 (Releases) |
| http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/07/0910246 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
The Release Candidate 1 of perl 5.10.1 has been [0]uploaded to CPAN. This
is the first maintenance release of the 5.10 series; it provides numerous
bug fixes, improvements and core module updates from CPAN. Read the full
list of changes in [1]the perldelta document. Help us testing the RC1
before the final release!
This story continues at:
http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/07/0910246
Discuss this story at:
http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=09/08/07/0910246
Links:
0. http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.10.1-RC1/
1. http://search.cpan.org/~dapm/perl-5.10.1-RC1/pod/perl5101delta.pod
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| New CPAN Distributions for August 7, 2009 |
| posted by pudge on Friday August 07, @10:30 (Module Listings) |
| http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/07/1530213 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
* [0]AnyEvent-4.91 -- the DBI of event loop programming
* [1]AnyEvent-XMLRPC-0.01 -- Non-Blocking XMLRPC Server. Originally a
AnyEvent implementation of Frontier.
* [2]AnyEvent-XMLRPC-0.02 -- Non-Blocking XMLRPC Server. Originally a
AnyEvent implementation of Frontier.
* [3]Audio-Scan-0.28 -- XS parser for MP3, MP4, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, ASF,
WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Monkey's Audio
* [4]BDB-Wrapper-0.25 -- Wrapper module for BerkeleyDB.pm
* [5]Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_03 -- free book in Chinese
* [6]Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_04 -- free book in Chinese
* [7]Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_05 -- free book in Chinese
* [8]Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_06 -- free book in Chinese
* [9]CSS-Minifier-XS-0.04 -- XS based CSS minifier
* [10]CairoX-Pager-0.01 -- pager for pdf , image surface backend.
* [11]Catalyst-Plugin-AccessLog-0.02
* [12]Catalyst-Plugin-ConfigLoader-0.25 -- Load config files of various
types
* [13]Catalyst-Plugin-RunAfterRequest-0.03 -- run code after the
response has been sent.
* [14]Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.06 -- GD::Barcode::QRcode View
Class
* [15]Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.07 -- GD::Barcode::QRcode View
Class
* [16]Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.08 -- GD::Barcode::QRcode View
Class
* [17]Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.09 -- GD::Barcode::QRcode View
Class
* [18]Conf-Libconfig-0.010 -- Perl extension for libconfig
* [19]Dancer-0.9003
* [20]DateTime-Format-Natural-0.78 -- Create machine readable date/time
with natural parsing logic
* [21]DateTime-Span-Common-0.03
* [22]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-AutoPrereq-0.3.1 -- automatically extract
prereqs from your modules
* [23]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-CompileTests-0.1.0 -- common tests to check
syntax of your modules
* [24]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-CompileTests-0.1.1 -- common tests to check
syntax of your modules
* [25]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-CompileTests-0.1.2 -- common tests to check
syntax of your modules
* [26]Errno-AnyString-0.03 -- put arbitrary strings in $!
* [27]Finance-Bank-IE-0.17
* [28]IO-Callback-1.04 -- Emulate file interface for a code reference
* [29]JSON-RPC-Common-0.06 -- Transport agnostic JSON RPC helper
objects
* [30]JavaScript-Minifier-XS-0.06 -- XS based JavaScript minifier
* [31]KinoSearch-0.30_05 -- Search engine library.
* [32]Lingua-Names-1.02 -- test a string to see if it is a name
* [33]Module-Build-JSAN-Installable-0.03 -- Build JavaScript
distributions for JSAN, which can be installed locally
* [34]Module-Build-JSAN-Installable-0.04 -- Build JavaScript
distributions for JSAN, which can be installed locally
* [35]PDF-Kit-v1.0.2 -- A collection of subroutines for PDF::API2.
* [36]Parse-QTEDI-0.16 -- Parse QT/KDE preprocessed headers
* [37]Perl-Metrics2-0.06 -- Perl metrics storage and processing engine
* [38]RDF-Query-2.200 -- An RDF query implementation of SPARQL/RDQL in
Perl for use with RDF::Trine, RDF::Redland, and RDF::Core.
* [39]RT-Extension-ExtractCustomFieldValues-3.04
* [40]RTx-S3Invoker-0.13 -- Simple Saved Search Invoker
* [41]RTx-S3Invoker-0.14 -- Simple Saved Search Invoker
* [42]Script-Toolbox-0.26 -- Framework for the daily business scripts
* [43]Sjis-0.39 -- "Yet Another JPerl" Source code filter to escape
ShiftJIS
* [44]Statistics-Test-WilcoxonRankSum-0.0.6 -- perform the Wilcoxon
(aka Mann-Whitney) rank sum test on two sets of numeric data.
* [45]Test-Run-Plugin-ColorFileVerdicts-0.0121 -- make the file verdict
("ok", "NOT OK") colorful.
* [46]Test-mysqld-0.06 -- mysqld runner for tests
* [47]Text-Template-Simple-0.79_08 -- Simple text template engine
* [48]Text-Template-Simple-0.79_09 -- Simple text template engine
* [49]Vimana-0.01 -- The great new Vimana!
* [50]Vimana-0.02 -- vim script port manager
* [51]Win32-MSI-HighLevel-1.0004 -- Perl wrapper for Windows Installer
API
* [52]Wx-0.92 -- interface to the wxWidgets cross-platform GUI toolkit
* [53]Wx-GLCanvas-0.08 -- interface to wxWidgets' OpenGL canvas
* [54]perl-5.10.1-RC1 -- Practical Extraction and Report Language
Discuss this story at:
http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=09/08/07/1530213
Links:
0. http://search.cpan.org/~mlehmann/AnyEvent-4.91
1. http://search.cpan.org/~bluet/AnyEvent-XMLRPC-0.01
2. http://search.cpan.org/~bluet/AnyEvent-XMLRPC-0.02
3. http://search.cpan.org/~agrundma/Audio-Scan-0.28
4. http://search.cpan.org/~hikarine/BDB-Wrapper-0.25
5. http://search.cpan.org/~fayland/Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_03
6. http://search.cpan.org/~fayland/Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_04
7. http://search.cpan.org/~fayland/Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_05
8. http://search.cpan.org/~fayland/Book-Chinese-MasterPerlToday-0.01_06
9. http://search.cpan.org/~gtermars/CSS-Minifier-XS-0.04
10. http://search.cpan.org/~cornelius/CairoX-Pager-0.01
11. http://search.cpan.org/~arodland/Catalyst-Plugin-AccessLog-0.02
12. http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/Catalyst-Plugin-ConfigLoader-0.25
13. http://search.cpan.org/~flora/Catalyst-Plugin-RunAfterRequest-0.03
14. http://search.cpan.org/~hide/Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.06
15. http://search.cpan.org/~hide/Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.07
16. http://search.cpan.org/~hide/Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.08
17. http://search.cpan.org/~hide/Catalyst-View-GD-Barcode-QRcode-0.09
18. http://search.cpan.org/~cnangel/Conf-Libconfig-0.010
19. http://search.cpan.org/~sukria/Dancer-0.9003
20. http://search.cpan.org/~schubiger/DateTime-Format-Natural-0.78
21. http://search.cpan.org/~tbone/DateTime-Span-Common-0.03
22. http://search.cpan.org/~jquelin/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-AutoPrereq-0.3.1
23. http://search.cpan.org/~jquelin/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-CompileTests-0.1.0
24. http://search.cpan.org/~jquelin/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-CompileTests-0.1.1
25. http://search.cpan.org/~jquelin/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-CompileTests-0.1.2
26. http://search.cpan.org/~pubnoop/Errno-AnyString-0.03
27. http://search.cpan.org/~waider/Finance-Bank-IE-0.17
28. http://search.cpan.org/~pubnoop/IO-Callback-1.04
29. http://search.cpan.org/~nuffin/JSON-RPC-Common-0.06
30. http://search.cpan.org/~gtermars/JavaScript-Minifier-XS-0.06
31. http://search.cpan.org/~creamyg/KinoSearch-0.30_05
32. http://search.cpan.org/~leocharre/Lingua-Names-1.02
33. http://search.cpan.org/~nplatonov/Module-Build-JSAN-Installable-0.03
34. http://search.cpan.org/~nplatonov/Module-Build-JSAN-Installable-0.04
35. http://search.cpan.org/~shcorey/PDF-Kit-v1.0.2
36. http://search.cpan.org/~dongxu/Parse-QTEDI-0.16
37. http://search.cpan.org/~adamk/Perl-Metrics2-0.06
38. http://search.cpan.org/~gwilliams/RDF-Query-2.200
39. http://search.cpan.org/~falcone/RT-Extension-ExtractCustomFieldValues-3.04
40. http://search.cpan.org/~jpierce/RTx-S3Invoker-0.13
41. http://search.cpan.org/~jpierce/RTx-S3Invoker-0.14
42. http://search.cpan.org/~eckardt/Script-Toolbox-0.26
43. http://search.cpan.org/~ina/Sjis-0.39
44. http://search.cpan.org/~ingrif/Statistics-Test-WilcoxonRankSum-0.0.6
45. http://search.cpan.org/~shlomif/Test-Run-Plugin-ColorFileVerdicts-0.0121
46. http://search.cpan.org/~kazuho/Test-mysqld-0.06
47. http://search.cpan.org/~burak/Text-Template-Simple-0.79_08
48. http://search.cpan.org/~burak/Text-Template-Simple-0.79_09
49. http://search.cpan.org/~cornelius/Vimana-0.01
50. http://search.cpan.org/~cornelius/Vimana-0.02
51. http://search.cpan.org/~grandpa/Win32-MSI-HighLevel-1.0004
52. http://search.cpan.org/~mbarbon/Wx-0.92
53. http://search.cpan.org/~mbarbon/Wx-GLCanvas-0.08
54. http://search.cpan.org/~dapm/perl-5.10.1-RC1
Copyright 1997-2008 pudge. All rights reserved.
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