[use Perl] Stories for 2010-05-24

use Perl Daily Newsletter

In this issue:
    * Ctypes for Perl: Intro and API spec
    * News: Rakudo Perl 6 development release #29
    * New CPAN Distributions for May 23, 2010

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ctypes for Perl: Intro and API spec                                |
|   posted by brian_d_foy on Sunday May 23, @07:50 (User Journal)    |
|   http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/23/1130259              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Hello, good evening and welcome.

For the next few months I will be using this blog to help document and
publicise my "[0]Ctypes for Perl" project. The project is being carried
out for TPF under the auspices of the [1]Google Summer of Code programme,
and mentored by [2]Reini Urban.

What's a ctypes?

'[3]ctypes' is the [4]Foreign Function Interface (FFI) library
distributed with the Python core. It basically allows native C libraries
to be called easily from Python; for module authors, it allows the
wrapping of C libraries in pure Python.

This is obviously a powerful concept. Imagine a world where Perl module
authors didn't need to use XS, and module consumers don't need to have a
correctly configured compiler set up on their system. This is the purpose
of the project: to create an easy, cross-platform, pure-Perl interface to
native C libraries.

Implementations

ctypes is based on [5]libffi. It's small, supports a wide range of
systems, and has a very [6]liberal license. It's been distributed with
GCC for a number of years, used by gcj for interfacing between
interpreted and compiled code.

From what I can gather, Python set the trend in dynamic languages using
libffi. Looking at the success of the Python module, developers at
Mozilla chose libffi to develop [7]ctypes.jsm. [8]Ruby-FFI uses it too,
so there's plenty of prior art which will hopefully help me out.

The FFI problem hasn't been ignored in the Perl world. There's [9]FFI.pm,
the biggest disadvantage of which in my view is being built on libffcall,
a library analogous to libffi but under the GPL (I don't think libffi was
around at the time FFI.pm was written). It also sets out to provide a
'low-level' interface. [10]P5NCI, on the other hand, is all about the
lovely interfaces, but only allows up to four arguments passed to C
functions, and doesn't yet support passing in pointers. [11]C::Dynalib
provides similar functionality to the other two modules; [12]click here
for the latest updates on its development. It's worth pointing out that
none of these modules worked out of the box on Strawberry 5.10.1.

My proposed API rolls in features of several of the above
implementations, particularly P5NCI and FFI.pm. I have indeed copied and
pasted swathes from their POD pages (So what? Wanna fight about it?). I
plan to also mimic C::DynaLib's acceptance of both positional & named
parameters; examples are omitted below for succinctness.

1. Functional

use Ptypes;
# FFI.pm's interface of Absolute Freedom...
my $addr = (address of a C function)
my $signature = (function signature)
my $ret = Ptypes::call($addr, $signature, ...);

# Keeping things where you can see them...
my $library_path = Ptypes::find_lib( 'mathtastic' );
my $library = Ptypes::load_lib( $library_path );
my $double_func = Ptypes::load_func( $library, 'double_double', 'dd' );
my $ret = $double_func->( 1.0 );

# Supplying a Perl callback...
$ret = Ptypes::call($addr, $signature, $subref, ...)

2. Objectionable

use Ptypes;
my $lib = Ptypes->new( library => 'mathtastic' [, package => 'MyPackage'
] );
my $double_func = $lib->load_function( 'double_double', 'dd' );
my $ret = $double_func->( 1.0 );

# Exposing funcs directly in Perl namespaces...
$lib->install_function( 'double_int', 'ii' [, 'perl_sub_name',
'AnotherPackage' ] );
my $ret = AnotherPackage::double_int( 1 );

# or simply...
package AnotherPackage;
my $ret = double_int( 3 );

All fairly self-explanatory, perhaps apart from arguments like 'ii' or
'dd' - these strings describe return values and arguments for C functions
in the same notation used by [13]pack. In addition to the above, the
module may provide mechanisms for manipulating C data types directly from
Perl ($c = new Ptypes::char). To start off with though there'll be a
fairly straight-forward / 'stupid' translation based on seeing what kind
of data's in your SV*, for initial experimentation.

There's also some exciting stuff to do with [14]GCC::TranslationUnit to
tell you about, but details of that will wait till later. For now, I have
some questions for you, the community:

  * How d'you like the API proposal above? Anything you'd add? Take out?

  * How does 'Ptypes' take you as a name for this malarky? Y'know, like
    ctypes, but for Perl. 'FFI' is already taken after all...

Don't want to gush here, but I'm so chuffed* to be working on this. I'm
already learning loads, and I think it will save a lot of blood, sweat &
tears for module authors and users in the future. I want to thank rurban
for his guidance & help so far, and dukeleto and others for organising
the The Perl Foundation's participation in GSoC and letting me
participate!

I like to work log, so follow @doubious_code on Twitter to get far more
information than you want about this project. I hope to be blogging
pretty regularly too.

* For American-speakers, 'chuffed' is kinda equivalent to 'stoked'

Discuss this story at:
    http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=10/05/23/1130259

Links:
    0. http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2010/tpf/t127230763807
    1. http://code.google.com/soc/
    2. http://blogs.perl.org/users/rurban
    3. http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/ctypes/
    4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_function_interface
    5. http://sourceware.org/libffi/
    6. http://github.com/atgreen/libffi/blob/master/LICENSE
    7. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript_code_modules/ctypes.jsm
    8. http://wiki.github.com/ffi/ffi/
    9. http://search.cpan.org/~gaal/FFI-1.04/FFI.pm
   10. http://search.cpan.org/~chromatic/P5NCI-0.31/lib/P5NCI.pm
   11. http://search.cpan.org/~rurban/C-DynaLib-0.60/lib/C/DynaLib.pm
   12. http://blogs.perl.org/users/rurban/2010/05/cdynalib-progress.html
   13. http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/pack.html
   14. http://search.cpan.org/~awin/GCC-TranslationUnit-1.00/TranslationUnit.pm


+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| News: Rakudo Perl 6 development release #29                        |
|   posted by brian_d_foy on Sunday May 23, @07:50 (Perl 6)          |
|   http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/23/1130246              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]colomon writes "On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm pleased
to announce theMay 2010 development release of Rakudo Perl #29
"Erlangen". Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual
Machine (see [1]http://www.parrot.org./ The tarball for the May 2010
release is available from [2]http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads .

Rakudo Perl follows a monthly release cycle, with each release named
after a Perl Mongers group. The May 2010 release is code named "Erlangen"
in recognition of Erlangen.pm and the Perl 6 talk that Moritz Lenz, one
of our core developers, gave this month.

Some of the specific changes and improvements occurring with this release
include:

* Lexical classes and roles were implemented. Additionally, anonymous
classes which were never quite right in alpha are now implemented more
correctly, and anonymous roles are also supported.

* Basic support for named enumerations of the form 'enum Weekday ' has
been restored.

* First cut of use Foo:from and eval('foo', :lang); needs Blizkost[1] to
be installed to work.

* Numeric / Real roles much closer to the spec now.

* As always, many additional small features and bug fixes make working
with Rakudo more pleasant.

* Rakudo now passes 32,347 spectests. We estimate that there are about
39,500 tests in the test suite, so Rakudo passes about 82% of all tests.

For a more detailed list of changes see "docs/ChangeLog".

The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for
making Rakudo Perl possible, as well as those people who worked on
parrot, the Perl 6 test suite and the specification.

The following people contributed to this release: Solomon Foster, Moritz
Lenz, Jonathan Worthington, Martin Berends, chromatic, Carl Masak,
snarkyboojum, Stefan O'Rear, Reini Urban, Jonathan Scott Duff, takadonet,
Christoph Otto, isBEKaml, ash_, bubaflub, Jimmy Zhuo, Peter Lobsinger and
Patrick Abi Salloum

If you would like to contribute, see [3]http://rakudo.org/how-to-help ,
ask on the [email protected] mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on
freenode.

The next release of Rakudo (#30) is scheduled for June 17, 2010. A list
of the other planned release dates and code names for 2010 is available
in the "docs/release_guide.pod" file. In general, Rakudo development
releases are scheduled to occur two days after each Parrot monthly
release. Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month.

Have fun!

[1] [4]http://github.com/jnthn/blizkost"

Discuss this story at:
    http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=10/05/23/1130246

Links:
    0. mailto:[email protected]
    1. http://www.parrot.org./
    2. http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads
    3. http://rakudo.org/how-to-help
    4. http://github.com/jnthn/blizkost


+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| New CPAN Distributions for May 23, 2010                            |
|   posted by pudge on Sunday May 23, @11:30 (Module Listings)       |
|   http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/23/1530207              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

  * [0]Algorithm-Networksort-1.09 -- Create Sorting Networks.
  * [1]Apache2-WebApp-Extra-Admin-0.10 -- Web based admin control panel
  * [2]App-TinyMVC-0.01_1 -- A lightweight MVC framework for dynamic
    content
  * [3]App-TinyMVC-0.01_2 -- A lightweight MVC framework for dynamic
    content
  * [4]App-perlbrew-0.07 -- Manage perl installations in your $HOME
  * [5]App-perlzonji-1.101420 -- A more knowledgeable perldoc
  * [6]Attribute-SubName-1.101420 -- Naming anonymous subroutines via
    attributes
  * [7]CHI-Driver-DBI-1.23 -- Use DBI for cache
  * [8]Carp-Source-1.101420 -- Warn of errors with stack backtrace and
    source context
  * [9]Catalyst-View-Email-0.30 -- Send Email from Catalyst
  * [10]Cindy-0.11 -- use unmodified XML or HTML documents as templates.
  * [11]Cindy-Apache2-0.04 -- use unmodified XML or HTML documents as
    templates.
  * [12]Class-Action-0.4 -- Basic command pattern obj undo/rollback
    actions
  * [13]Class-Factory-Enhanced-1.101420 -- More functionality for
    Class::Factory
  * [14]Class-Null-2.101420 -- Implements the Null Class design pattern
  * [15]DBIx-Class-Schema-Loader-0.07000 -- Dynamic definition of a
    DBIx::Class::Schema
  * [16]Devel-REPL-1.003010 -- a modern perl interactive shell
  * [17]Dist-Zilla-3.101421 -- distribution builder; installer not
    included!
  * [18]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-AutoVersion-Relative-0.01027903 --
    Time-Relative versioning
  * [19]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-DistManifestTests-1.101420 -- Release tests for
    the manifest
  * [20]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-HasVersionTests-1.101420 -- Release tests for
    version numbers
  * [21]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-Homepage-1.101420 -- Automatically sets the
    homepage URL
  * [22]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-InstallGuide-1.101420 -- Build an INSTALL file
  * [23]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-KwaliteeTests-1.101420 -- Release tests for
    kwalitee
  * [24]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-MetaProvides-1.10027802 -- Generating and
    Populating 'provides' in your META.yml
  * [25]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-MinimumVersionTests-1.101420 -- Release tests
    for minimum required versions
  * [26]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-MinimumVersionTests-1.101421 -- Release tests
    for minimum required versions
  * [27]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-PodLoom-3.00 -- Dist::Zilla plugin for
    Pod::Loom
  * [28]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-PodSpellingTests-1.101420 -- Release tests for
    POD spelling
  * [29]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-PortabilityTests-1.101420 -- Release tests for
    portability
  * [30]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-ReportVersions-1.101420 -- Write a test that
    reports used module versions
  * [31]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-ReportVersions-1.101421 -- Write a test that
    reports used module versions
  * [32]Dist-Zilla-Plugin-SynopsisTests-1.101420 -- Release tests for
    synopses
  * [33]Dist-Zilla-Plugins-CJM-3.00 -- CJM's plugins for Dist::Zilla
  * [34]Dist-Zilla-Role-Tempdir-0.01021401 -- Shell Out and collect the
    result in a DZ plug-in.
  * [35]File-Namaste-0.24 -- routines to manage NAMe-AS-TExt tags
  * [36]FusqlFS-0.001 -- fusqlfs - FUSE file system to mount DB and
    provide tools to control and admin it
  * [37]Graph-Easy-0.65 -- Convert or render graphs (as ASCII, HTML, SVG
    or via Graphviz)
  * [38]IPC-SysV-2.03 -- System V IPC constants and system calls
  * [39]Judy-0.27 -- Library for creating and accessing dynamic arrays
  * [40]KappaCUDA-1.1.0 -- Module to give easy access to NVIDIA CUDA from
    Perl using the Kappa Library.
  * [41]Language-Befunge-4.13 -- a generic funge interpreter
  * [42]Language-Befunge-Vector-XS-1.1.1 -- Language::Befunge::Vector
    rewritten for speed
  * [43]Log-Contextual-0.00202 -- Simple logging interface with a
    contextual log
  * [44]Log-Syslog-Fast-0.30 -- Perl extension for sending syslog
    messages over TCP, UDP,
  * [45]Markup-Unified-0.02 -- A simple, unified interface for Textile,
    Markdown and BBCode.
  * [46]Markup-Unified-0.03 -- A simple, unified interface for Textile,
    Markdown and BBCode.
  * [47]Marpa-0.101_000 -- Generate Parsers from any BNF grammar
  * [48]Math-Evol-1.11 -- Evolution search optimisation
  * [49]Monotone-AutomateStdio-0.08 -- Perl interface to Monotone via
    automate stdio
  * [50]MooseX-MarkAsMethods-0.07 -- Mark overload code symbols as
    methods
  * [51]PDL-2.4.6_007 -- Perl Data Language
  * [52]Perl-Critic-Bangs-1.06 -- Perl::Critic::Bangs - A collection of
    policies for Perl::Critic
  * [53]Pod-Weaver-Section-Installation-1.101420 -- Add an INSTALLATION
    pod section
  * [54]RDF-Query-2.202 -- A pure-perl impelmentation of the RDF query
    languages SPARQL and RDQL.
  * [55]RDF-RDFa-Linter-0.03 -- find common mistakes in RDFa files
  * [56]Rose-DB-0.761 -- A DBI wrapper and abstraction layer.
  * [57]Rose-DB-Object-0.788 -- Extensible, high performance
    object-relational mapper (ORM).
  * [58]SVG-Rasterize-0.001005 -- rasterize SVG content to pixel graphics
  * [59]Test-Module-Used-0.2.0 -- Test required module is really used and
    vice versa bitween lib/t and META.yml
  * [60]Text-Template-Library-0.03 -- a derived class of Text::Template
  * [61]Tk-ForDummies-Graph-1.12 -- Extension of Canvas widget to create
    a graph like GDGraph.
  * [62]once-1.101420 -- Execute code only once throughout the program's
    lifetime

Discuss this story at:
    http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=10/05/23/1530207

Links:
    0. http://search.cpan.org/~jgamble/Algorithm-Networksort-1.09
    1. http://search.cpan.org/~mbrooks/Apache2-WebApp-Extra-Admin-0.10
    2. http://search.cpan.org/~smash/App-TinyMVC-0.01_1
    3. http://search.cpan.org/~smash/App-TinyMVC-0.01_2
    4. http://search.cpan.org/~gugod/App-perlbrew-0.07
    5. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/App-perlzonji-1.101420
    6. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Attribute-SubName-1.101420
    7. http://search.cpan.org/~jswartz/CHI-Driver-DBI-1.23
    8. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Carp-Source-1.101420
    9. http://search.cpan.org/~dhoss/Catalyst-View-Email-0.30
   10. http://search.cpan.org/~jzobel/Cindy-0.11
   11. http://search.cpan.org/~jzobel/Cindy-Apache2-0.04
   12. http://search.cpan.org/~dmuey/Class-Action-0.4
   13. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Class-Factory-Enhanced-1.101420
   14. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Class-Null-2.101420
   15. http://search.cpan.org/~rkitover/DBIx-Class-Schema-Loader-0.07000
   16. http://search.cpan.org/~frew/Devel-REPL-1.003010
   17. http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/Dist-Zilla-3.101421
   18. http://search.cpan.org/~kentnl/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-AutoVersion-Relative-0.01027903
   19. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-DistManifestTests-1.101420
   20. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-HasVersionTests-1.101420
   21. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-Homepage-1.101420
   22. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-InstallGuide-1.101420
   23. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-KwaliteeTests-1.101420
   24. http://search.cpan.org/~kentnl/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-MetaProvides-1.10027802
   25. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-MinimumVersionTests-1.101420
   26. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-MinimumVersionTests-1.101421
   27. http://search.cpan.org/~cjm/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-PodLoom-3.00
   28. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-PodSpellingTests-1.101420
   29. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-PortabilityTests-1.101420
   30. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-ReportVersions-1.101420
   31. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-ReportVersions-1.101421
   32. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Dist-Zilla-Plugin-SynopsisTests-1.101420
   33. http://search.cpan.org/~cjm/Dist-Zilla-Plugins-CJM-3.00
   34. http://search.cpan.org/~kentnl/Dist-Zilla-Role-Tempdir-0.01021401
   35. http://search.cpan.org/~jak/File-Namaste-0.24
   36. http://search.cpan.org/~kstepme/FusqlFS-0.001
   37. http://search.cpan.org/~shlomif/Graph-Easy-0.65
   38. http://search.cpan.org/~mhx/IPC-SysV-2.03
   39. http://search.cpan.org/~jjore/Judy-0.27
   40. http://search.cpan.org/~brian/KappaCUDA-1.1.0
   41. http://search.cpan.org/~jquelin/Language-Befunge-4.13
   42. http://search.cpan.org/~jquelin/Language-Befunge-Vector-XS-1.1.1
   43. http://search.cpan.org/~frew/Log-Contextual-0.00202
   44. http://search.cpan.org/~athomason/Log-Syslog-Fast-0.30
   45. http://search.cpan.org/~idoperel/Markup-Unified-0.02
   46. http://search.cpan.org/~idoperel/Markup-Unified-0.03
   47. http://search.cpan.org/~jkegl/Marpa-0.101_000
   48. http://search.cpan.org/~pjb/Math-Evol-1.11
   49. http://search.cpan.org/~aecooper/Monotone-AutomateStdio-0.08
   50. http://search.cpan.org/~rsrchboy/MooseX-MarkAsMethods-0.07
   51. http://search.cpan.org/~chm/PDL-2.4.6_007
   52. http://search.cpan.org/~petdance/Perl-Critic-Bangs-1.06
   53. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/Pod-Weaver-Section-Installation-1.101420
   54. http://search.cpan.org/~gwilliams/RDF-Query-2.202
   55. http://search.cpan.org/~tobyink/RDF-RDFa-Linter-0.03
   56. http://search.cpan.org/~jsiracusa/Rose-DB-0.761
   57. http://search.cpan.org/~jsiracusa/Rose-DB-Object-0.788
   58. http://search.cpan.org/~lgehlen/SVG-Rasterize-0.001005
   59. http://search.cpan.org/~tsucchi/Test-Module-Used-0.2.0
   60. http://search.cpan.org/~opi/Text-Template-Library-0.03
   61. http://search.cpan.org/~djibel/Tk-ForDummies-Graph-1.12
   62. http://search.cpan.org/~marcel/once-1.101420



Copyright 1997-2008 pudge.  All rights reserved.


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