Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 24-30 December, 2006

  This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

     "Grrr, otta profefreed my onw righting occashionaly."

     -- Larry Wall's commit message for r13508--one typo correction of many


  Language

   Numeric Semantics <http://xrl.us/t3o7>

     Luke Palmer wanted a clear definition of when math should use floating
     points and when it should be integer-based. In response, Darren Duncan
     highlighted a recent #perl6 discussion <http://xrl.us/t3o8> on the
     topic. He proposed distinct operators to allow users to explicitly
     choose the math mode. Jonathan Lang mentioned that in the one other
     instance where there were type-specific versions of a common operator,
     a third 'generic' version was required. Dr. Ruud suggested giving
     numerics multiple faces.

  Parrot Porters

   Re: [perl #41020] [PATCH] pmc2c.pl functionality extracted into separate
   package <http://xrl.us/t3o9>

     Earlier, James Keenan supplied some patches which he noted were not
     completely functional.

     This week, chromatic made a few suggestions on the style of the code.
     James explained that some of his choices had been dictated by the fact
     that this was maintenance coding.

     In another subthread, James stated that he had found a good way to run
     the tests. They are meant to be run before `make`.

     After Kevin Tew reported some failing tests, James requested the
     output with the failing tests. Will Coleda suggested that perhaps
     James could make the tests give a helpful error message if they are
     run at the wrong time. James added the suggested patch.

     chromatic sent James his test results. With the newest patches,
     everything worked. chromatic committed them as r16345.

   Building Parrot::Embed on Windows XP / Visual C++ <http://xrl.us/t3pa>

     Ron Blaschke reported two warnings he had seen from trying to build
     Parrot::Embed on Windows/VC8. He had some questions on how to proceed.
     chromatic and Ron tried to find a patch which would fix the problems.
     A solution was applied as r16229.

   [perl #41125] [PATCH] Fix small typo in root.in <http://xrl.us/t3pb>

     Nikolay Ananiev's patch in ticket [perl #41125] <http://xrl.us/t3q8>
     was applied as r16239.

   [perl #41128] [PATCH] Fix #41122: ParrotObjects don't call init_pmc
   vtable <http://xrl.us/t3pc>

     In ticket [perl #41128] <http://xrl.us/t3q9>, Matt Diephouse submitted
     a patch but didn't commit it because it affected code other people are
     maintaining. chromatic agreed with the patch because it didn't break
     any tests or modify the external interface.

   Creating Keys in PIR <http://xrl.us/t3pd>

     chromatic discovered that writing tests for keyed variants is painful.
     He wanted to see working PIR for creating a key for a nested
     namespace. Bob Rogers supplied a patch and wondered if it was what
     chromatic had had in mind.

   Re: [perl #41132] [BUG] Segfault in Parrot_call_sub_ret_int
   <http://xrl.us/t3pe>

     Nikolay Ananiev created ticket [perl #41132] <http://xrl.us/t3ra> to
     deliver a patch. Jonathan Worthington replied that he had applied the
     patch, because it was consistent with `Parrot_call_sub`. He asked if
     Nikolay could look at related code to see if similar fixes were
     needed. Bob Rogers explained the underlying problem as he saw it.

     chromatic wondered if it would be possible to create some
     documentation on how contexts, interpreters and code segments work.
     Bob said he'd try, but that he was just learning about code segments
     as well.

   [PATCH] make pdump's output about debug segment more consistent
   <http://xrl.us/t3pg>

     Lee Duhem submitted a patch to make pdump's output more consistent.
     This was ticket [perl #41140] <http://xrl.us/t3rb>. It was applied as
     r16269.

   GC problem in parrot_pass_args to a tailcall (r16239)
   <http://xrl.us/t3ph>

     Bob Rogers wrote about a segmentation fault which is triggered during
     argument passing after a tailcall. He gave an analysis of the problem
     and provided a patch. However, he hoped that there was a better
     option.

   [PATCH] Add get_name() Method to Namespaces <http://xrl.us/t3pi>

     chromatic supplied a patch to implement `get_name()` as specified in
     PDD21. He did not check it in because it changed the API.

   [perl #41141] [PATCH][Win32][VC] Minor display cleanup during
   compilation <http://xrl.us/t3pk>

     In ticket [perl #41141] <http://xrl.us/t3rc>, Ron Blaschke reported a
     problem with compilation output on Windows. He supplied a patch to
     correct this.

   [perl #41144] [PATCH] refresh front page of parrotcode.org
   <http://xrl.us/t3pn>

     Allison Randal submitted a patch as [perl #41144]
     <http://xrl.us/t3rd>. The patch cleans up the main web page at
     Parrotcode.org. James E Keenan wondered who applied these types of
     patches. Will Coleda applied the patch and gave instructions on how to
     acquire commit access to the website.

   Mac OS X Concurrency <http://xrl.us/t3po>

     Allison Randal gave the URL to an article on Mac OS X concurrency
     <http://xrl.us/t3re>.

   Exceedingly lightweight C embedding <http://xrl.us/t3pp>

     Allison Randal posted a link <http://xrl.us/t3rf> on the topic.

  Users

   gather { if $xy.was_taken { ... } } <http://xrl.us/t3pt>

     Gilbert R. Röhrbein asked if there is a way to look inside a
     gather-block if something was already taken. He included some example
     code of how he thought it would work.

  Acknowlegements

     This summary was prepared using Mail::Summary::Tools
     <http://xrl.us/qvno>, available on CPAN.

     If you appreciate Perl, consider contributing to the Perl Foundation
     <http://donate.perlfoundation.org> 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, <[email protected]>.

     Happy New Year!

  Distribution

     This summary can be found in the following places:

     * use.perl.org <http://use.perl.org/>
     * The Pugs blog <http://pugs.blogs.com/>
     * The perl6-announce mailing list <http://xrl.us/qycj>
     * ONLamp <http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/>

  See Also

     * Perl Foundation activities <http://blog.perlfoundation.org>
     * Perl 6 Development <http://dev.perl.org/perl6>
     * Planet Perl Six <http://planetsix.perlfoundation.org/>