Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary for 4-10 February, 2007

  This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists

     "> Errrr ... I'm the one who *needs* the tutorial, not the one to
     write it.

     "That makes you a prime person to capture the questions it needs to
     answer! You can't evade the Responsibility Ponies that easily."

     -- chromatic, responding to James E Keenan in 'What Skills Do We Need
     to Finish Parrot? <http://xrl.us/uqmk>'


  Language

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r13570 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/u2zu>

     A commit by Larry Wall changed categories to allow multiple dispatch
     via the longest-token rule.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r13575 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/u2zz>

     A commit by Larry Wall added `Q//` as a quoting form and removed
     `qn//`.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r13577 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/u2z3>

     This commit by Larry Wall affected S04, S05, S06 and S12. It unified
     proto processing to implicitly allow re-declarations within a scope.
     It works on most declarators, including regex, token, rule and
     variables.

     Multiple `my` declarations now issue a warning, which may be
     suppressed with a `proto` declaration of the variable. The `multi`
     keyword is optional in a `proto` scope, and the `unique` keyword
     "undoes" an outer `proto`.

   recent changes <http://xrl.us/u2z4>

     Larry Wall decided to explain what was driving the recent synopsis
     changes. For some time, he has been working on a Perl 6 grammar
     written in Perl 6; a snaphot
     <http://svn.pugscode.org/pugs/src/perl6/Perl-6.0.0-STD.pm> is
     available. Audrey Tang noted that Pugs can parse it, but it still
     needs to be made to run, and run fast.

  Parrot Porters

   [PATCH] Update pirgrammar.pod <http://xrl.us/u2z8>

     Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch with an updated version of
     `pirgrammar.pod` and `pirgrammar.html` which contains examples for
     most constructs. The documents are still being worked on.

     Later, in '[PATCH] update pirgrammar.pod (replaces patch 2/4/2007)
     <http://xrl.us/u22c>', he submitted an updated version.

     These triggered some discussion in the thread '[PATCH] Updates for
     languages/PIR/docs/pirgrammar.pod <http://xrl.us/u22j>'.

   Q on Calling conventions; parameter order <http://xrl.us/u2z9>

     Klaas-Jan Stol remarked that some Parrot calling conventions are
     unclear. He made a list of the order in which checks are done, as far
     as he can tell, and asked if it was correct and if cases were missing.

   What Skills Do We Need to Finish Parrot? <http://xrl.us/uqmk>

     Last week, James E Keenan asked what code remains to be written in
     Parrot. Allison Randal replied that IO, Events, Threads, Compiler
     tools interface, Object support and Exceptions need the most work.
     James then asked about resources for learning PIR. chromatic offered
     suggestions.

     This week, Allison Randal replied that to date, she hadn't been able
     to get the relevant sections of "Parrot Essentials" released, and
     proposed that James create a PIR tutorial. She suggested
     `docs/imcc/syntax.pod` as an introduction. Klaas-Jan Stol mentioned
     that he'd been working on `languages/PIR/docs/pirgrammar.pod`.

     James said that he needed a tutorial, and therefore wasn't suited to
     write one. chromatic disagreed, stating that inexperience left James
     in the perfect position to know what questions needed to be answered.
     Joshua Isom seconded, suggesting that James could start a FAQ by
     creating at least the questions. Bernhard Schmalhofer suggested adding
     questions to `docs/imcc/imcfaq.pod`.

     It turned out that Dzema Dmitriy is working on a PIR tutorial to
     accompany a PIR bundle for Texmate.

   [perl #41453] [BUG] Test failure in t/pmc/object-meths.t
   <http://xrl.us/u22d>

     In ticket [perl #41453]
     <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41453>, James Keenan
     reported a failure with a text in `t/pmc/object-meths.t`. Allison
     Randal identified it as stemming from r16783, and thought that `o =
     new 'MyClass', $P0` should call `init_pmc` rather than `init`, even if
     `$P0` is null. She asked Leopold Toetsch if the choice between `init`
     and `init_pmc` should be based upon the content of the argument.
     Leopold replied that that was not his intention; there should be just
     one init :vtable which is called, according to PDD03 calling
     conventions.

     Allison summarized the situation as a feature request which had been
     submitted as a failing test. She changed the test to reflect the
     current situation (r17026) and submitted the feature request in ticket
     [perl #41528] <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41528>.

   Prototype object model for Parrot <http://xrl.us/u22e>

     Allison Randal worked with Sam Vilain on a prototype object model
     written in PIR. She checked it in to `compilers/smop`. The next step
     is to implement the prototype at the PMC level, and incorporate much
     of the functionality of `src/objects.c`.

     Kevin Te replied that he had just started to port `Class::MOP` to
     PMCs, and would be glad to help with this port as well.

   [perl #41454] [PATCH] add 2 new tests for object method dispatch
   <http://xrl.us/u22f>

     Sam Vilain noted, in ticket [perl #41454]
     <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41454>, that inherited
     method dispatch was only tested with a simple parent/child class. In
     his attached patch, there are tests for three classes in a straight
     line, as well as a 4-class diamond inheritance.

   [perl #41455] [NEW] and [PATCH]: tools/build/ops2pm.pl refactored
   <http://xrl.us/u22g>

     James Keenan submitted ticket [perl #41455]
     <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41455>. It contained
     several patches, for test files and related libraries. They were added
     to the trunk as r17061 after passing on Darwin and Win32. Later they
     were confirmed to also work on Linux.

   [perl #41456] [PATCH] add a Super PMC test for addparent-established
   inheritance trees <http://xrl.us/u22i>

     In ticket [perl #41456]
     <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=41456>, Sam Vilain
     submitted a test which checks that if an inheritance tree is created
     with `addparent`, it performs just like one made with `subclass`.

   [PATCH] Updates for languages/PIR/docs/pirgrammar.pod
   <http://xrl.us/u22j>

     Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a patch for `pirgrammar.pod` and
     `pirgrammar.html` in '[PATCH] Update pirgrammar.pod
     <http://xrl.us/u2z8>'.

     chromatic remarked that he did not like keeping HTML in the
     repository, and wondered if it could be automatically generated
     because, unlike other generated files, it does not require `flex` and
     `bison` to produce it.

     Klaas-Jan wondered if `pod2html` was available for all platforms where
     Perl can run. He thought it could be incorporated in the `make`
     procedure if that were the case. chromatic replied that it had been
     core since at least 5.8.0.

   Re: Porting parrot on PDA <http://xrl.us/u22k>

     Hakim Cassimally replied to [Aldo Calpini's
     post]{http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.perl.perl6.internals/10966)
     and expressed an interest in porting to the Nokia N800.

     Jerry Gay replied that he'd love to see Parrot ported to the N800 and
     suggested a way to start on it.

   [PATCH] Updates and fixes for docs/imcc/syntax.pod <http://xrl.us/u22n>

     Klaas-Jan Stol submitted a number of patches for languages/PIR and
     `docs/imcc/syntax.pod`:

     * '[PATCH] update docs/imcc/calling_conventions.pod <http://xrl.us/u22b>'
     * '[PATCH] Update ASTGrammar for lang/PIR <http://xrl.us/u22m>'
     * 'docs/imcc/syntax.pod' * '[PATCH] languages/PIR fix string encoding,
       hex and binary numbers <http://xrl.us/u22o>'
     * '[PATCH] languages/PIR .globalconst <http://xrl.us/u22p>'

     One patch, '[PATCH] Update pirgrammar.pod <http://xrl.us/u2z8>', also
     sparked some discussion.

   [perl #40706] [TODO] Tcl - implement [close] <http://xrl.us/u22q>

     Earlier, Paul Cochrane submitted ticket [perl #40706]
     <http://xrl.us/s5sh> where he noted that
     `languages/tcl/src/builtin/close.pir` is only a stub.. Nuno Carvalho
     reported that a first implementation had been committed in r16933.
     There is still some discussion on how to best implement it for Tcl.

  Users

   Pugs on Windows <http://xrl.us/u22r>

     Gabor Szabo reported a 404 error when attempting to download a Win32
     binary of Pugs and Parrot. Audrey Tang suggested a different URL.
     David Vergin noted that the page Audrey offered linked to a build from
     November 2006 and asked if there was a newer build available.

   "delete" and maybe a problem with gather <http://xrl.us/u22s>

     Gilbert R. Röhrbein wanted to reorder an array so that the elements
     are randomly ordered. He noted a problem with `delete` which he wasn't
     able to describe, except for stating that it was linked to `gather`.
     The code was included.

  Compiler

   dpkg-buildpacke fails due to outdated 10smoke patch <http://xrl.us/u22t>

     Moritz Lenz reported that the current (r15185) revision of Pugs fails
     to compile on Debian when `dpkg-buildpackage` is used because the
     '10smoke' patch cannot be applied.

  Acknowledgements

     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]>.

  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/>