Welcome to the first issue of the Rakudo Weekly, formerly known as the Perl 6 Weekly. It continues the tradition of weekly news about the development of Rakudo, an implementation of the Raku Programming Language. Please see About for more background on this incarnation of this weekly blog.

More video tutorials

Yanzhan Yang has not been deterred by the name change. He published 8 more video tutorials, now about Raku:

• Map, Reduce and Filter
• Solve Exercism Problems: Problem No. 3..5
• Hashes
• Solve Exercism Problems: Problem No. 6..8
• Class
• Solve Exercism Problems: Problem No. 9
• Exception
• Solve Exercism Problems: Problem No. 10

More videos

• Phasers to Stunning by Simon Proctor.

Reports on renaming

• Perl and Raku Both Anticipating Newfound Glory on I Programmer.
• Perl 6 Programming Language to be Renamed to Raku on Crypto Crypto News.
• Perl 6、「Raku」への名称変更が決まる on OSDNMagazine (Japanese).
• Perl 6 in Raku umbenannt on Pro-Linux.de (German).
• Change offers amazing opportunites by Dean Hamstead (/r/perl6 comments).
• Perl et Raku envisagent tous deux de retrouver leur gloire on technologik.fr (French).
• Perl 6 Is Now Known as ‘Raku,’ It Seems on Dice (/r/perl6 comments).
• Perl 6 is now Raku. Officially on HackerNews

Nightmare

Tyler Limkemann describes a disturbing case of truth-bending in A Logician’s Exceptional Nightmare. Enter at your own risk.

Andrew Shitov

This week also has been a busy week for Andrew Shitov: he started a discussion about how Raku can attract business users, and he published his second Raku book called Raku One-Liners, which is also available as a free download.

DCBPW

In the DC / Baltimore area, another rename has taken place: DC Baltimore Perlyglot Workshop 2020 on 18/19 April 2020 at John Hopkins University. Raku presentations are welcome and can already be submitted!

Meta-programming Book

Ben Davies is running a Twitter poll trying to find out whether there is any interest in a book about the ins and outs of metaprogramming with Rakudo.

Weekly Challenge

Another thing that continues, is of course the Weekly Challenge. With these Raku entries this week for Challenge #30:

• Sunday Christmas and Triplets by Laurent Rosenfeld.
• Christmas Twelft Cometh by Arne Sommer.
• Weekly Challenge #30 by Jaldhar H. Vyas.

Of course, Challenge #31 is up for your perusal!

Core Developments

Two weeks worth of developments:

• Patrick Bröker added Unicode path support on Windows. He also made sure that root thinks it can always read / write / execute files. And added a BuildTools assistant for the MSVC compiler.
• Stefan Seifert added logic to allow introspection into NativeCall call sites, e.g. to check whether the library has been loaded and whether the JIT has compiled a function body for it. He also fixed a problem with native sub repossession in compiled modules. And an access to freed memory in guard handling. And a file descriptor leak in precompilation.
• Ben Davies added concreteness checks on many array ops.
• Jan-Olof Hendig fixed an issue that would create havoc if a Garbage Collection would happen during the setting up an asynchronous connection. He also made sure libuv 1.33.0 will be used.
• Bart Wiegmans added additional version of the let keyword in the JIT to indicate a specific result type, since the type might be obscured by macros otherwise.
• Nick Logan fixed a deadlock that was triggered by zef in Continuous Integration.
• Paweł Murias fixed some issues on the Javascript backend.
• Naoum Hankache pointed out that on Windows, the REPL should be exited with ^Z, and adapted the associated message accordingly.
• Vadim Belman fixed the build on OpenBSD.
• Nele Schwarz fixed a problem in the build template for the JVM backend.
• Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev did some of the initial textual changes to move to Raku.
• And many smaller fixes and additions.

Questions about Raku

• Create a sorted list from n sorted sublists (efficiently) by Holli.
• Modify a script to be able to use timeline visualization of CommaIDE by JJ Merelo.
• How can I correctly use libXL using NativeCall? by HanTyr.
• Optional Type Inference by /u/dharmatech.
• Multimethod for Proxy by user0721090601.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Distinct languages by 🐼Pandy Knight🐼.
• Chance to figure it out by brian d foy.
• A year or two by Trey Harris.
• Decades of smearing by Dr. Roy Schestowitz (罗伊).
• Hackers Hub by せーでん.
• More surprising by ゆうじ＠カメさんそろそろコタツ終わります.
• Around utf-8 by MSX to mac.
• Vibes by Tyler Limkemann.
• Amateur idea by 一ノ瀬優希.
• Whatever it is by ASuh1337Dude.
• Aim? by あじ.
• Cheaper to search? by Alexander Kiryuhin.
• Popular? by オペアンプbot.
• Incense master? by 霧島(きりしま）.
• Too early for humanity by TANI_Röhei@赭埴菴.
• Review soon by Mohammad S Anwar.
• More cleanly by e^iπ+1.
• In a few days by JJ Merelo.
• Pretty impressive by Mike Clarke.
• Strange place by Mike Clarke.
• Adopted at YAPC::Nogoya::Tiny by 八雲アナグラ.
• Rakuda? by Brandon Pittman.
• No scratching by Erez 🤓.
• Next edition by brian d foy.
• Naming dogs by せーでん.
• Still waiting by Jonathan Broad.
• Stop the argument by perlzemi.
• Wixed by 🦘.
• Not a gem anymore by Delton Ding.
• In Kanji? by おもと.
• To die by Kota Mizushima.
• Not many languages by philomagi.
• Translucent automata by みやおか.
• Transition policy by 佐藤 [退席中].
• Cro Templates in Comma by Jonathan Worthington.
• At the GSOC Mentor Summit by yo yehudi🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺.
• Your first Raku distribution by London Perl Workshop.
• Building modules by London Perl Workshop.
• Weekly Challenge by London Perl Workshop.
• Run safely by London Perl Workshop.
• Not Ted by London Perl Workshop.
• Accentless by London Perl Workshop.
• TAFKAP6 by Allison Randal
• Building Slides by Mohammad S Anwar
• Halloween? by Willian Braga 🌀.
• Law 43? by |_\.:i:./_|.
• Making Pottery by RakuistIO.
• Documentation Preview by JJ Merelo.
• On StackOverflow by JJ Merelo.
• Up to 216 releases by Jonathan Stowe.
• #rakulang please by सुमन खनाल🇳🇵.
• Perhaps Advent? by JJ Merelo.
• Extensions? by Alexey Melezhik.
• Too much chocolate by JJ Merelo.
• Great weekend by Søren Lund.
• Morning reading by Jonas Berlin.
• More empathy by Alexis King.

Meanwhile on Facebook

Alas, the Perl 6 Facebook group has still not been renamed back, so deeplinks will break soon. So, if you’re interested in developments there, please navigate from the Perl 6 group homepage.

Meanwhile on perl6-users

• Perl 6 -> Raku? What’s the scope? by N6ghost.
• Order of execution by Marcel Timmerman.
• Processing a file in chunks by Joseph Brenner.
• Must chomp input files by yary.

Comments about Raku

• Winter project by VVertigo.
• Great switch by ktpsns.
• Perl 6 is Dead, Long Live Raku on /r/perl6.
• Reinvent regular expressions by dan-robertson.
• Other ways to express regular expressions by kbenson.
• Also operators by dragonwriter.
• Designed to co-exist by lifthrasiir.
• Just a little by 7thaccount.
• Self-blunder by coldtea.
• Raku haz twigils by Lars Dieckow.
• await doesn’t need async by Brad Gilbert.
• A different perspective by Brad Gilbert.
• Actually a lambda by Brad Gilbert.
• Pick at most two by Brad Gilbert.
• Unique by Brad Gilbert.
• Was about pottery by /u/BlueManedHawk.
• The 100 year Language by Patrick Spek.

New Raku Modules

• Pakku by Haytham Elganiny.

Updated Raku Modules

• Algorithm::LibSVM by Itsuki Toyota.
• Net::IP by Tom Browder.
• Gnome::Gdk3, Gnome::Glib, Gnome::GObject, Gnome::Gtk3, Gnome::N, Gnome::Gtk3::Glade, XML::Actions by Marcel Timmerman.
• Tomtit by Alexey Melezhik.
• Red by Fernando Corrêa de Oliveira.
• LibXML, LibXSLT by David Warring.
• Inline::Perl5 by Stefan Seifert.
• ORM::ActiveRecord by Greg Donald.
• Failable by Ben Davies.
• Prometheus::Client by Sterling Hanenkamp.

Winding down

Hope you like the new home for this weekly blog. The past week was filled with a lot of conflicting emotions after the decision to rename Perl 6 to Raku. It will take quite some time for everybody to get used to the new name, and the territory that comes with it. In any case, it was good to see a lot of new names on the new #raku IRC channel on Freenode. So, see you again next week for more news about the Raku Programming Language and Rakudo!