If you intended to write a blog post for this years Raku Advent Calendar, you’re too late! Well, sort of. You can still add yourself as a fallback should one of the other participants not be able to write a blog post after all!

Or you can do as Sterling Hanenkamp and do your own Advent Calendar. In their case about Async & Concurrency! The more the merrier!

Renaming Progress

• Thanks to Razvan Calugarasu kindly renaming their Github account, the Raku Core Developers are now in control of https://github.com/Raku. Transfer of repositories from https://github.com/perl6 will happen in the coming weeks.
• Andy Lester is looking for someone to take over the vim-perl6 package to move it into the Raku era. Please someone, please?

The Raku Beginner Tutorial

Nikos Vaggalis has published a nice blog about Yanzhan Yang‘s Raku Tutorial videos, also mentioning Laurent Rosenfeld‘s Think Perl 6 book. Curiously, there also appears to be a French version of the same blog.

FOSDEM 2020

Andrew Shitov reports that Raku will have a booth at FOSDEM 2020 on 1 and 2 February in Brussels, Belgium. Well, at least on one of these days. Stay tuned!

Rewriting Legacy Code

Jeff Goff has started a series of blog posts about rewriting legacy code to Raku, more specifically porting OLE::Storage_Lite. Looking forward to seeing the first module upload to the ecosystem! (/r/rakulang comments).

Weekly Challenge

Mohammad S Anwar elaborates on his ideas about the Weekly Challenge in 2020. Here are the Raku entries for Challenge #35:

• Binary Encoded Morse Code by Laurent Rosenfeld.
• Morse and Remorse with Raku by Arne Sommer.
• Weekly Challenge #35 by Javier Luque.

Of course, Challenge #36 is up for your perusal!

Core Developments

Not a lot was going on last week feature-wise, while awaiting the Rakudo compiler release:

• Stefan Seifert fixed a sign-extension issue related to NativeCall that would show itself with empty arrays when using Inline::Perl5.
• Tom Browder improved error messages in declarator pod blocks.
• Vadim Belman merged his work of the past weeks with regards to generating the correct rakudo executable (with aliases raku, and perl6 for compatibility). They also made sure that $.foo: 42 syntax works as an alternative to self.foo: 42.
• Ben Davies improved naming of metamodels, so that the relative expensive creating of a shortname is only done when needed.
• And some smaller fixes and improvements.

Questions about Raku

• Create and populate an array of objects? by hsmyers.
• WebApp::Template condition behaviour and use of variables by kolikov.
• Capture the returned value of a routine used in RUN-MAIN? by Daniel Mita.
• Behaviors on **2 vs ² by hkdtam.
• Why does comb behave differently inside the loop? by jmcneimey.
• Question on the array generating sequence by Lars Malmsteen.
• Is it possible to parse a string as if it’s surrounded by << and >>? by cowbaymoo.
• One line expression to capture group from string? by con.
• Use a variable and assign an expression to it in one step by Lars Malmsteen.
• How to write a declaration for a C function returning a whole struct? by Fernando Santagata.
• Which perl for text in 2019? by CourierZetta.
• shell function within start block won’t end by Stanley.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Use the Rat type by Jo Christian Oterhals.
• More comprehensive by The Perl Shop.
• Exceptional mess by Daniel Mita.
• Looking nice by Simon Proctor.
• Because insane by Jared Ashcraft.
• Actually using it by Jonathan Stowe.
• Widely used by Massa 👽 Humberto.
• Graceful Restart by Joelle Maslak.
• An Introduction to Raku by BCS Open Source Specialist Group.
• How it evolves by JJ Merelo.
• Thank you at commitconf by JJ Merelo.
• [\+]! by john.
• Please edit links by JJ Merelo.
• Spanish up-to-date by Ramiro Encinas.
• Not trivial by JJ Merelo.
• A new home by JJ Merelo.
• Interestingly infinite by e^iπ+1.
• => Ku by B.G.
• Poster children by Matthew Persico.
• Looking at modern languages by Embecosm.
• Rebranded last month by Jeremy Bennett.
• Convenient tweet by パ.
• Nothing Mu by かるぱねるら.
• Better? by ぷらす.
• Illustrative graphics by JJ Merelo.
• Recommendation of the day by linuxonrails.
• What a Raku is by Luis GC.
• Always Yes by Commit Conf.
• Weekly informal study group by siliconbaytech.
• Quick Syntax on Sale by JJ Merelo.
• A tad overwhelming by Jared Ashcraft.
• .WHY is a great feature by Ben Davies.

Meanwhile on Facebook

Alas, the Perl 6 Facebook group has still not been renamed. If you’re interested in developments there, please navigate from the Perl 6 group homepage.

Meanwhile on perl6-users

• Split to walk into an HoH? by Marc Chantreux.
• Need Windows loop help by ToddAndMargo.
• for by 3? by ToddAndMargo.
• Which Windows am I in? by ToddAndMargo.
• Perl 6 vs batch by ToddAndMargo.
• run line question by ToddAndMargo.
• Pop ups in Windows? by ToddAndMargo.
• qx and echo question by ToddAndMargo.

Comments about Raku

• Surprising Rat by emptybits.
• Don’t want to fiddle around by _pmf_.
• A context free language by Ralph Mellor.
• Influenced by CLOS by lispm.
• Word ordering by Ralph Mellor.
• Going faster, spot on by Ralph Mellor.

New Raku Modules

• Grid by Haytham Elganiny.

Updated Raku Modules

• LibXML by David Warring.
• Math::FFT::Libfftw3 by Fernando Santagata.
• Net::BGP by Joelle Maslak.
• Pg::Notify by Jonathan Stowe.
• Gnome::GObject, Gnome::Gtk3, Gnome::Glib, Gnome::Gdk3 by Marcel Timmerman.

Winding down

Just before closing this issue of the Rakudo Weekly, a renaming snag was found in the Rakudo Compiler Release process that needed some thoughts and discussion. Fortunately, there is a 2019.11 MoarVM release already! So please check in again next week for news about the compiler release, and other news related to Rakudo and the Raku Programming Language, of course!