This week saw a lot of releases! First of all, the Rakudo Compiler Release 2020.01 was finished by Alexander Kiryuhin, quickly followed by Claudio Ramirez packaging the release for many, many Linux distributions and JJ Merelo with an Alpine Docker image. Then Fernando Santagata started releasing modules that support the GNU Scientific Library (see the New Modules section). Jonathan Worthington released a new version of Cro 0.8.2.1 as well as a new version of the Comma Community IDE (main new features). And Stefan Seifert released a new version of Inline::Perl5. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg this week. Good to see so much new stuff!

How we built Comma

On 16 January, Jonathan Worthington gave a webinar on how Comma, the Raku IDE, was built. You can either look at the slides or look at the video of the webinar.

Squashathon

This Saturday (8 February 2020, one week later than usual because of FOSDEM) will see another Squashathon, this time focused on closing tickets from the old RT ticket system that are now available in the old issue tracker. Every contributor gets a free virtual pizza. And the winner (in most/best contributions) will get a real, physical plushy Camelia sent to them!

Rakudist custom

Alexey Melehzhik expands on RakuDist again, with Raku Modules Custom Installation.

Renaming Progress

Weekly Challenge

The Raku entries for Challenge #45:

• Square Secret Code and Source Dumper by Laurent Rosenfeld.
• Square Dumper with Raku by Arne Sommer.
• Weekly Challenge #45 by Javier Luque
• Square Secret Code and Quine by Ryan C. Thompson.
• Encoded messages and self-source-code-printing by Luca Ferrari.

Challenge #46 is up for your perusal!

Core Developments

• Daniel Green completed the long work to make MoarVM use the most up-to-date version of the libtommath library.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen added a compile time check for default values for class attributes (with help from Vadim Belman) and fixed an issue related to $/ in Regex.ACCEPTS. They also made Str.comb(Regex) about 1.8x as fast, and Str.split(Regex) about 15% faster.
• Christian Bartolomäus fixed various (new) issues on the JVM backend.
• Ben Davies fixed an issue with Parameter.raku.
• Stefan Seifert added some options that improve building of Rakudo, specifically for packagers.
• Patrick Böker added a Continuous Integration precomp release build pipeline and fixed some issue with the Windows binary-release build script.
• And some smaller fixes and improvements, mainly in preparation of the Rakudo 2020.01 compiler release.

Questions about Raku

• Where’s a good community for Raku? by nubzzy.
• Nativecall gtk-clipboard-request-text? by Todd.
• Compound statements? by blippage.
• Distinguish between Exception and Failure in a CATCH block by jakar.
• How can I do arithmetics with Unicode Nd, Nl or No codepoints? by JJ Merelo.
• Does Raku always parse? by Peter Bauer.
• “Illegally post-declared types” with circular class definition by Lars Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ 迪拉斯.
• Raku confusing postfix ,= operator behavior by gmoshkin.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• What are you waiting for? by JJ Merelo.
• ^ matches start by Regular Expression.
• Thanks to all people who helped by Alexander Kiryuhin.
• Juicy features by Alexander Kiryuhin.
• Thank you! by JJ Merelo.
• $ matched the end by Regular Expression.
• Got stuff done! by Jeff Goff.
• For scripting by James Mishra.
• Webinar recording + slides by JetBrains Platform.
• Improve your skills by The Perl and Raku Conference.
• Two Talks by JJ Merelo.
• Interesting and addictive by まこ.
• On Android? by Rudolf Olah.
• Improved version by Alexey Melezhik.
• Clarified by うさぎ.
• Say hello! by JJ Merelo.
• It’s up! by Stuart J Mackintosh.
• Introductions? by German Perl Workshop.
• Every hour by もりを.
• Identity crisis by Claudio Ramirez.
• Packed all day by Stuart J Mackintosh.
• Should have tagged by Alexey Melezhik.
• sum / mod by こたつがめ.
• 9% faster! by Joelle Maslak.
• Hundred-Year Language by HsiangHui.
• Jokingly by iurii.
• Ready to help! by JJ Merelo.
• Talk done! by JJ Merelo.
• Rakudist alive by Alexey Melezhik.
• Seeking mentors by The Perl Shop.
• The CFP for TCPiH is open by The Perl and Raku Conference.
• What brings joy? by Endless Mason.
• Not shy at all by Andrew Shitov.
• Your own operators by Jozef Legény.
• An overview by Andrew Shitov.
• Commercial tool support by The Perl Shop.

Meanwhile on Facebook

If you’re interested in developments there, go to the Perl 6 group homepage.

Meanwhile on perl6-users

• Range on Subsets by Simon Proctor.
• Hash Constraints w/in subset’s by Paul Procacci.
• With XS by wes park.

Comments about Raku

• No disconnect by WorldMaker.
• It was at least fun by Ralph Mellor.
• More pragmatic by tyingq.
• Not an actual implementation yet by Ralph Mellor.
• No sequential semantics by Ralph Mellor.

New Raku Modules

• Math::Libgsl::Constants, Math::Libgsl::Elementary, Math::Libgsl::Complex, Math::Libgsl::Function, Math::Libgsl::Matrix, Math::Libgsl::Combination, Math::Libgsl::Multiset, Math::Libgsl::Sort by Fernando Santagata.
• IP::Addr by Vadim Belman.
• Migration::RTtoGithub by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Pretty::Table by Luis F. Uceta.
• App::Rakuman by Patrick Spek.

Updated Raku Modules

• LogP6-Writer-Journald by Mikhail Khorkov.
• Gnome:N, Gnome::Glib, Gnome::GObject, Gnome::Gdk3, Gnome::Gtk3 by Marcel Timmerman.
• Desktop::Notify::Progress by Fernando Santagata.
• Trait::Traced by Ben Davies.
• Distribution::Builder::MakeFromJSON, Inline::Perl5 by Stefan Seifert.
• cro, Cro::HTTP, Cro::TLS, Cro::WebSocket by Jonathan Worthington.
• PDF::Class by David Warring.
• DateTime::Monotonic, Net::BGP, Sys::HostAddr by Joelle Maslak.
• Date::Calendar::Hebrew, Date::Calendar::CopticEthiopic by Jean Forget.
• App::GTD by Patrick Spek.

Winding down

Although yours truly only spent a few hours at FOSDEM this year, it was good to see a lot of friends and discuss stuff. And to see the Perl / Raku stand to be regularly mobbed by many, many people. Yours truly hopes to see many new users of Raku because of it in the coming weeks. Or maybe next week already! See you then for more news about the Raku Programming Language!