Some weeks see one release. And then some do two! In any case, it is good to see the 2020.05 Rakudo Compiler Release, thanks to the hard work of Alexander Kiryuhin. Which was immediately followed by updated Docker Containers (by Suman Khanal and JJ Merelo) and installable Linux packages (by Claudio Ramirez). And since it has been a time since there was a Rakudo Star release, Patrick Spek immediately created a Rakudo Star Release Candidate. Rakudo Star users: please test this Release Candidate!

Testing a compiler

Andrew Shitov published Chapter 11 of their compiler book, about building control flow into the language.

RakuAST Grant Accepted

Long Queue Short

Alexey Melezhik updates the community on RakuDist changes (/r/rakulang comments).

Confusing or What?

p6steve has written another interesting blog post, this time about Raku objects, and the different approaches for setters and getters. Which resulted in quite an extensive discussion on /r/rakulang.

Random Raku Reflections

Eric Londo has written a very nice column on their life experience in programming, and how Raku has become their personal favorite programming language to read and write (/r/rakulang comments).

Weekly Challenge

Laurent Rosenfeld did extensive weekly reviews of the Raku solutions of Challenges #56 and #57 and Luca Ferrari was the champion of April. These are entries for Challenge #59 that have Raku solutions:

• Bits and Arrays by Luca Ferrari.
• Linked Sum by Raku by Arne Sommer.
• Linked Lists and Bit Sums by Laurent Rosenfeld.
• Weekly Challenge #59 by Javier Luque.
• Weekly Challenge #59 by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Weekly Challenge #59 by Shahed Nooshmand.
• Sorting a Linked List and Summing Binary Bits by Colin Crain.

Challenge #60 is up for your perusal!

Core Developments

• Suman Khanal fixed various internal documentation issues related to the rename.
• Timo Paulssen optimized the JITted version of nqp::atpos / nqp::bindpos for native int arrays. They also removed some unnecessary initializations from QAST objects.
• Patrick Böker fixed the --relocatable configuration feature.
• Ben Davies improved GNU C++ NativeCall name mangling.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen added a CACHEDIR.TAG file to precomp directories, made the List.rotate method use less memory, added a Supply.rotate method, and normalized internal handling of say, put, note and print.
• And a number of other fixes, optimisations, and improvements.

Questions about Raku

• Grammar problem by blippage.
• What is the correct file extension? by s-ro_mojosa.
• What does Raku have that can help it shake the “Write Only Language” stigma? by s-ro_mojosa.
• Reading a file on a Mac by clydekilgore.
• Is it possible to run a sub-grammar inside a grammar nqp? by Konrad Esiele.
• Drop use of = in parsing arguments by margolari.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Grammar live view by The Perl Shop.
• Thanks for all the submissions by The Perl and Raku Conference.
• 2020.05 Compiler Release by Alexander Kiryuhin.
• Clearing a lot of PRs by JJ Merelo.
• Mathematical consideration by けんちょん 🍡( ´ ꒳ `🌸).
• In Memoriam by JJ Merelo.
• Season of Docs by JJ Merelo.
• OpenSSL dependency testing by JJ Merelo.
• Remembering Parrot by ハイパージャンボ寝そべり俺くん.
• Easiest way to test your distributions by Alexey Melezhik.
• A Better IDE by Antonio Nikishaev.
• Being renamed? by Darren Coral.
• Incorrect label by Suman Khanal🇳🇵.
• Supporting transclusion by Jakob.
• For loops in a few languages by S0AndS0.
• Is .rakumod correct? by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Welcome! by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Prime marriage by Joelle Maslak.
• .Date/.DateTime coercers by برعي.
• Because I could by Jonathan Stowe.
• Awesome for data scientists by Daniel Gustaw.
• Discord API by 八雲アナグラ.
• Confusing or What? by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Finally? by bunny evans.
• Forfeited by Corey Quinn.
• Different by 八雲アナグラ.
• IT minister implementing? by 堀田ヒロアキ@緊急帰省中.
• Learned a lot by Joelle Maslak.
• Hello. Goodbye. by MITA Tomohiro.
• Really handy! by chenyf.
• Grammar for binary data by Charlie Barto.
• Fixing relocatability by JJ Merelo.
• Rake by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• 2020.05.1 Compiler Release by Alexander Kiryuhin.
• Bastardized with curlies by Hisham.
• Multidimensional hash by برعي.
• Raku recipes coming up by JJ Merelo.

Meanwhile on perl6-users

• More questions on the -pe one-liner flag: in conjunction with s/// and tr/// by William Michels.
• NativeCall questions by David Santiago.
• Raku -npe command line usage by WFB.
• vim-raku roadmap by Marc Chantreux.
• No such method prefix for invocant of type Capture by Konrad Bucheli.

Comments about Raku

• A new shiny thing by thekingofh.
• Buzzwords by clarkema.
• Types per variable by Ralph Mellor.
• Types per value by Ralph Mellor.
• Embedded logic programming by jrumbut.
• Tokenizer and parsing by Ralph Mellor.
• How we built Comma by oilshell.
• Make sense? by Ralph Mellor.
• Harper’s decision to use the word “class” by Ralph Mellor.
• Representation Polymorphism by Ralph Mellor.
• Dynamic Scoping by Elizabeth Mattijsen.

New Raku Modules

• Algorithm::ZhangShasha by Itsuki Toyota.
• GPGME, Trait::Enum by Curt Tilmes.
• Shelve6 by Robert Lemmen.
• Util::Uuencode by Jonathan Stowe.
• Rake by Elizabeth Mattijsen.

Updated Raku Modules

• Cache::Async, ReadWriteLock by Robert Lemmen.
• Test::Async by Vadim Belman.
• Template::Mustache by Tim Siegel.
• Inline::Perl5 by Stefan Seifert.
• Matrix::Client by Matías Linares.
• Gnome::Gtk3 by Marcel Timmerman.
• Async::Workers by Vadim Belman.
• TCP::LowLevel, Net::BGP by Joelle Maslak.

Winding down

Yet another week of every day feeling like every other day. But this week saw some nice releases, both in the compiler world, as well in the module world! Yours truly keeps repeating: stay safe, stay healthy, stay helpful. See you next week!