Alexander Kiryuhin announced the 2020.12 Rakudo Compiler Release of the Raku Programming Language. JJ Merelo made sure there’s an up-to-date Alpine-Linux docker image, as well as a raku-test image. And Claudio Ramirez made sure there are Rakudo compiler packages for many Linux distributions. Kudos to all involved!

In related joyous news, Jonathan Worthington released a new version of the Comma Complete IDE (the paid version for subscribers only). The free Comma Community IDE version will be released in January 2021.

Adventing Raku

The third crop of this year’s Advent Posts!

• Rudolph on Raku by Steve Roe.
• Writing faster Raku code, Part II by Wim Vanderbauwhede.
• Becoming a Time Lord in Raku by Matthew Stephen Stuckwisch (/r/rakulang, /r/programming comments).
• Typed Raku, Part 1: Taming State by Ben Davies.
• Typed Raku, Part 2: Taming Behaviour by Ben Davies (/r/rakulang comments).
• A Raku in the Wild by Fritz Zaucker.
• The Story Of Elfs, and Roles, And Santas’ Enterprise by Vadim Belman.

If you want to stay up-to-date each day, you can also check out the full list of Raku Advent Blog Posts.

Donald Hunter has also started blogging about their Raku Advent of Code solutions. And Andrew Shitov is also still blogging about that. Meanwhile you may still want to check out Daniel Sockwell‘s leaderboard for Raku Advent Of Code solutions.

Other Assorted Blog Posts

• Better argument parsing with Getopt::Long by Leon Timmermans.
• Sparky on k8s cluster by Alexey Melezhik (/r/rakulang, Hacker News comments).
• The second wave of Covid.observer by Andrew Shitov.
• Raku Santa Emoticon [}:]>* by Steve Roe (/r/rakulang comments).
• Chasing assorted Rakudo bugs with Sparrow by Alexey Melezhik.
• Making myself a present by Wenzel P.P. Peppmeyer.

CFP for FOSDEM DevRoom

The Request for Presentations for the DevRoom at FOSDEM 2021 is still open, but not for very long anymore! So please make sure you submit any presentations in time! In related news, the German Workshop 2021 (Leipzig, 24-26 March 2021) is also inviting you as a speaker, or just as an attendee!

Weekly Challenge

Weekly Challenge #92 is available for your perusal.

Core Developments

• Stefan Seifert made the curcode op inlineable (in order to recoup some of the performance loss incurred by the new coercion protocol), fixed issues with simultaneous compilation of code in multiple threads and fixed an issue with lowering signatures.
• Vadim Belman made creation of coercion types faster.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen fixed an issue in the symmetric difference set operator (^) and made the is DEPRECATED trait introspectable for core functions.
• Daniel Green fixed some core tests that would fail on an uninstalled Raku compiler.
• And some smaller tweaks and fixes.

This week’s new Pull Requests:

• Switch from tommath to gmp
• Fix “Corrupt multi dispatch cache” panic in concurrent code
• Displays default values for parameters in sub MAIN
• Move to CentOS 7 in binary release linux build
• Make enums return Failure on bad conversion
• Re-imagine @a[Iterable]:adverbs (3x as fast)

Please check them out and leave any comments that you may have!

Questions about Raku

• How to donate for Raku’s development by Ali.
• Property Based Testing for Raku by jchidley.
• Raku list addition operator Z+ fails unless one of the lists is forced by Julio.
• How to use hyperoperators with Scalars that aren’t really scalar? by Mark Reed.
• Differences between sigilless and sigilled variables that are bound to by ogniloud.
• Attribute Value Becomes “Method” Inside Proxy.new by JustThisGuy.
• Reduction operator using user-defined function error by lisprogtor.
• Can Rakudo run in M1 Macs yet? by Solomon Foster.
• No such method AngleCosine for invocant of type Rat by Todd.
• Raku NativeCall to LibX11 screen and display by Todd.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• A wide range of languages by angel feathers.
• The Algorithm recommended by fuzzix.
• Psychedelic Butterfly by さんたーP.
• Doing Physics by JJ Merelo.
• Rain risk with regexes by Julio.
• On representation polymorphism by Brendan Zabarauskas.
• On Getopt::Long by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Two new Sparrow plugins by Alexey Melezhik.
• Even faster Raku code by JJ Merelo.
• Free money by Kang-min Liu.
• This is not Raku by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Guess the output by Andrew Shitov.
• I forgot about … by SEAHAL.
• In 60 lines by Markus Holzer.
• Dealing with timezones by JJ Merelo.
• One more great article by Dr. Roy Schestowitz (罗伊).
• Colourful Sparky by Alexey Melezhik.
• It will take off eventually by Mike Stucka.
• On Raku’s type system by JJ Merelo.
• Thanks for the tip! by Adventist Pythonic Maverick.
• In 8 lines by Markus Holzer.
• Using custom operators by Andrew Shitov.
• Taming behaviour by JJ Merelo.
• Need help with my dissertation by gdyx18717.
• Splitting up simplifies by Simon Proctor.
• Incomplete understanding by Kang-min Liu.
• Deadline on the 23rd! by Søren Lund.
• Called for a proper grammar by Moritz Lenz.
• Rakubrewing 2020.12 by JJ Merelo.
• Handling biological data in Raku by JJ Merelo.
• Understanding cow emissions by JJ Merelo.
• A fun Challenge by Andrew Shitov.
• Ideal language to work out challenges by JJ Merelo.
• Achieving Beauty by Tim Bunce.
• Did the name change? by Yoshinori Ehara.

Comments about Raku

• Grammars better than regexps by drran.
• Real nice Windows support by Matthew Stephen Stuckwisch.
• If the new thing is incompatible by ScottBurson.
• Interesting to think by bosswipe.
• Introspection and autocomplete by systems.

New Raku Modules

• Calendar, DateTime::Location, Astro::Almanac by Tom Browder.
• Bio by Henri Schmidt.

Updated Raku Modules

• Game::Amazing by Arne Sommer.
• Terminal::ANSI by Brian Duggan.
• LibXML by David Warring.
• Spreadsheet::XLSX by Edument.
• Tuple, P5times by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• CRDT by Fernando Correa.
• Math::Libgsl::Constants by Fernando Santagata.
• Getopt::Long by Leon Timmermans.
• Gnome::Gio, Gnome::GObject, Gnome::Gtk3, Gnome::Glib, Gnome::N, Gnome::Gdk3 by Marcel Timmerman.
• DateTime::Timezones by Matthew Stephen Stuckwisch.
• HomoGlypher, GeoIP2, Metropolis, TinyID by Paweł Pabian.
• Raku::Pod::Render by Richard Hainsworth.
• Prime::Factor by Steve Schulze.
• Universal::errno by Travis Gibson.

Winding down

On the day of the solar solstice, it is good to realize that maybe most of the dark is now behind us. Yours truly wishes everybody familiar with the Raku Programming Language an acceptable way of celebrating these festive days. Even more so, keep up the good work, stay safe and stay healthy! And see you next week for this year’s last Rakudo Weekly News!