Daniel Sockwell has started a discussion on what to do with the contents provided by the CCR Project with an idea to publish a “Best Of Raku” book. Modelled after books such as Coders at Work and Introduction to Best Software Writing, it would ask the Raku community to select 15-30 blog posts that do a good job of telling the story of the Raku Programming Language, thereby providing a good overview of what Raku is all about. Further suggestions, and other ideas, are very much welcome! And on a related note, 328 blog posts have been remastered so far!

A point release

Alexander Kiryuhin announced the Rakudo Compiler 2021.02.1 Release to fix an unfortunate regression that was sadly not caught before the 2021.02 release.

Highlighting for *.raku files

Andrew Shitov noted that Github has started highlighting *.raku files as files containing code of The Raku Programming Language.

Wenzel’s Corner

Wenzel P.P. Peppmeyer wrote three blog posts this week:

• Pattern Dispatch
• Custom when
• Undocumented escape hatch

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #102 is available for your perusal.

Pull Requests

• Formal request for The Raku Foundation
• VMArray: Use dest for select kind in copy_elements
• VMArray: Check slot type for read_buf and write_buf
• Fix a couple errors when running scripts with the JS runner
• Update broken IRC log links
• $x ** ±Inf is sometimes 0
• Add a predicated wait for Lock::ConditionVariable
• Tweak some tests to work on JVM backend

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

Core Developments

• Jonathan Worthington fixed an issue with profiler output of multi-threaded code.
• Patrick Böker fixed an issue with rebuilding on the Azure CI pipelines.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen fixed an issue with array-slicing when the slice consistent of mixed lazy and non-lazy parts.
• Vadim Belman optimized coercive parameter typechecking, making calling sub foo(Bool() $bar)upto 9x as fast.
• Daniel Sockwell implemented space-delimited command line parameters (--foo 42 versus --foo=42) (and wow, and what a commit message!).
• Salvador Ortiz fixed an issue with $*KERNEL.signals, which would return an extraneous element.

In related news, Jonathan Worthington has added quite a number of features in the rakuast branch in the past week.

Questions about Raku

• Grammar problem when trying to define a grammar for markdown by byteunit.
• How to use a wrapper script for a CLI by Daniel Sockwell.
• Is it possible to use CompUnit modules for collected data? by Richard Hainsworth.
• Markdown grammar to parse sections by byteunit.
• Mathematical precision at 19th decimal place and beyond by lisprogtor.
• Regex to capture and modify the LFM code blocks by Lars Malmsteen.
• As a complete beginner…why Raku over Python and some others? by Brixes.
• does versus but operators when mixing in a Role into an object by Daniel Sockwell.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Still too bloated by Tony O’Dell.
• Experiments in Maths and DSL’s by Simon Proctor.
• It’s now called Raku by Cuong Manh Le.
• Updated tutorial examples by Jonathan Stowe.
• Teapotting by Jonathan Stowe.
• Finally highlights by Andrew Shitov.
• Porting DBIx::Class schema to Red by Jonathan Stowe.
• Try out “what if” ideas by Brian Wisti.
• Have you heard about… by New River Investments Inc.
• A niche in digital humanities? by Abacus.
• It is a delight by Gareth Field.
• Released a lot of videos by JJ Merelo.
• Wonder if it will be taken by harurun🌹
• How should Red types work? by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• Temporarily confused by Jake Hamby.
• A good chance for TPF by Andrew Shitov.

Meanwhile on the mailing list

• Weird! When legal? by rir.
• List of all raku classes? by Joseph Brenner.

Comments about Raku

• More of a theoretical concern by Matthew Stuckwisch.
• Case statements on steroids by Ralph Mellor.
• The new Lisp by wolfgang.
• A child’s toy by bmn__.
• An interesting idea by Ralph Mellor.
• Phasers on stun by Ralph Mellor.
• On representing quotients by dragonwriter.
• Squeeze out the boilerplate by Ralph Mellor.
• A bit crazy in a Raku way by Thibault Duponchelle.
• Popular language by layoutIfNeeded.
• Creating a new programming language in minutes by Ralph Mellor.
• Backend Web Frameworks: Cro, minimalistic by Alex Merced.
• Individual languages by hazbo.
• Basic block syntax by Ralph Mellor.
• Preferred language: Raku by Mark J. Reed.

New Raku Modules

• Logger by André Brás.
• Date::Calendar::Persian by Jean Forget.

Updated Raku Modules

• Web::App by JJ Merelo.
• Terminal::ANSI, Terminal::UI by Brian Duggan.
• HarfBuzz, LibXML by David Warring.
• Red by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• Pakku::RecMan, Pakku::RecMan::Client by Haytham Elganiny.
• License::SPDX by Jonathan Stowe.
• Getopt::Long by Leon Timmermans.
• Gnome::Glib, Gnome::GObject by Marcel Timmerman.
• LogP6 by Mikhail Khorkov.
• Raku::Pod::Render, Collection by Richard Hainsworth.
• Inline::Perl5 by Stefan Seifert.
• fez by zef:tony-o.

Winding down

Continue to be safe and healthy! With that said, another nice Rakudo Weekly News with plenty to read and think about. See you next week for another instalment!