Steve Roe has published an interesting blog post about how the Raku Programming Language is holding up under the Muller Extreme Challenge, an algorithm designed to break computational accuracy: raku:34 python:19 extreme math. This in turn caused a discussion on /r/rakulang and in the end a Pull Request for a new feature!

TPaRCitC 2021 Call For Papers

The Perl and Raku Conference in the Cloud 2021 will happen on 8 June, 2021. And the Call for Papers is open now! Be sure to submit your Raku presentations!

PostgreSQL Connectivity

Luca Ferrari looks at connecting to a PostgreSQL database from the Raku Programming Language in: A glance at Raku connectivity towards PostgreSQL.

Installing on Ubuntu

Damian A. has published a tutorial on how to install Rakudo on Ubuntu 20.04.

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #107 is available for your perusal. And this week’s “What’s everyone working on (2021.14)” as well.

Pull Requests

• Add description of three new DateTime methods
• Free Uni property codes hashes with --full-cleanup
• Minor README updates
• [JVM] Make nqp::unbox_i on NativeCall object work
• Build: Deal with signals in system calls, use exec where possible
• Unbreak use NativeCall on JVM
• Add test for repl handling junction correctly
• Introducing $*RAT-UPGRADE-CLASS
• Add NFC / NFD / NFKC / NFKD as subs

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

Core Developments

• Daniel Green implemented a new nqp::time op with nanosecond precision, and adapted uses of the old nqp::time_i and nqp::time_n codes to the new opcode in NQP and Rakudo as well.
• Patrick Böker disabled Travis, AppVeyor and CircleCI for CI testing: they proved to be too unreliable and/or too slow: AzureCI is what has been in use for a while already.
• Stefan Seifert fixed a number of spesh / NULL bugs on MoarVM, and implemented a cheaper nqp::backtrace option, which also makes backtraces consistent on all backends. Daniel Green improved on that further by removing a malloc / free per frame in a backtrace. Stefan also fixed a race condition related to continuation taking in the ThreadPoolScheduler.
• Christian Bartolomäus made progress on unbreaking NativeCall on the JVM backend and various other types of incompatibilities between the JVM and MoarVM backend, and closed a lot of old (obsolete) issues.
• Vadim Belman fixed a TAP-protocol inconsistency with subtests.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen worked a lot on unicode related functionality, which was mostly internal reorganization, but which also resulted in some nice performance improvements. And they also worked on reducing binary size of several hot methods, making them more likely to be inlined.
• Tom Browder added three new methods to DateTime: julian-date, modified-julian-date and day-fraction for easier interfacing with a lot of astronomical software.
• And many other smaller fixes and improvements!

Questions about Raku

• Is there a straightforward way to check if something is a mixin? by JJ Merelo.
• Is there a way to access mixed-in components when the original variable has a default coercion? by JJ Merelo.
• Allowing a method to operate on a List of my type? by Daniel Sockwell.
• Arcane treatment of doubles and rationals by syphilis.
• Is there a convenient way to replicate R’s concept of ‘named vectors’, possibly using Mixins? by jubilatious1.
• Windows runner in Github Actions? by Jonathan Stowe.
• How can I get this Muller Recurrence One-Liner to work? by Steve Roe.
• How can I clear EOF on stdin ($*IN) after gettig it with get / prompt? by cowbaymoo.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Less work and unicode proof by Markus Holzer.
• This would be quite cool by JJ Merelo.
• Rakudo binary for AUR by Siavash.
• Doccers welcome! by JJ Merelo.
• First verified author ecosystem by Tony O’Dell.
• Using Postgres from Raku by Postgres Weekly.
• Top tip for authors by Jonathan Stowe.
• Branchless expression by Markus Holzer.
• Monthly report by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Might have saved lives by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Stacking up languages by Steve Roe.
• Want to hear from you by The Perl and Raku Conference.
• Using smartmatch all of the time by Leon Timmermans.
• Amazing for data analyisis by Alexander Krizhanovsky.
• See you there! by Geekuni.
• Stated annoyingly by Jonathan Stowe.
• Touched all of my modules by Jonathan Stowe.
• 2020 PAUSE statistics by Neil Bowers.
• 107.1 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.

Meanwhile on the mailing list

• Locations relative to script location by Joseph Brenner.

Comments about Raku

• Really like Raku by cestith.
• Significantly higher level by b2gills.
• On string lenghts by b2gills.
• On the decline of Perl (HackerNews discussion, much about Raku).
• Looping syntaxes by Ralph Mellor.
• Did you know that when and & junctions can destructure like this? by Daniel Sockwell.
• Hard to beat by cygx.
• Expressive and cool! by samatman.
• On NativeCall interfacing by Ralph Mellor.
• The idea is spreading by cxw.
• Happy Easter! by Daniel Sockwell.
• On enums and sum types by Ralph Mellor.

Updated Raku Modules

• Terminal::UI, Terminal::ANSI by Brian Duggan.
• Text::Diff::Sift4 by Daniel Green.
• CSS::Module, CSS, CSS::Properties by David Warring.
• Pakku::RecMan by Haytham Elganiny.
• FastCGI::NativeCall::Async, Audio::Playlist::JSPF, Lumberjack::Message::JSON, Audio::Hydrogen, Audio::Icecast, Lumberjack::Dispatcher::EventSource, Ujumla, Audio::Fingerprint::Chromaprint, Lumberjack, Monitor::Monit, URI::FetchFile, XDG::BaseDirectory, META6, LibraryCheck, JSON::Name, Object::Permission, Test::Util::ServerPort, Audio::Convert::Samplerate, Staticish, Linux::Cpuinfo, Object::Permission::Group, Test::META, URI::Template, Sys::Lastlog, FastCGI::NativeCall::PSGI by Jonathan Stowe.
• Intl::LanguageTag by Matthew Stuckwisch.
• Algorithm::SpiralMatrix by Michal Jurosz.
• Collection-Raku-Documentation, Raku::Pod::Render, Collection by Richard Hainsworth.
• Pod::To::Markdown by Tim Siegel & Jorn van Engelen.
• Universal::errno by Travis Gibson.

Winding down

Some very cool core developments this week, in stability, ease of maintenance and number of new features! And quite a number of updated modules as well in this week’s Rakudo Weekly News! Stay healthy and safe, please, for another instalment next week!