Oleksandr Kyriukhin has announced the release of Rakudo Compiler 2021.07, an implementation of the Raku Programming Language. With quite a few (small) efficiency improvements, some fixes, a few cool new features and one deprecation this time around. On top of that, a Windows MSI installer is now also available from the Rakudo Downloads page (thanks to Patrick Böker). And of course there are new Linux packages (by Claudio Ramirez)! Great to see more OSes being supported by binary installers!

Alexey’s Corner

Alexey Melezhik published 3 blog posts this week:

• Sparrow plugin to convert markdown to pdf (/r/rakulang comments)
• Example of Data Structures Algorithms on Raku
• Validating k8s deployments using Sparrow

Flavio’s Corner

Flavio Poletti continued writing, but only one post this week:

• Brute forcing “The monkey and the coconuts” (/r/rakulang comments)

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #123 is available for your perusal. And this week’s “What’s everyone working on (2021.30)” as well.

Pull Requests

• Add Set operator character explanations
• Stream Decoder: Disallow incomplete code at EOF
• Zero-pad the shorter string for bitwise string ops
• Fix spesh optimizing away still needed label register
• Positional hyperwhatever
• Add Iterable cmp Iterable candidates
• Add Cool.Order “coercer”

Please check these Pull Requests and leave any comments that you may have!

Core Developments

• Daniel Green optimized some memory allocation logic on MoarVM, and removed deprecated ops from the internal operator list.
• Stefan Seifert spotted and fixed a re-allocation thinko, and fixed a recently introduced regression that could dead-lock heavily multi-threaded programs.
• Nicholas Clark fixed an incorrect sanity check on empty hashes.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen made cmp work for Uni values and native arrays and made IO::Path.add take multiple values.
• Patrick Böker extended the binary release pipeline to also create a Windows MSI installer.
• And some smaller fixes and improvements.

Meanwhile, on the new-disp branch, Jonathan Worthington was mostly busy removing code that has become superfluous. More importantly, Stefan Seifert, Jan Olof Hendig, Daniel Green and Timo Paulssen have been able to support Jonathan with fixes on the new-disp branch, after investigating several reports of code analysis and performance tools showing problems.

Questions about Raku

• Access callee/this in Raku map code/block by mykhal.
• Is it possible to disable the GC in Raku? by Julia.
• Weird “Can’t use unknown trait” when nextsame or callsame are used by JJ Merelo.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Rewrite it in Raku! by Julia.
• Conference T-shirt updated by Andrew Shitov.
• Consistently most expressive by Moritz Lenz.
• Telegram botting by Julia.
• My slot by Mohammad S Anwar.
• BodySerializer useful to you? by Jonathan Stowe.
• Notwithstanding by Barry Schwartz.
• Cramming into a line by Julia.
• #122.1 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.
• Is it canon? by Markus Holzer.
• #122.2 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.
• Unfairly undervalued by Andros Fenollosa.
• 6 or 7 now? by no one.
• Borrowed from APL by Helmut Wollmersdorfer.
• Using a module by auth or version by JJ Merelo.
• Third Saturday of the month by JJ Merelo.
• Installing a new Raku by Julia.
• The first imperative not to use FP by Trey Harris.

Comments about Raku

• Decidable? by Ralph Mellor.
• On function arguments by Brent Laabs.
• Bootstrapped from a tiny base by Ralph Mellor.
• No clear migration path by warpspin.
• Minuscule Protobuf implementation by Ralph Mellor.
• Mutable cooperating slangs by Ralph Mellor.
• On inlines by Ralph Mellor.
• No splattering by Daniel Sockwell.
• A great presentation by 7thaccount.

New Raku Modules

• Hash::Ordered role for ordered Hashes by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• BSON::Simple Simple codec for the BSON (Binary JSON) serialization format by Geoffrey Broadwell.

Updated Raku Modules

• Sustenance by Andy Weidenbaum
• Terminal::UI by Brian Duggan.
• PDF::Font::Loader by David Warring.
• Red by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• Gnome::Gtk3 by Marcel Timmerman.
• Test::Async by Vadim Belman.
• Algorithm::LibSVM by Itsuki Toyota.

Winding down

A bit of a quiet week in Rakudo land before the 2021.07 Rakudo Compiler release. Well, quiet? On the new-disp branch and the #moarvm IRC channel, things were pretty busy this week (see e.g. Wednesday)! In any case, stay healthy! The fact that restrictions have been lifted, does not mean the pandemic is over. See you all next week!