Oleksandr Kyriukhin has released the 2021.10 version of the Rakudo Compiler, which includes all of the work of the new MoarVM dispatch mechanism. This is the culmination of more than 1.5 year work by many people, but mostly by Jonathan Worthington. A historic step forward that lays the groundwork on more efficient executing of Raku programs, and actually delivers on a number of improvements.

Claudio Ramirez quickly provided Linux packages for this release.

This release is also historic for another reason: after having done 24 Rakudo compiler releases, Oleksandr Kyriukhin has decided it is time for someone else to take over this important task. Kudos to Oleksandr for having done so many releases!

Videos

This week, a number of videos from recent and not so recent conferences became available:

• Reflections on a decade of MoarVM by Jonathan Worthington.
• Raku – Un lenguaje para el siglo XXI by JJ Merelo.
• Vue + Raku – A new Facade by Cecilia Merelo.
• Designing an ‘In-Meeting’ Indicator with Raku by Joelle Tori Maslak.
• Raku for malware analysis by Paula de la Hoz.
• The Four Sigils Of Raku by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• A method for Creating NativeCall Bindings in Raku by Clifton Wood.

Do you like Red?

Then this is the time you can answer Fernando Correa de Oliveira‘s appeal to create the first stable release of Red, an ORM for the Raku Programming Language. Check out the issues of what still needs to be done. And the whole Raku community will be thankful!

That time of the year is coming!

Only a few weeks to go, and it’s Advent Calendar time again! Make sure you get a slot in this year’s Advent Calendar for the Raku Programming Language, by adding your blog post (proposal) to the preliminary list of authors and articles!

Mikhail’s Corner

Mikhail Khorkov tells us about their Raku Code Coverage module called App::RaCoCo in Measuring Code Coverage by Testing in Raku (original Russian version).

Alexey’s Corner

Alexey Melezhik has added a language selection option to My Butterflies (for independent software reviews), for instance software for Raku only.

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #136 is available for your perusal.

New Pull Requests

• Allocate frame work and, when possible, environment registers on the callstack
• API for asking whether the compiler supports a certain nqp op
• Make enums and Bool throw on .new
• Better cope with megamorphic callsites after new-disp

Core Developments

• Jonathan Wortington improved inlining of code that can never de-optimize.
• Daniel Green fixed several C-compiler warnings and some memory leaks and added JITting of the nqp::abs_i op.
• Stefan Seifert fixed an issue with dispatch guards on a de-optimization, the compilation of dispatch on routines that use non-standard native result types and removed unnecessary boxing of routines with native return types.
• Christian Bartolomäus fixed various JVM specific tests in nqp.
• Vadim Belman added an is-wrapped method to Routine objects.
• And some smaller tweaks and fixes.

Questions about Raku

• Why does Pakku crash with Cannot locate native library while using on MacOS Big Sur by Mikhail Khorkov.
• How to execute raku script from interpreter? by con.
• Trouble Accessing Value of a Multidimensional Hash by Garrett S.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• An exciting keynote! by Manuel Rigger.
• #135.2 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.
• #135.1 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.
• Added a write-in option by Brian Wisti.
• There was… by ぽんこつ@Z6/Z7.
• Assumptions in this house by Tim Brown.
• Thanks to VMIL2021 by Jonathan Worthington.
• Comma, differently by Mikhail Khorkov.
• Refusing to acknowledge by Trix Farrar.
• Implementing opt-in serialization by Jonathan Stowe.
• Missed an opportunity by Tom Elliff.
• Add yourself here! by JJ Merelo.
• Better than average error messages by Phil Crissman.
• Finally found the courage by Mohammad S Anwar.
• Documenting your way by JJ Merelo.
• Thinking of Christmas by Paul Cochrane.
• Being paid to do stuff in Raku by Jonathan Stowe.
• 900+ commits! by Oleksandr Kyriukhin.
• Advertising a little bit by Julia.
• In one word by Marc Chantreux.
• Real decimal numbers? by 魚田雅彦.
• #136.2 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.
• #136.1 in a tweet by Markus Holzer.
• I don’t need it right now by Siavash Askari Nasr.

Meanwhile on the mailing list

• FTP client yet? by ToddAndMargo.
• I need a better regex with a literal in it by ToddAndMargo.

Comments about Raku

• Might be worth posting by Steve Roe.
• Greatly exaggerated on Hacker News.
• Planning ahead by Ralph Mellor.
• Some ideas from Raku by reezer.
• Don’t quite agree by Wenzel P.P. Peppmeyer.
• Built-in parsing by Ralph Mellor.
• Conceptual Trajectory by Stéphane Payrard.
• A similar exceptional system by Ralph Mellor.
• Intend to add a Raku version later by martin.
• War stories? by Paddy3118.
• Perhaps of interest by Ralph Mellor.

New Raku modules

• Terminal::LineEditor “Generalized terminal line editing” by Geoffrey Broadwell.
• AWS::SNS::Notification “Description of an AWS Simple Notification Service message” by Jonathan Stowe.
• DateTime::US “Time zone and DST information for US states and territories” by Tom Browder.
• PatternMatching “Library for pattern matching” by Siavash Askari Nasr.

Updated Raku Modules

• App::IRC::Log, App::Raku::Log, IRC::Channel::Log, IRC::Log, IRC::Log::Colabti, IRC::Log::Textual by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• App::RaCoCo by Mikhail Khorkov.
• JSON::Class by Jonathan Stowe.
• DateTime::Timezones by Matthew ‘Stephen’ Stuckwisch.
• Physics::Measure, Physics::Constants, Physics::Unit by Steve Roe.
• Red by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• Net::Ethereum by Konstantin Narkhov.
• Math::Libgsl::Polynomial by Fernando Santagata.
• Gnome::Gio by Marcel Timmerman.

Winding down

A historic week. Some nice videos to watch. And a 2021.10 Rakudo Compiler release that made the new-disp work go mainstream, to try out! A good week. Check in again next week for more news about the Raku Programming Language.