This year has seen a lot of migrations. In the real world sadly, but also online: the FreeNode fiasco comes to mind, and now Twitter appears to be going the same direction. So it was a good opportunity to start an official channel for the Raku Programming Language on Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@RakuLang, run by members of the Raku Steering Council. This will replace the two Twitter accounts that were run by Moritz Lenz and Roman Baumer.

Yours truly found out today that you can actually “follow” a tag on Mastodon. To follow the #RakuLang tag, the relative URL is /tags/RakuLang on your local Mastodon instance, so e.g. https://fosstodon.org/tags/RakuLang. Why the CamelCase? Aren’t tags case insensitive? They are indeed, but by camelcasing them, you make it easier on the people that need to use screen readers, as screenreaders take the capital letters as hints for pronunciation.

Special offer on Raku (e)Books!

It looks like Springer Verlag has put out a special offer on two Raku Books, each at about 10€ / 10$, and the ebook at about 7€ / 7$! It is unclear how long this offer will last! This would make an excellent Christmas present!

• Raku Fundamentals by Moritz Lenz.
• Raku Recipes by JJ Merelo.

From the Documentation Team

After a lot of discussion, it was decided to start using the Github Discussions feature for the documentation project. And/or participate in discussions on the #raku-doc channel on Libera.chat (or just follow the live logs if you just want to lurk).

San Francisco Raku Study Group

Joseph Brenner has been hosting an on-line Raku Study group for quite some time now. Sadly, announcements so far had been out of step with the publication of the Rakudo Weekly News. That has been remedied, so yours truly is proud to announce there will be an online SF Raku Study group at 9 GMT on 4 and 18 December (password: 4RakuRoll). You will need Zoom to be installed.

Nikos’ Corner

Nikos Vaggalis published a column about the vision shared in The Perl and Raku Foundation (previously known as YAS: Yet Another Society).

Elizabeth’s Corner

Elizabeth Mattijsen continued their blogging streak with:

• Setting up your haystack (part 4 in the “It’s time to rak!” series)
• Role playing (part 3 in the “A gaze of iterators!” series)

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #192 is available for your perusal.

New Pull Requests

• Add info on the RakuAST project
• Fix smartmatch over topic

Core Developments

• Elizabeth Mattijsen fixed an issue with file notifications.
• Vadim Belman removed a whole set of now unused nqp::ops.
• Stefan Seifert continued working on RakuAST, with tests now at 553/1355 (+2) and 79/131 (+1).

Questions about Raku

• Is there an equivalent of Roles for functional programming? by Kay Rhodes.
• How much does the Promise construct share in common with JavaScript’s Promises? by uzluisf.
• A Raku helper script to move windows in linux by jobs4bits.
• When does it make sense to use a sigil-less variable? by user214575.

Meanwhile on Mastodon

Some weeks ago the big migration started. Yours truly went along (https://mastodon.social/@lizmat) and will be reporting Raku related information from the Mastodon area of the Fediverse. Turns out, there have been quite a few mentions of the Raku Programming Language on Mastodon in the past that were not properly reported in the Weekly. Without going to far back in history, here are the threads since October 2022:

• For raku geeks wanting org-babel support by Kay Rhodes.
• Complicated thoughts by Kay Rhodes.
• On XDG::GuaranteedResources by Kay Rhodes.
• The end of grepper fear by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Something really broken with DB::SQLite by Kay Rhodes.
• Deep flattening by Kay Rhodes.
• Nicer table setting by Kay Rhodes.
• Solving the puzzle by Suman Khanal.
• A nice discovery by Kay Rhodes.
• Please, a docset for Dash, please! by Kay Rhodes.
• Listicles bug-- by Kay Rhodes.
• Mark Github flavoured by Kay Rhodes.
• Lots of awesome stuff by Kay Rhodes.
• Run code, explode, then edit by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• An introduction by Adrian Kreher.
• A fresh gaze by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Over 30 years by Massa Humberto.
• A Guppe group by Julia.
• Pushing the limits by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• With some similarities by Mark Gardner.
• Fun coding challenges by Simon Proctor.
• Searching all text by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• A tiny script by Julia.
• Non-technical nice-to-haves? by Salve J. Nilsen.
• Following tags! by Julia.
• On being unemployed by Kay Rhodes.
• A home on the fediverse by Daniel Sockwell.
• Functions taking functions by Kay Rhodes.
• Fresh on Fedora 37 by Claudio Ramirez.
• Improved docs by Kay Rhodes.
• Testing against different Rakudos and Linux dists by Alexey Melezhik.
• Completely non-optional by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Will you stick? by Daniel Sockwell.
• Somewhat surprised by Jonathan Stowe.
• But but by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Looking for articles! by JJ Merelo.
• An olive branch by Mark Gardner.
• Haystacking by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Adding secrets management by Alexey Melezhik.
• Kebab-case by Gianni Ceccarelli.
• Storability over the weekend by Jonathan Stowe.
• Rolling iterably by Elizabeth Mattijsen.

Meanwhile on Twitter

Yours truly will continue to monitor Twitter, but decided to not post any new content on Twitter anymore.

• Big differences? by Ned Dev.
• No good after all? by 結城 あゆむ.
• More awesomeness! by Moritz Lenz.
• Elimination suggestion by Massa Humberto.
• Pod loading works by JJ Merelo.
• Other more awsomeness by Roman Baumer.
• Enough suggestion by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• A shared vision by Nikos Vaggalis.
• Just can’t, or can they? by Pramod.
• How’s it going? by ザイポッポ.
• Zeffing by default by Shoichi Kaji.
• On fire by JJ Merelo.
• Most versatile by Josh.
• Much nicer by curupira.

Meanwhile on the mailing list

• Session ID by ToddAndMargo.
• I can’t find my booboo by ToddAndMargo.
• What is this handle? by ToddAndMargo.
• NativeCall pointer question? by ToddAndMargo.

Comments about Raku

• Limiting ourselves by rootbear.
• Never considered it to be Perl by Matt S. Trout.
• Mostly tangential by Ralph Mellor.
• Interesting control structures in an SSA language by Ralph Mellor.

New Raku Modules

• App::Rak::Complete “App::Rak with all its optional dependencies” by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Function::Validation “Functions to help you validate the signature of functions” by Kay Rhodes.

Updated Raku Modules

• Collection-Plugin-Development, Raku::Pod::Render by Richard Hainsworth.
• Gnome::GObject, Gnome::Gtk3 by Marcel Timmerman.
• PublicSuffix by JJ Atria.
• App::Rak, rak, Ecosystem, CLI::Ecosystem, paths by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• Text::CSV by H.Merijn Brand.
• User::Language, User::Timezone, DateTime::Timezones by Matthew Stuckwisch.
• App::Zef-Deps by Will Coleda.
• File::ExtendedAttributes, Net::Snapcast by Adrian Kreher.
• Mi6::Helper by Tom Browder.
• UpRooted by Pawel Pabian.
• Lingua::Translation::DeepL, UML::Translators, Text::CodeProcessing by Anton Antonov.
• App::Mi6, HTTP::Tinyish, CPAN::Uploader::Tiny by Shoichi Kaji.
• Pod::Load by JJ Merelo.
• Pod::To::PDF, Pod::To::PDF::Lite by David Warring.
• zef by Nick Logan.

Winding down

An interesting week yet again. With a lot of changes. Fortunately, still the steady flow of Raku news!

This week’s picture of Lego-like bricks from the late 1960’s! To remind us Ukraine is still fighting the Russian aggression. Слава Україні!  Героям слава!

In the meantime, please keep staying safe, keep staying healthy, and keep up the good work!

If you like what I’m doing, committing to a small sponsorship would mean a great deal!