Richard Hainsworth kicks off the Pod6 to RakuDoc standardisation process in “Revising RakuDoc“, a follow-up of the discussions at the Raku Core Summit. Summary: currently a small team of developers (among whom is Damian Conway) is working on a beta-version of RakuDoc standard that will be available for discussion on August 1st. See also “Reinventing Pod6: Moving Forward by Alexandr Zahatski, and the associated problem solving issue.

Releases

Thanks to Justin DeVuyst there is now a Rakudo Compiler Release 2023.06, and thanks to Anton Oks there is now also a Rakudo Star 2023.06! And of course the various binary packages have been updated. New features are:

• support for asynchronous unix sockets
• Format class and :o / :format quoting constructs adverbs

Anton’s Corner

Anton Antonov wrote a blog post about their new EBNF::Grammar module, to convert Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) into Raku grammars.

Elizabeth’s Corner

Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote a blog post about the new Formatter and Format classes, and the new :o / :format quoting adverb in “Moving printf formats forward” (/r/rakulang comments).

Vadim’s Corner

Vadim Belman announced the publication of the video of the first Raku Core Development Class, with all its warts and glitches (/r/rakulang comments).

Wenzel’s Corner

Wenzel P.P. Peppmeyer was on a roll again this week with two blog posts:

• Saying them apart
• I take issue with enshittification (/r/rakulang comments)

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #224 is available for your perusal.

New Problem Solving Issues

• Errors should not be adhoc in core
• POD6 to RakuDoc revision process

New Pull Requests

• Remove unused apply_transcoding compiler function (nqp)
• Fix potential concurrent hash access race condition
• Make sub version of min/max/minmax on Ranges consistent
• RakuAST: allow → ↔ as unicode version of -> <->
• RakuAST: allow ⇒ as the unicode version of =>
• Remove nqp/lib from vm search paths
• Remove deprecated Proc.status
• Remove unused transcode compiler option (Rakudo)

Core Developments

• Nick Logan fixed a build issue on the JVM backend, and removed the deprecated --nqp-lib option.
• Will Coleda added a test script to compare the output of --doc between legacy and RakuAST for all of the Raku Programming Language documentation. This proved to be a great source of rendering inconsistencies.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen refactored Formatter internals so that a Callable with a specific signature is created, renamed the Format.code method to less ambiguous .Callable, and added the Format.AST method.

And in RakuAST developments this week:

• Elizabeth Mattijsen fixed several small RakuDoc parsing and rendering issues, bringing the number of passing Raku documentation files from 200 to 416 (out of 419).
• The number of passing test-files with the new Raku grammar are now 140/150 (make test) and 884/1356 (make spectest).

Meanwhile on Mastodon

• Pretty damn cool by jbz.
• Examples in Raku and Python by Paul Buetow.
• Contrary to Raku by Elizabeth Mattijsen.

Meanwhile still on Twitter

• Most excited by Joaquín Ferrero.
• Going smoothly by Khalid Borai.

Meanwhile on the mailing list

• Strange behavior with sequence of functions by Sean McAfee.
• A question on AND by ToddAndMargo.

Questions about Raku

• Usenet Newsgroups? by s-ro_mojosa.
• Where are executable scripts stored? by Solomon Foster.
• Raku NativeCall to SOD Segmentation fault by Khalid Elborai.
• How does the scope effect EVAL of an infix:<> sub? by Jim Bollinger.

Comments

• Top paying technologies of 2023 by Helitha Rupasinghe.
• On terrible package management by Felix Knorr.
• Also an option by radiator.
• It never stopped by hobbified.
• A Raku equivalent by Ralph Mellor.
• Perl 5.38 released on Hacker News.
• Learn at least Raku by DeviousBeevious.

Updated Raku Modules

• EBNF::Grammar, Data::Cryptocurrencies, FunctionalParsers by Anton Antonov.
• fez by Tony O’Dell.
• Template::Nest::XS by Frode Marton Meling.
• PDF::Content, PDF::Font::Loader by David Warring.
• PublicSuffix by JJ Atria.
• Oyatul, URI::Template, Ujumla, MQ::Posix, Sys::Utmp, GDBM, AccessorFacade, Unix::Groups by Jonathan Stowe.
• Protocol::Postgres by Leon Timmermans.
• Net::Ethereum by Konstantin Narkhov.
• octans by Andinus.
• Tomtit by Alexey Melezhik.

Winding down

Quite some action on the Pod6 / RakuDoc front! Which always takes longer than expected. Not unlike other things in the world. Слава Україні!  Героям слава!

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!