The Raku Core Developers welcome John Haltiwanger as a full core developer on Rakudo, an implementation of the Raku Programming Language. Usually known by their ab5tract nickname, John has recently been very active in working on RakuAST implementing many features, including: a newly featureful FIRST phaser, the subset and enum types, and a comprehensive new implementation of how WhateverCodes prime themselves and others. These were developed through Pull Requests. That extra step won’t be necessary anymore!

Yet Another Release

Justin DeVuyst managed to get out the 2023.11 release of the Rakudo compiler for the Raku Programming Language just before Black Friday. Binary packages became available shortly after.

Test-t testing much faster

H.Merijn Brandt has been testing performance of the Text::CSV module for over 9 years now. Careful observers of this test, may have noticed that the test became more than 3x as fast between 13 and 17 November:

2023-11-13 14:37:07 test-t 1.363
2023-11-17 11:58:09 test-t 0.423

This was not caused by any changes in Rakudo, but by the fact that new hardware replaced the more than 10 year old hardware. Kudos to Merijn for keeping the old hardware around long enough for consistent test results over all those years!

Anton’s Corner

Anton Antonov is taking the Raku Programming Language into the realm of interpretation of images, in an impressive blogs post: AI Vision via Raku (/r/rakulang comments).

John’s Corner

John Haltiwanger also looked into integration with the Zig Programming Language in a blog post called: An initial investigation into using Zig to speed up Raku code.

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #245 is available for your perusal.

New Problem Solving Issues

• Allomorphs are an interface drug
• * .. 'foo' scenarios create surprisingly inconsistent, invalid Ranges

New Pull Requests

• Convert all dir functions to just use libuv with windows long path support
• Initial draft of near complete generics instantiation

Core Developments

• Patrick Böker fixed a rare race-condition that could occur during the setup phase of supplies.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen changed the semantics of Grammar.parse / Grammar.subparse / Grammar.parsefile in 6.e by NOT setting $/ in the caller’s scope anymore. This to prevent a trap with using these methods inside a block that is part of a .hyper / .race chain.

In RakuAST developments this week:

• Márton Polgár added a Hungarian localization to the Raku Programming Language.
• Elizabeth Mattijsen made use variables :D; and use attributes :D; work, and made sure these semantics are not applied to native types.
• The number of passing test-files with the new Raku grammar are now 111/150 (make test +0) and 981/1358 (make spectest +0).

Meanwhile on Mastodon

• A new library by Samuel Chase.
• Why use variables :U by Julia.
• Rocks my world by Massa Humberto.
• Butterfly endorsement by Samuel Chase.
• Baby pairings by Profoundly Nerdy.
• Smallest code seen by Ecosistema de monte.
• A small script for removing by Julia.
• Loving the stuff by Herzenschein++.
• Brainfitting by JJ Atria.
• Refactoring with a killer app by Samuel Chase.

Meanwhile still on Twitter 𝕏

• A Fat Golden Ratio by Fásmido insular.

Meanwhile on the mailing list

• Help with macports port for zef by raf.

Questions about Raku

• How to define ⟂ as a constant? by Wim Vanderbauwheede.
• What’s your IDE? by Osei.

Comments

• Caring, trying, loving by Kaamkiya.
• A curious mixture by chubot.
• Is the answer the answer? by Ralph Mellor.

New Raku Modules

• actions “Introduce actions keyword” by Elizabeth Mattijsen.

Updated Raku Modules

• PublicSuffix by JJ Atria.
• Humming-Bird by Rawley Fowler.
• GIO, GLib by Clifton Wood.
• Terminal::ANSIColor by Elizabeth Mattijsen.
• WWW::OpenAI, LLM::Functions, Lingua::Translation::DeepL by Anton Antonov.
• sublist by yabobay.
• Sparky by Alexey Melezhik.
• Crypt::LibScrypt by Konstantin Narkhov.
• Net::Whois by Fernando Santagata.
• Terminal::Widgets by Geoffrey Broadwell.

Winding down

Definitely a quiet week on the western side of the Atlantic pond! Meanwhile, Слава Україні!  Героям слава!

Please keep staying safe and healthy, and keep up the good work!

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