Perl 6 Summary for 2005-07-05 through 2005-07-12
All~
Welcome to another summary from the frog house. A house so green it can
be seen from outerspace (according to google earth).
Perl 6 Compiler
Building Pugs Workaround
Sam Vilain posted a useful work around to the error "error: field
`_crypt_struct' has incomplete type" which occurs on some systems.
Fortunately, Salvador Garcia found a fix.
<http://xrl.us/gqjy>
<http://xrl.us/gqjz>
Pugs, Pirate. Pirate, Pugs.
Autrijus began plotting with the Pirate folks. Thoughts include unifying
PIL and PAST or possibly retargeting PIL to PAST. Perhaps the result
should be a more nautical dog maybe schipperke.
<http://xrl.us/gqj2>
Implicit Invocants and Pain
Larry (as will be summarized later) ruled that " ./method " was gone. he
further ruled that " .method " would pitch fits at either compile or run
time if " $_ =:= $?SELF " was false. Autrijus found this quite difficult
to implement. Talk continues, my instincts tell me that this too will
pass, although Larry assures us that it is absolutely permanent for at
least a week.
<http://xrl.us/gqj3>
Parrot
Key Question
Klass-Jan Stol found that using a assigning a floating point value to a
key and then using it make parrot segfault. Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/gqj4>
Parrot Copyrights
Allison Randal hinted that The Perl Foundation has almost finished
hammering out some legal stuff and there will soon be sweeping changes
throughout the repository addressing copyright issues.
<http://xrl.us/gqj5>
Character Classes in Globs
Will Coleda noted that Tcl would pass more tests if PGE supported
characters classes in globs. Patrick, unable to resist the siren call of
passing tests, implemented it.
<http://xrl.us/gqj6>
Amber for Parrot
Roger Browne announced that he had succeed in extracting viable DNA from
a Parrot encased in amber since the Jurasic age. Either that or he
release Amber version 0.2.2 not sure which.
<http://xrl.us/gqj7>
Leo's Branch
Leo has created a branch in SVN (branches/leo-ctx5) of his work
implementing the new calling conventions. This led to some discussion of
how to deal with optional arguments.
<http://xrl.us/gqj8>
<http://xrl.us/gqj9>
Leo's Branch Meets mod_parrot
Jeff Horwitz posted some observations and troubles he was having with
Leo's branch of new calling conventions. Leo warned that the branch was
still young, but would gladly take test cases.
<http://xrl.us/gqka>
Leo's Branch Meets PGE
After the initial discussion of optional parameter, Patrick updated the
leo_ctx5 branch of PGE to the new calling conventions. All tests pass.
<http://xrl.us/gqkb>
Get onto the Bus
Matt Diephouse found a Bus Error when running
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/gqkc>
MinGW Patch Resurrection
F Perrad resurected a patch from mid June with a set of action
items. Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/gqkd>
Scared Parrots Like Scheme
Joh Lenz posted an announcement that he had an alpha version of Chicken
(a Scheme to C compiler) backending to Parrot. Leo provided answers to
some of his questions.
<http://xrl.us/gqke>
Bytecode vs PMCs
Matt Diephouse posted a list of questions about the place of PMCs. Some
of the core tradeoffs include: maintability, portability, optimization,
duplicate implementations, and security.
<http://xrl.us/gqkf>
make svnclean
Leo pointed out that make svnclean got removed, but that he found it
useful. Chip suggested that it be renamed make svnclobber, as it does
more than just clean.
<http://xrl.us/gqkg>
pmc2c.pl Bug
Nicholas Clark found a bug in the shortcut to avoid writing a pmc dump
file. Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/gqkh>
Define "cache"
Nicholas Clark suggested that it was probably not wise to #define
"cache". So they removed it.
<http://xrl.us/gqki>
Parrots Getting Smarter
Leo pointed out that at least one parrot understood the concept of zero,
putting it some distance ahead of romans when it comes to math. the
Parrots start to grow opposable thumbs, I will welcome our new Parrot
overlords.
<http://xrl.us/gqkj>
Leo's Branch Meets Exceptions
Leo posted two suggestions for how the new calling conventions could
interact with Exceptions. Autrijus liked the one that unifies exception
handlers with the rest of calls and returns.
<http://xrl.us/gqkk>
Control Flow Graph Bugs
Curtis Rawls noted what he thought might be a bug in the
compute_dominators function. Leo confirmed that it was likely a bug.
Later he posted a note saying he was working on a new implementation for
some of the CFG algorithms. He asked for a hand, but Warnock applied.
Actually, I think I have looked at that code before. I would help be
happy to take a look Curtis.
<http://xrl.us/gqkm>
TD: Steal Good Ideas from Dan
Will Coleda opened a ticket suggesting that we open tickets based on
some of Dan's latest posts to Squaks of the Parrot. Remember: "talent
immitates, but genius, genius steals".
<http://xrl.us/gqkn>
Punie
Allison Randal wants to add Punie (a Perl 1 compiler) to svn. Response
was positive.
<http://xrl.us/gqko>
Mobilizing PM groups
Will Coleda wondered if there had been any work mobilizing Perl Monger
groups for the good of Parrot. Maybe I should finally look up the
Cambridge or Boston PM group
<http://xrl.us/gqkp>
<http://xrl.us/gqkq>
Perl 6 Language
As usual in p6l land, there are a couple really long threads. As usual
in p6summarizer land, they will get short summaries. how that
happens.
Conflicting Autogenerated Accessors
Last week, Stevan Little wondered what would happen with conflicting
autogenerated accessor names. Larry said they would carp as soon as they
were discovered.
<http://xrl.us/gqkr>
DBI v2
The first really long thread has to do with the next version of DBI. I
am not really a database person. But apparently those who are have
strong opinions.
<http://xrl.us/gqks>
<http://xrl.us/gqkt>
Time::Local
The next really long thread has to do with the next version of
Time::Local. I am not really a Time person. But apparently those who are
have strong opinions.
<http://xrl.us/gqku>
submethods
Stevan Little and Larry Wall talked about submethods, their purpose, and
their interaction with the meta model. I must say that I have only
partially wrapped my head around metamodels at all.
<http://xrl.us/gqkv>
SMD Considered Harmful?
Last week, Yuval Kogman conjectured that MMD should be the one true MD,
as it allowed nifty extensibility. This week Stuart Cook offered a sort
of compromise. I rather like Stuart's compromise.
<http://xrl.us/gqkw>
Dependency Injection
Piers wants to be able to have classes that inject themselves in
correctly at use time based on what is actually used. Larry commented,
but one quote really caught my attention "Globals are bad only if you
use them to hold non-global values". <off topic>There is an important
lesson imbedded in that quote. We really should learn rules not to
follow them blindly, but so that we understand the spirit behind them
and respect that instead. Not that I have had screaming matches with any
programmers who blindly eshew globals and goto's without understanding
why </off topicThat was more of a rant then just off topic.
well.
<http://xrl.us/gqkx>
File.seek Interface
Wolverian wondered what the seek interface would look like for handles.
Larry likes the idea of it working entirely through opaque position
objects using "`" to specify units.
<http://xrl.us/gqky>
Perl6/Perl5 ~ 82%
Michael Hendricks noticed that (accrding to Text::TypingEffort). Perl 6
requires 18% less effort than Perl 5. He suggests that this is a bad
thing for the communities wasteline. I conjecture that perl developers
will use the extra time they save for activities like running and
canoeing and as a result will paradoxically lose weight from expending
less effort at work.
<http://xrl.us/gqkz>
Creating Value Types
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how to create a value type. Luke Palmer
suggested using an " is value " trait. He then went on to speculate
about mutating value traits and CW semantics. Larry though that perhaps
an " is copy " trait was called for. , a preposition at the end of a
sentance, makes me want to occasionally split infinitives
<http://xrl.us/gqk2>
.isa
Ingo Blechschmidt viciously lied when claiming to post a "quick" isa
question. This quickly went the way of the meta object. I think I
mentioned my take on those earlier (powerful, but ow).
<http://xrl.us/gqk3>
Method Call on Invocant
The last really long thread has to do with the next chapter in the
method call on self saga. I am a bit of a method call on self person.
And apparently those who are have strong opinions. Woth note this time
is that Larry updated the current state of the world. Now " ./method "
is gone, and " .method " only works when " $_ =:= $?SELF ".
<http://xrl.us/gqk4>
Use and Require Question
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered what use and require actually do. Gall Yahas
suggested they return the last thing in the used/required file. Larry
aggreed and held that they would also return the same thing. He also
warned that %INC would probably work differently in Perl6.
<http://xrl.us/gqk6>
User Defined Infix
Autrijus wondered if an method " infix:<" would eed to be marked as
export for a script that "use"s it to get the method. Larry explained
that the method " infix:<" would be available by name, but would
have to be marked as export for the syntactic sugar of " A B " to
work.
<http://xrl.us/gqk7>
Hackathon Notes
Autrijus posted a link to his hackathon notes. This spawned several
threads. David Storrs tried to convince people to change subject lines,
with limited success. Much of the discussion focused on MMD and how
confusing it was. Damian Conway posted his set of 3 rules that would
prevent AIs from harming humans and his set of 8 rules that would
prevent MMDs from harming programmers. Proving that MMDs are almost 3
times more dangerous than AIs.
<http://xrl.us/gqk8>
Raw Binary Data
David Formosa wanted to play with raw binary data in Perl 6. I try and
avoid raw things except sushi. Larry suggested that this would just be a
string whose maximum abstraction level was set to bytes.
<http://xrl.us/gqk9>
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Matt Fowles summarized:

Method Call on Invocant
Now " ./method "is gone, and " .method " only works when " $_ =:= $?SELF ".

Important qualification:

Within a method or submethod, C<.methodonly works when C<$_ =:= $?SELF>.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

C<.methodis perfectly legal on *any* topic anywhere that $?SELF doesn't exist.

Damian

Matt Fowles summarized:

Method Call on Invocant
Now " ./method "is gone, and " .method " only works when " $_ =:= $?SELF ".

Important qualification:

Within a method or submethod, C<.methodonly works when C<$_ =:= $?SELF>.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

C<.methodis perfectly legal on *any* topic anywhere that $?SELF doesn't exist.

Damian

Damian Conway wrote:

Important qualification:

Within a method or submethod, C<.methodonly works when C<$_ =:=
$?SELF>.

C<.methodis perfectly legal on *any* topic anywhere that $?SELF
doesn't exist.

Just to be clear, this includes any method/submethod with an explicitly
named invocant, I hope.

Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 12:14:57PM -0600, John Williams wrote:
: Actually I took his question to be:
:
: If I explicitly name my invocant in the method signature, does that give
: the compiler enough assurance that I'm not going to use .method to mean
: $?SELF.method, and it will allow me to safely use .method as $_.method in
: for and given?

That question also came up in the cabal's last telecon, and I basically
decided that it doesn't. If you want those assurances, a single

use self;

would be sufficient, even if you don't use the default of "self", or
whatever self defaults to.

we might just go ahead and provide an explicit pragma dealing with
the .foo construct, but I'll be switched if I can come up with a decent
name for it.

use topic;

though arguably

use topic "it";

would tend to mean that you want to always use "it" for the topic and
leave .foo for $?SELF.foo. So maybe if you say

use dot;

it defaults to

use dot '$_';

and in general says, "I know the heck what I'm doing about dot".

[From there our discussion digressed/descended into whether there
should be an "I am an expert" pragma. I was dubious about any sort
of non-feature-based razor.]

Anyway, the people who always want to use .foo for self calls could
then say

use dot '$?SELF';

and then such programs could be plagued by self-dot.

Larry