In the last few months I have been learning Flutter and Dart and recently I saw a youtube video from our very own Perl Wizard Randal Schwartz ( Vibe-coding with Gemini CLI ) where he is exploring the use of Google Gemini to vibe code Flutter applications. Gemini Cli is a command line tool that gives you the power of Gemini AI right in your command line prompt. In the beginning of Randal's adventure with Gemini he wrote this AI prompt "review the app @youtube_watcher. Tell me the Good, the Bad and the Ugly." and AI delivered a very detailed response on what is and isn't working within the application.
After seeing this very detailed report I decided to do the same on ev-calc-pricing a perl dancer project I worked on and I was amazed to see Gemini work on a perl dancer project. At this point I realize that Gemini is capable of assisting coders in any language/ framework and it can provide insight on software engineering best practices for you application.
We finally managed to arrange our first regular meeting between the three of us.
Largely we discussed strategy for the named parameters branch. We agreed to merge soon (so people start playing with it), just staying ready to back it out well before release, in case it proves not to be ready.
In that context, we considered the situation with experiment warnings. We agreed that named parameters should be an additional experiment of its own, though it is an adjunct of another experiment – and we do not yet have established ways of dealing with such a situation. We want to think about how our experiment mechanism should be extended to cover such cases.
Twenty years is a long time in the world of software. That's how long it's been since I last updated my Perl module, File::Finder. But today, thanks to a bug report from a dedicated user, I'm excited to announce the release of version 1.0.0!
For those who don't know, File::Finder is a handy little module that gives you the power of the find command right in your Perl code. It turns out that it wasn't playing nicely with Windows, and it was high time to fix that.
It's a surreal and wonderful feeling to revisit code you wrote two decades ago and find that it's still useful to people. It's a testament to the power and longevity of Perl and the open-source community.
A big thank you to the user who took the time to report the bug and help me bring this module into the modern era. It's moments like these that make you appreciate the collaborative spirit of software development.
Ongoing scheduling issues have meant we haven’t met all three together
for a while, but today Paul and Leon found a time to discuss a few
issues.
Dev point releases
5.43.3 just went out. .4 to .7 are accounted for, so we’ve a few months
yet on that. Nothing for PSC to do for now.
OpenSSL progress
Leon has been building a replacement for Net::SSLeay - an XS wrapper
of libssl. Eventual plan is that IO::Socket::SSL should be able to
use that instead. Eventual intention is that it can be bundled with the
actual core perl dist and get us ability to use https URLs from the
in-core CPAN client directly.
We should have a technical meeting at some point to round up some of
the interested parties. PSC’s involvement can just be keeping an eye on
it, and seeing if it is on track to be included in (5.)44.
TODO: Plan a time and audience for said meeting.
Better categorization of core vs dual-life modules
Graphic::Toolkit::Color 1.9 brought several big new features which I will write about when 2.0 comes out - just to sum up what changed since 1.0. This time I want to describe the internal changes, since this release completed an in-depth rewrite. So this will be about software engineering, architecture and coding style. TLDR: simple, clear, DDD, OO by composition and arg and a color space DSL!
I recently refactored the multi-core benchmarking framework I've been using for my Perl CPU benchmark suite (Benchmark::DKbench) and released it as a separate module: Benchmark::MCE.
Why spin it out? Because the harness can do more: it can be used to write custom benchmark suites of any type, generate massively parallel workloads for stress testing, or run throughput benchmarks against services and APIs.
The exact scenario that prompted me was a comparison of Cloud SQL database instances. We wanted to see how a 16-CPU Enterprise Plus instance would compare to a 24-CPU Enterprise instance under heavy load. One way to do that is to write one or more functions that run randomized, typical/heavy queries (e.g. random searches for SpareRoom ads in our case), then use Benchmark::MCE to time them running on dozens of parallel MCE workers to simulate high load:
You may also join the Perl Programmers Facebook Group, or if you're a member go there. A few days after the latest videos are sent to our exclusive mailing list, they will get set to the FB group.
Finally, you may monitor our Perl Community Subreddit, which will be the last place they are officially released to the public. We just dropped batch #2. We have 2 more batches for the 2024 PCC. Then we'll be doing it all over again for the 2025 Summer PCC we just had in July.
And if you see anyone else releasing them on any other platforms, note this is currently unauthorized!
Only Graham and Philippe attended. We coordinated with Aristotle via chat.
We only met to discuss the mailing-list moderation and immediate actions
(which resolved to sending an email to them moderators, and another one
to the list).
We also talked about moderation in general, and got some ideas to discuss
with the next PSC.
The idea for Pod::Readme is that a README file that is simply a version of the module documentation isn't all that useful. It often lacks important details like the prerequisites or installation instructions, and it includes a lot of unnecessary details about functions and methods.
A README file should be short and sweet: a synopsis and description, installation instructions and requirements, links to issue trackers, source repos and author/copyright info.
As I am rewriting this, I am wondering if the installation instructions are necessary now?
Before Dist::Zilla was as widely used, another option was to add installation instructions to the README file, usually with a few boilerplate along the lines of
Prepare yourselves, the Call for Participation for the December PCC will be happening soon!
DOIs:
DOIs like permanent redirects for publications and research assets. They are managed through organizations like Crossref and are assigned at Arxiv.org, for example. They are not fee, and infact require a relatively large financial investment.
Now that we have our ISSN for Issue #1, https://doi.org/10.63971/spj.2024v01 now works! Each article now has a beautiful, permanent DOI that redirects to it's own URL at science.perlcommunity.org.
Also the corresponding Perl module is on CPAN as: CPAN::MetaCurator V 1.00.
This converts the JSON file exported from Perl.Wiki into a HTML/jsTree managed version.
All three of us attended, but with Aristotle and Paul short on time. So this was a short meeting. We discussed some administrivia and reviewed the left-over todo list from the previous PSC.
Work continues on Dancer2 2.0.0, albeit a bit slower than planned. It's summer; trips happen, things come up, etc. etc. Progress is still happening though - we took in a few extra PRs (with one more incoming still), and a few more approvals for some items are needed.
I'll keep dropping updates as the release approaches. Hoping you are all as excited for this as I am :-)
