PPC0030 (equ) does not have an implementation ready for this release cycle and PPC0031 (eq:u) is controversial.
PPC0027 (any/all) is basically accepted other than needing its feature flag naming figured out.
As an aside regarding PPC0027, we reiterated that we would like use feature ':all' to go away if possible. It was never a good idea anyway, but has become untenable with the introduction of feature flags like indirect and bareword_filehandles, which we expect to have many more of in the future. Since their purpose is to be disabled rather than enabled by default, a simple toggling of all features (on or off) is a nonsensical request.
Now I want it to be available for Perl and in progress of coding it.
The progress is happening here
The progress is happening at a moderate pace.
Currently this runs okay on windows, and should also be okay everywhere else (not tested)
Lots of progress is done already.
Lots of work needs to be done.
I think I've crossed an imaginary equator recently and expect it to be finished in a month or two.
Please let me know here about your ideas, so I could add to the module.
PS.
This post is a slight misuse of the "blogs.perl.org" resource, because I want to create some small corner for developers discussion about it, so I am doing an attempt to invite interested people comment about development here.
I had written a Math paper which was not good enough to be published in a journal, yet I wanted to have proof of the date I wrote it on so I could post the paper on the web without other people later being able to question who first came up with the idea.
The way I thought was more correct to do this was to publish the paper's sha256 checksum on the Bitcoin blockchain. Posting the SHA on social media (such as x.com) was not enough, as paid members can edit their old posts.
I got in touch with BBRTJ, the maintainer of Bitcoin::Crypto, who was very helpful in teaching me how to use his module and achieving my aim.
The goal, he told me, was to include the SHA256 checksum as the comment (technically the 'NULLDATA') of a small bitcoin transaction.
We agreed on not terrible feature names for PPC0027: keyword_any and keyword_all. These can now be merged.
This led to a brief excursion on the fact that it would be good to have proper iterators as part of the language. But we quickly agreed that the PSC meeting is too small of a margin for that subject.
We talked about the failure of “experimental features”, and possible approaches to remediate that problem. It is going to be difficult to address technically. Philippe pushed for a PPC about the subject.
We took note of the upcoming freeze period and surveyed the changes we think should be merged beforehand. The only thing we weren’t already tracking is the coderef-in-stash optimization, which we decided should be reverted once again and re-attempted earlier in the cycle next time.
I'm resigning from the board position at TPF (The Perl Foundation) also known as TPRF (The Perl and Raku Foundation).
tl;dr
After eight years with the foundation board, the time has come for me to step down. While I'm leaving the board, I intend to remain an active member of the Perl community and continue contributing in meaningful ways for Perl users and developers. You'll still see me at various Perl events; and perhaps Raku ones, too.
Over the years, I've learned a great deal, (hopefully) made a positive impact, and had a lot of fun.
Why I'm stepping down #1. The board needs a refresh
As I've noted before, having long-term board members at a nonprofit has advantages and disadvantages. My resignation opens the door for new perspectives and ideas. The foundation's board has started searching for backfill, which is good for the board's long-term success.
People usually don't think about Perl's type system. Some would even mistakenly claim it doesn't have one. It is, however, a most unusual one that doesn't really look like anything else.
What is a type anyway? And what is a type system? I'm not going to precisely define it here, that's for academics, but generally speaking a type is a fundamental property of a variable or value that determines what operations can and can not be done with it and what invariants it must hold. In a strong type system it is a stable trait: it can't change over the lifetime of the value/variable.
In some type systems containers are typed (such as C) and values really don't exist separate from containers. In other typed systems containers are typeless but values are typed (e.g. Python, Javascript, ). There are languages where both values and containers are typed (e.g. Java, C#), typically this means that the container constrains the values in it.
Contrary to what you might expect, Perl has the latter sort of typesystem, but with a twist.
FOSDEM 2025 is just around the corner, and you know what that means—great talks, amazing people, and of course… fantastic food! 🥂
The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) is once again bringing the community together for a special dinner during the FOSDEM weekend. If you’re an active member of the Perl and Raku ecosystem, this is your chance to relax, connect, and celebrate with fellow developers, contributors, and enthusiasts.
📅 When? Saturday Evening, during FOSDEM weekend
📍 Where? A great venue in Brussels (details will be shared with registered attendees)
💬 Who? Active community members, contributors, and Perl/Raku enthusiasts
Why You Should Join 🍻
Meet fellow Perl and Raku hackers in a relaxed, social atmosphere.
Celebrate our open-source wins with great conversations and laughter.
Enjoy a delicious meal, because good food makes great coding even better!
Forge new collaborations and chat about everything from regex wizardry to the future of Perl and Raku.
We spent most of our time on the PPC process, and started by merging Dave Cross’s PR for a static PPC web site. Many thanks to Dave once again.
We discussed revising the PPC process, and started by picking more specific names for the various statuses of a PPC, which we’ll soon apply to the existing PPCs.
There are several competing philosophies for wrapping external C libraries. One is that the XS module should hide all the details of the library and provide a clean “Perlish interface”. The opposite extreme is that the external C functions should be exposed to Perl using an extremely minimal XS layer, or the Foreign Function Interface (FFI) and all the logic for working with the library should be written in Perl.
I advocate something in the middle. I think that a good interface should expose as much of the low-level as possible (to make the most usage of that library possible by other Perl modules) while “padding the sharp edges” so that it is difficult for Perl-side usage to crash the program. Higher level features can be provided in addition to the low level API via XS, Perl modules, or both.
Adding a SECURITY or SECURITY.md file to your Perl distributions will let people know:
How to contact the maintainers if they find a security issue with your software
What software will be supported for security issues
The contact point is very important for modules that have been around for a long time and have had several authors over the years. When there is a long list of maintainers, it's not clear who to contact.
You don't want people reporting security vulnerabilities in public on the RT or GitHub issues for your project, nor do you want a post on IRC, Reddit or social media about it.
Otherwise, a single email address is acceptable. An alias that forwards to all of the maintainers or at the very least, a single maintainer who has agreed to that role will work.
I know, thinking about where to put what in a code file sounds lame to most artisan hero's that fly by intuition, but I find it actually helpful. Here my article about it on dev.to and you can tell its written with Perl in mind. I just wanted to publish outside to reach more people and maybe even bring some in.
Having reached a certain level of proficiency with Mojolicious and Vue.js, I made the decision to dedicate some of my free time every week to develop "cool and somewhat useful" (according to some) open-source web apps in Perl.
The goal is to practice and learn, and maybe also help make Perl a bit more popular.
My first such project is Gandalf Links, a link-aggregator website (inspired by pinboard.in) that's pretty much complete and can be installed and run very easily with Docker.
At the front page's footer you can find a link to the source code. A full list of current and future features can be found here.
If interested to contribute in ANY way (ideas, know-how, coding) please do get in touch with me via e-mail, through the form that's on gandalf.gr, or maybe use the project's issue tracker. I've done almost all I can on this project, now I'm looking for other people's expertise.
I'd also be looking for ideas on what other self-hosted web app to work on next (with you if you're interested).
