The transition meeting to the new PSC proved a bit tricky to schedule to get everyone from both the old and new PSC in attendance, but eventually we succeeded: Aristotle, Graham, Leon, Paul, and Philippe all participated.
We discussed our structure for PSC meetings and our learnings about it from last cycle. We briefly introduced Leon to it and went over the onboarding checklist.
We discussed roadmap items from the last cycle that did not get done, such as getting TLS in core. No decisions were taken as they will be for the new PSC to make.
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.
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.
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 :-)
XS has a reputation for being hard to access and I think it's a shame because I don't think it has to be: it's mostly that the Perl API is hard. What if you offload as much logic as possible to perl, and use XS only to expose functions to perl? That would be much easier for a casual XS writer who doesn't know anything about Perl's internals.
So, in this example I will write a simple XS module for a real-life API, in this case POSIX real-time semaphores. This allows you to synchronize data between different processes or threads. At its core the API is this:
sem_t* sem_open(const char* path, int open_flags, mode_t mode, unsigned int value);
int sem_close(sem_t *sem);
int sem_unlink(const char* path);
int sem_wait(sem_t *sem);
int sem_trywait(sem_t *sem);
int sem_post(sem_t *sem);
We reviewed the perldelta entry for the CVE-2025-40909 patch, which has so far been blocking the security point releases. We reasoned out previous tentatively assumed necessary improvements to the text and ended up rejecting them and concluding that the text is perfectly adequate. The point releases can now go ahead.
Philippe reported on the experience with the release process and thoughts on how to improve it and the release guide. Main takeways are that it would be useful to have a single source of truth for the version of Perl (e.g. for buildtoc) and that what we think of as the release process is really a procedure for performing a state transition on the repository, where the repository constitutes the input to makerel, and the state transition aims to trigger the correct change in the output of makerel.
We initiated transition to next PSC and discussed preparations for passing on an agenda for continuity.
To some, he was tough. Uncompromising. Intimidating, even. He was half-man, half-thermite, a brilliant intellect with a particular way of loving something so fiercely that if you didn’t match that intensity, he might burn straight through, leaving you feeling crispy at the edges. Others have spoken about his “Get good or get out” attitude and I think it’s important to acknowledge that whilst he forged a lot of people into better programmers, it also drove others away.
But my version of Matt was the best mentor I’ve ever had. He was never condescending, in fact he seemed to have an infinite amount of belief in me and patience with me that I’m not sure what I did to deserve. When I was drowning, he’d pull me out of the water at the last minute, give me a hint, and throw me back into the deep end. I learned to swim because he never doubted that I could.
