Perl 6 Summary for 2004-10-18 through 2004-10-23

Perl 6 Summary for 2004-10-18 through 2004-10-23
    All~

    Last week I received a request to summarize perl6-language before
    internals. Frankly, it seems like a reasonable idea. Perl6-internals has
    always been first as long as I can remember. So perhaps, it is time to
    switch it up. Thus I give you

  Perl6 Language
   Packrat Parsing
    Thomas Sandlass posted a link to an article on Packrat Parsing. It looks
    like a promising technique for small programs, all though its memory
    requirements may be a bit heavy for large programs. Mr. Sandlass appears
    to have been Warnocked, but there are several explanations. First he
    posted from google, there has been trouble in the past about such things
    getting through. Second, he posted to Perl6 Language instead of Perl6
    Compiler.

    <http://xrl.us/dndb>

  Perl6 Compiler
   Perl6 Compiler list troubles
    In the last summary, I mentioned that Perl6 Compiler has not yet found
    its way to google groups. Leo seems to have had trouble subscribing to
    it also... Perhaps this bears investigation?

  Parrot
   Unununium
    Dan and Steve Fink told Jacques Mony that a port to Unununium would
    probably require substantial changes to configure.

    <http://xrl.us/dndc>

   grsecurity interfering with the parrot JIT/build
    Apparently our current scheme of mem_alloc_executable and
    mem_free_executable is not quite enough to make grsecurity happy. Work
    is ongoing...

    <http://xrl.us/dndd>

   signal.t failure
    Will Coleda had problems with signal.t failing while his machine was
    under load. Leo pointed out that this is known behavior. Jeff Clites was
    a little confused/disappointed that his earlier patches to help solve
    this problem had not sufficed.

    <http://xrl.us/dnde>

   New naming for parrot_interp
     Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon warned everyone that he was committing a
gianormous change which would effect any pending patches.  From the
lack of chaos on the list, I would say that his warning worked.

    <http://xrl.us/dndf>

   Parrot Forth
    Michel Pelletier and Matt Diephouse discussed some of the finer points
    of Forth implementations and optimizations.

    <http://xrl.us/dndg>

   Win32 update
    Ron Blaschke gave a quick update on his progress with VC7.1 on Win32.
    Looks good and keep on chugging Ron.

   Downloading Parrot
    Jerry Wiltz asked if help in downloading Parrot (he was starting from
    scratch (no Perl or C compiler)) on a WinXP box. Fred the
    LastNamelessOne provided a plethora of useful links.

    <http://xrl.us/dndh>

   The Return of Register Stacks
    Miroslav Silovic posted a summary of a design change that he and Leo
    were considering. I asked for more details as to how it was different
    then something we had moved away from much earlier. Leo provided a quite
    nice and thorough explanation. Thanks. Dan observed that this recurring
    thread happened nearly yearly, but that the cycle was not quite 12
    months. Dan also observed that the timing to coincide with his being
    sick was fortuitous. Leo and Dan went back and forth for a while
    discussing the implementation and implications of it. I believe that the
    end result is that we will have indirect access to registers, we will
    not need to have saveall/restoreall pairs around function calls, and Dan
    should eventually get better, but not until this is fully thrashed out.

    <http://xrl.us/dndi>

    <http://xrl.us/dndj>

    <http://xrl.us/dndk>

    <http://xrl.us/dndm>

    <http://xrl.us/dndn>

   JIT rework
    As a side effect of indirect access to registers the JIT needs to be
    rejiggered to account for this. Leo and Jeff Clites went back and forth
    working on this with what sounds like good progress being made.

    <http://xrl.us/dndo>

    <http://xrl.us/dndp>

    <http://xrl.us/dndq>

   Win32 pernum test fix
    Ron Blaschke fixed a test failing because of -0.0. Leo applied the
    patch.

    <http://xrl.us/dndr>

   x86-64 problems fix
    Brian Wheeler submitted a patch to fix x86-64. Leo couldn't apply it.
    Brian resubmitted. It got mangled on the way. Brian reresubmitted. Leo
    applied it. Thanks for perservering Brian!

    <http://xrl.us/dnds>

   External dependencies
    Robert Spier suggested several options on how to simplify the problem of
    Parrot and external dependencies. Sadly, Warnock applies.

    <http://xrl.us/dndt>

   mod_parrot
    Jeff Horwitz is making amazing progress with his cybernetically enhanced
    parrot. Oh wait, I mean embedding parrot in to apache. It all looks
    really cool and he has been able to use his experience to provide
    valuable crituques to us all.

    <http://xrl.us/dndu>

    <http://xrl.us/dndv>

   Python, Parrot, and scoping
    Sam Ruby has "been trying to make sense of Python's scoping in the
    context of Parrot". Leo, Dan, and Allen Short all rushed to his aid.

    <http://xrl.us/dndw>

   Resizable*Array implementation
    Bernhard Schmalhofer wondered if the Resizable*Arrays should use chunked
    allocation. Dan told him: No, the motivation behind them is simple and
    fast, thus the chunking would be unwanted overhead. He did mention that
    they could do something clever (like chunking) if they got big enough...

    <http://xrl.us/dndx>

   Register Spilling
    In a flash of good news for Dan, Bill Coffman has started to put his
    mighty brain to work on the register spilling code. He, Leo, and Jeff
    discussed various aspects of it. I look forward eagerly to the results
    of getting parrot a really cool spilling algorithm (although not
    probably not a eagerly as Dan and his nasty pathological code ;-)

    <http://xrl.us/dndy>

   C89 spec
    Bill Coffman wondered if he could find the C89 spec so that he could
    ensure his changes were compliant. Dan suggested using K&R second
    edition. Jeff Clites pointed out the "-std=c89" flag for gcc. Michael G
    Schwern suggested using C99 spec (which should also contain the C89
    spec) as a "frightening accessory this Halloween". Michael frightens me.

    <http://xrl.us/dndz>

    <http://xrl.us/dnd2>

   method_util.c
    Leo asked what the state of the functions in src/method_util.c is. He
    got Warnocked. I would say that means they should get pitched and see
    what happens.

    <http://xrl.us/dnd3>

   .include 'absolute path'
    Matthias Huerlemann created a patch allowing absolute paths in .include
    statements. Leo responed that the implementation was not quite right,
    but the format of the patch was good.

    <http://xrl.us/dnd4>

   ICU + Redhat == Pain
    Joshua Gatcomb had a fairly log conversation with himself fleshing out a
    problem with ICU on Redhat. Leo broke into his monologue to say that it
    seemed Redhat specific.

    <http://xrl.us/dnd5>

   Strange segfault involving string concat
    Matthias Hoelzl has a fairly hard to pin down segfault. Leo suggested
    trying to you "parrot -G", "--gc-debug", and "-t" to track it down. No
    response yet.

    <http://xrl.us/dnd6>

   pmccache
    Leo suggested a small perl task of making something akin to ccache for
    pmcs. Jeff Clites jumped on it.

    <http://xrl.us/dnd7>

   Befunge shall live again!!
     Stepan Roh fixed somethings with the Befunge interpreter while
simultaneous accusing befunge of being unimportant.  Jerome applied
some of those fixes and admonished Stepan for saying such things.  I
remember a time when Befunge fleshed out many trouble some bugs in
parrot and I forsee a future when Befunge will be included in
webservers everywhere through the magic of mod_parrot!

    <http://xrl.us/dnd8>

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• Perl 6 Summary for 2004-10-18 through 2004-10-23 by Matt Fowles