The Perl Journal October, 2004
It's been about six months since Parrot 0.1, and as Dan Sugalski put it in his blog (http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/): "A lot's happened since then. We don't think about it much, since we're all used to just sync-ing up to the CVS server (which anyone can do—there's full anon CVS access and rsync access to the repository) but a lot of folks like having a stable release. So...0.1.1."
Dubbed Poicephalus (after a popular breed of pet parrots), Parrot 0.1.1 is available from http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LT/ LTOETSCH/parrot-0.1.1.tar.gz. Leo Toetsch's release notes cite better OS support; improved PIR syntax for method calls and = assignment; reworked dynamic loading, including a "make install" target; multimethod dispatch for binary vtable methods; an improved and cleaned-up library; and "tons of fixes, improvements, new tests, and documentation updates." Leo sums up: "A lot is unfinished and keeps changing. Nevertheless Parrot is stable and usable at the surface, while internals are moving."
In Perl 5 news, Nicholas Clark has lengthened the release schedule for Perl 5 to four months from three, meaning that code changes for Perl 5.8.6 must be committed to blead by October 31, and we should expect to see the first release candidate in early November.
The new Parrot 0.1.1 runs slightly more than half of the pie-thon test suite, but Dan is looking for volunteers to finish the work. The pie-thon, of course, came into being when Dan bet Guido van Rossum that Python bytecode could be made to run faster on Parrot than it does in CPython. The challenge ended on a bittersweet note: Dan took a couple of pies in the face, but a $520 donation was made to the Perl Foundation in his honor.
However, although the Python-on-Parrot project wasn't finished in time to spare Dan the taste of cream pie, the work so far bears very promising results. The Parrot team got four of the seven benchmarks running—and of those, three came out with faster times than CPython. "Both Leo and my translators were reasonably near completion, and need to be pushed that final bit of the way," Dan wrote on the perl6-internals list. "Neither of us have the time, so...Anyone want to take a shot? Leo's builds faster code but mine's a bit clearer, and both could be mined for ideas for a third, completely different one. (Or you could go the IronPython route and reimplement the parser, which works too)."
Scott Lanning has succeeded Rafael Garcia-Suarez as the new Perl 5 list summarizer. As always, the summaries can be read on use.perl.org, or by sending e-mail to perl5-summary-subscribe@ perl.org.
Unfortunately, Piers Cawley has been forced to go on hiatus after two and a half years as the Perl 6 Summarizer; a teaching course is currently demanding most of his time. "I may not have stopped writing the summaries for good either; I just haven't got computrons to spare for writing them at the moment," he wrote to the list. "But if any of you are thinking 'I could do that!' then don't let me stop you—there's an awful lot goes on on the lists, and there's a lot of interested people who don't have the time to keep up with them. A regular summary helps the interested but busy people get a grasp of how the Perl 6 project is getting on, and that can only be a good thing." As there are now three separate Perl 6 lists—perl6-internals, perl6-language, and perl6-compiler—the job may well call for more than one volunteer.
ActiveState has given notice to its customers that PerlEx engineering support will end on September 30th of next year. "We have decided to better allocate our Perl development and support resources," the company announced. "Although there will be no further maintenance updates or bug fixes for PerlEx, we will continue to offer existing PerlEx customers standard support (installation and configuration) through March 31, 2005. There are no plans to deactivate the PerlEx discussion list or remove product documentation on ASPN."
PerlEx was designed to improve Perl performance on Windows-based web servers. It works similarly to mod_perl by precompiling scripts and enabling persistent database connections. It also supports ASP-style embedding of Perl code in HTML files; SOAP and XML-RPC integration; encryption of CGI scripts; and integration with Windows Performance Monitor tools. ActiveState's end-of-life notice is at http://www.activestate.com/Products/ PerlEx/; PerlEx technical documentation remains at http://aspn .activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ASPNTOC-PERLEX____/.
The Open Source Developers Conference (OSDC) in Melbourne, Australia—previously known as YAPC::AU::2004—is now open for registrations. The conference, scheduled for December 1-3, now includes tracks on Python, PHP, and open source operating systems, as well as, of course, Perl. Damian Conway and Nathan Torkington will give keynote speeches. Attendance fees are $265; see http://www.osdc.com.au/registration/index.html to register.
The 7th German Perl-Workshop, which will take place next February in Dresden, has issued a call for papers. The deadline for proposals is October 31. According to the conference web site (http://www.perl-workshop.de/2005/docs/cfp.htm), "Conference language is German, but you can give your presentation in English if German isn't your native language." The conference organizers are looking for five, 20, or 40 minute talks on "every subject that pertains to Perl or its periphery."