This week saw the landing of the Rakudo compiler release 2015.01, named Gotanda. Not much happened before the release was done by [Coke]++. Unfortunately, yours truly caused a problem in slices that would break some modules in the ecosystem, so within 24 hours, a hotfix release 2015.01.1 was made. This means that a new Rakudo Star release is likely: but as of yet nobody had the tuits to do this.

All of the exciting new developments happened after the release, so unless you’re living on the bleeding edge, you will have to wait for the next compiler release to see them.

Rakudo on MoarVM got 20% faster

Because jnthn bumped the optimization level on the MoarVM compiler (something that would previously break Rakudo), we now have a faster Rakudo on MoarVM. Typical startup time is 20% less, and the spectest runs 20% faster as well. And without breaking things as far as we know.

Much more documentation

Many people have been working on documentation, so it gets more and more worth it to check doc.perl6.org if you have a question or want to look up specific subjects. moritz++ for instance, has documented Proc::Async for the first time (other than what S17 already specified in a less readable manner).

Claiming a method when composing

CurtisOvidPoe++, while preparing for his presentation at FOSDEM, found that the current way conflicts are handled when composing roles into other roles, and roles into classes, may be confusing and present a “silently do the wrong thing” issue. In a discussion with, among others, TimToady and jnthn, a claim keyword was suggested. Which was promptly implemented by jnthn in a branch.

Programming in Perl 6 considered hazardous

CurtisOvidPoe was very busy in the past week. He also tweeted about it:

I strongly recommend *NOT* programming in Perl 6. Do it long enough and you won’t want to go back to Perl 5.

Now, if that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is 🙂

Development Allsorts

moritz++ fixed a number of issues with Proc::Async and Supply.categorize. Yours truly made slices with adverbs, such as %h<a b c>:delete, up to twice as fast. atroxaper++ provided a –git-reference option to the configuration of Rakudo, as well as NQP, allowing you to specify local repositories, instead of fetching from Github all the time.

Already 25+ patches since this month’s release!

Signing off for this week

Please let me know of any errors, omissions, additions!