Friday, July 14, 2006
State of The Perl Foundation
Perl.com update
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Hello, readers. This is the Perl.com newsletter, sent out bi-weekly in a
transparent attempt to keep you somewhat up to date with the latest news
in the increasingly diverse Perl community.
Did you know that the country with the second-largest number of Perl.com
readers is India? That's right! Greetings to everyone on the
subcontinent; tell your friends about us.
Here's what's new in the world of Perl this fortnight.
* Perl News
The Pittsburgh Perl Workshop is yet another example of local, low-cost,
community-lead conferences to promote Perl and the Perl community. If
you'll be on the east coast in late September, here is your chance to
help:
<http://pghpw.org/>
David Golden has released versions of both Vanilla and Strawberry Perl.
These are self-contained distributions of Perl, a compiler, and useful
modules for Windows users. Yes, that means you can install modern Perl
modules from the CPAN with (relative) ease:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/12/148200>
Ann Barcomb revived the Perl 6 summaries with help from Audrey Tang and
Yuval Kogman. This first version covers February 2006:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/12/145233>
Andy Lester issued a call for Parrot Cage Cleaners (more on that in a few
paragraphs):
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/11/095244>
The Perl Foundation issued a call for the next round of grant
applications:
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/11/0832229>
Audrey Tang and the Pugs hackers released Pugs 6.2.12 and the Perl 5
modules v6 (you have to see it to believe it):
<http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/07/1532235>
amoore gave excellent suggestions on how to sneak testing into your
development team's routine:
<http://use.perl.org/~amoore/journal/30215>
Josh McAdams, fresh from organizing YAPC::NA and moving, interviewed the
Pragmatic Programmer Andy Hunt for Perlcast:
<http://www.perlcast.com/audio/Perlcast_Interview_031.mp3>
* Perl Jobs
The Pugs and Parrot projects each maintain a small list of tasks for
programmers interested in spending an hour or two helping out. You often
don't have to know much about either project or much beyond Perl 5.
Audrey Tang suggests a few tasks in the Pugs repository
<http://svn.openfoundry.org/pugs/>:
* Go through examples/ and see if any of the examples fails to run; if
so, seek advice at #perl6 to get them fixed. Along the way, write
regression tests for those examples; currently only a handful of examples
are tested under t/examples/.
* Harness Pugs's interactive shell with perl5's IPC::Run (or something
else) and produce a web-based evalbot, similar to
http://tryruby.hobix.com/. Remember to set the PUGS_SAFEMODE environment
variable to true--use &Pugs::Safe::safe_getc, &Pugs::Safe::safe_readline,
and &Pugs::Safe::safe_readline for interaction with the user, if needed.
* Check in the current http://pugscode.org/ home page to the repository
and merge it with the docs/feather/, and reorganize the home page a bit to
make e.g. downloads easier to locate.
* Look over test files in t/bugs/, especially the fixed ones (they lack
:todo), and move them into other more descriptive directories under t/.
Join #perl6 on irc.freenode.net for more information.
Andy Lester suggests a few Parrot tasks:
* As we search for automated ways to check code quality, splint looks
really good. It's also really picky and pernicious. It won't be perfect
from the start, but it's an improvement. Take us to a decent splint or
lint target in the Makefile.
* Change all of the Perl 5 files from using -w to use warnings.
* Any of the CAGE tasks in Parrot's RT are up for grabs:
<http://xrl.us/owsd>
Contact andy@perl.org if you are interested.
Remember, you don't have to know C or Perl 6 (yet) to be a big help.
There are plenty of small tasks for an afternoon or evening--you could be
the next person praised in the Perl.com newsletter! (Thanks to Andy,
Audrey, Ann, Jerry Gay, and Will Coleda so far.)
* Perl on ORN
It's been a while since the last batch of lightning articles. These short
pieces are practical tidbits of knowledge ready for you to absorb and
reuse in your world. Steven Philip Schubiger demonstrates how to convert
crufty MakeMaker installation scripts into shiny pure-Perl installers;
Phil Crow demonstrates the use of Java's powerful Swing UI toolkit from
Perl; Joshua McAdams explains how to turn any module into a script; and
your editor removes duplication from test suites:
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/07/13/lightning-articles.html>
In other news, your editor summarized Bill Odom's "State of The Perl
Foundation" talk at YAPC:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/07/bill_odom_and_the_state_of_the.html>
Andy Oram suggested a change in focus for producing community-created
documentation:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/07/06/rethinking-community-documentation.html>
Meanwhile, OSCON is a week and a half away. Are you ready?
Storing up sleep and food,
- c
chromatic@oreilly.com
Editor, Perl.com, et cetera
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*** Featured Articles ***
Still More Perl Lightning Articles
Perl lightning articles are short, direct, and full of electrifying
practical information. This time, Steven Philip Schubiger demonstrates how
to convert crufty MakeMaker installation scripts into shiny pure-Perl
installers, Phil Crow demonstrates the use of Java's powerful Swing UI
toolkit from Perl, Joshua McAdams explains how to turn any module into a
script, and chromatic removes duplication from test suites.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/07/13/lightning-articles.html>
***
FEAR-less Site Scraping
Many web programmers talk about "domain-specific languages" as if defining
functions and methods were a new discovery. A real domain-specific
language provides concise syntax and symatics for a particular purpose,
such as Yung-chung Lin's FEAR::API. He explains how this toolkit allows
you to scrape, modify, store, and re-present web data easily, effectively,
and economically.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/06/01/fear-api.html>
***
Charting Data at the Bottom of the World
Alex Gough has a curious job. He's the only programmer for 500 miles at a
remote Antarctic research station. His problems are like your problems
too, though--gathering, manipulating, recording, and displaying data.
Here's how he uses several CPAN modules to make pretty charts and graphs
with almost no work.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/05/04/charting-data.html>
***
Unraveling Code with the Debugger
Reading other people's code can be difficult, especially if you have no
idea what happens when and where. Understanding code flow is vital to
maintenance and bug fixes, but littering code with print and debugging
statements is tedious and prone to error. There's another way: use the
debugger! Daniel Allen demonstrates how to pinpoint a problem with Perl's
debugger.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/04/06/debugger.html>
***
Using Ajax from Perl
The recently rediscovered Ajax technique makes the client side of web
programming much more useful and pleasant. However, it also means revising
your existing web applications to take advantage of this new power.
Dominic Mitchell shows how to use CGI::Ajax to give your Perl applications
access to this new power.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/03/02/ajax_and_perl.html>
***
Advanced Subroutine Techniques
Subroutines seem like a basic building block of code. They're simple and
easy to understand and use, right? That's true--but there are a few
advanced techniques to make your code more maintainable and robust. Rob
Kinyon goes beyond making sense of subroutines to making subroutines work
for you.
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/02/23/advanced_subroutines.html>
***
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