use Perl

It has been two months since I first started Pugs. Compared to one month ago, we have 53 committers (was 16), 1395 commits (was 373), and a new roadmap that more closely align us with the Parrot project. As Nicholas had put it in the Parrot FAQ:

Pugs will probably be the compiler that first compiles the ultimate Perl 6 compiler, but thereafter Pugs will no longer be the primary reference implementation.

However, I think this "ultimate Perl 6 compiler" will start off as a simple (even mechanical) translation from Pugs's Haskell code to Perl 6, just to guarantee its correctness. That may or may not come to pass. We'll see. :-)

Today the Hualian gang keeps churning out amazing breakthroughs that read like April Fools day's joke, but are actually all real:

• clkao implemented the basics of darcs patch dependency calculation algorithm in svk, in a O(n) fashion which is much faster than darcs!
• acme wrote a new perl debugger, complete with a web interface that lets you step and watch things from a browser!
• obra prototyped Bamboo, a meta-MVC toolkit that works as a plugin to any MVC frameworks, and we completed a minimal application in it. It's hard to describe Bamboo, other than saying it's a cross between RoR ActionPack and Cocoon FlowScript. I have high hopes on it taking over the world, maybe starting by implementing it in Pugs...
• ingy designed FreePAN, and figured out how it complements CPAN and other repositories, then talked with gugod so they can make it all happen on this weekend.
• mugwump has written a regexp-based YAML 1.1 validator (and soon parser, based on Parse::RecDescent), that is generated from the BNF grammar. It is likely to pave a way to the BNFC/Alex/Happy based YAML support in Pugs.
• miyagawa, although not in hualian physically, stayed with us in #yapc.tw, kept sending Kwiki patches, prompting a new release of Kwiki::Atom. A new set of Kwiki/Spork/Spoon releases will happen soon, too, with fresh tweaks from YAPC::Taipei.

So, what did I do, you ask? I mostly just kept chating with other hackers about their projects, and try to raise some bad ideas. :-) It feels good to not code a lot for a day, and thanks to #perl6, our puppy is being fed very well when I'm in this IMC-diving mode. In particular, I'd like to welcome our new committer shapr, a veteran lambdafolk who has provided many Haskell insights on the channel. Thanks, shapr!

I think that's all for today. I'll save my "looking forward" paragraph in the upcoming PA02. Meanwhile, you can look at this VICTUALS file. Happy April 1st!