Docs and releases
Tim Bunce
Are the docs (especially the PDDs) upto date on best practices?
If not, will that be a goal for the next release?
Tim.
Leopold Toetsch
> Has a date been set for the next release?
No, not yet. But I can imagine to have a release in February. It of
course depends on progress WRT objects and threads.
> Are the docs (especially the PDDs) upto date on best practices?
No. Not much better then as of 0.0.13.
> If not, will that be a goal for the next release?
Having docs in sync is a permanent goal :)
> Tim.
leo
Dan Sugalski
>Has a date been set for the next release?
Nope. I suppose we could shoot for another holiday release, if
someone's got a good february one.
>Are the docs (especially the PDDs) upto date on best practices?
Alas not, no.
>If not, will that be a goal for the next release?
Yeah, I think getting the docs better will be an aggressive goal for
the next release.
--
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
d...@sidhe.org have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
Tim Bunce
> At 11:52 AM +0000 1/12/04, Tim Bunce wrote:
> >Has a date been set for the next release?
>
> Nope. I suppose we could shoot for another holiday release, if
> someone's got a good february one.
Valentines day? :-)
[ On a whim I thought I'd google for parrot and valentine:
http://www.bram.net/humor-archive/1999-Feb/msg00012.html ]
> >Are the docs (especially the PDDs) upto date on best practices?
>
> Alas not, no.
>
> >If not, will that be a goal for the next release?
>
> Yeah, I think getting the docs better will be an aggressive goal for
> the next release.
I think that's wise.
While parrot gains features and abilities at a steady pace the
attractiveness of parrot as a development platform grows exponentially.
The developers _of_ parrot need to keep in mind the needs of those
poised on the edge of developing _in_ parrot.
Smoothing the path for newcommers, of both types, is very important.
Tim.
Dan Sugalski
>On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 09:33:57AM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:
>> At 11:52 AM +0000 1/12/04, Tim Bunce wrote:
>> >Has a date been set for the next release?
>>
>> Nope. I suppose we could shoot for another holiday release, if
>> someone's got a good february one.
>
>Valentines day? :-)
I was thinking that was mostly a US holiday, and a pathetically
commercial one at that (not, mind, that we've got much else at the
moment, but I'm *not* going there... :)
>[ On a whim I thought I'd google for parrot and valentine:
> http://www.bram.net/humor-archive/1999-Feb/msg00012.html ]
>
>> >Are the docs (especially the PDDs) upto date on best practices?
>>
>> Alas not, no.
>>
>> >If not, will that be a goal for the next release?
>>
>> Yeah, I think getting the docs better will be an aggressive goal for
>> the next release.
>
>I think that's wise.
>
>While parrot gains features and abilities at a steady pace the
>attractiveness of parrot as a development platform grows exponentially.
>
>The developers _of_ parrot need to keep in mind the needs of those
>poised on the edge of developing _in_ parrot.
Yeah, very good point. I need to scrawl down my recent experiences
before I forget, which would be somewhat unfortunate.
Harry Jackson
> The developers _of_ parrot need to keep in mind the needs of those
> poised on the edge of developing _in_ parrot.
I think that there are a lot of people who would help but the learning
curve seems to high. I for one am finding it a pretty steep curve at the
moment and am always worried about making an ass of myself when posting.
I decided to hell with it, if you're ain't in you won't win.
> Smoothing the path for newcommers, of both types, is very important.
I spent quite a bit of time fishing around the outskirts for stuff to do
ie looking for some simple tasks etc and was dismayed to find none.
There are no lists of things anywhere although I believe Leo compiled
one which got warnocked.
I know its a pain but a list of easy to complete tasks would be rather
helpful for any shy lurkers with some pointers on where to start maybe
not now but later.
Harry Jackson
If there are any shy lurkers out there please speak now or forever hold
your peace.
Robert Eaglestone
>
> I think that there are a lot of people who would help but the learning
> I decided to hell with it, if you're ain't in you won't win.
>
>
> Harry Jackson
>
> If there are any shy lurkers out there please speak now or forever hold
> your peace.
Yes, I'm a shy lurker.
Harry Jackson
> Yes, I'm a shy lurker.
Are there any more, don't be shy, there might be a lot of barking but no
one bites at least I have not had anyone bite me _yet_.
Is there anyone on the list who wants to help but does not know where to
start. If you are really that shy email me off list. I can think of at
least one simple task that needs doing and all it requires is some
rudimentary C and a generous helping of elbow grease.
Harry
Dan Sugalski
>Tim Bunce wrote:
>and am always worried about making an ass of myself when posting.
Dammit, and here I was trying to lead by example. It's OK! :)
>
>>Smoothing the path for newcommers, of both types, is very important.
>
>I spent quite a bit of time fishing around the outskirts for stuff
>to do ie looking for some simple tasks etc and was dismayed to find
>none. There are no lists of things anywhere although I believe Leo
>compiled one which got warnocked.
>
>I know its a pain but a list of easy to complete tasks would be
>rather helpful for any shy lurkers with some pointers on where to
>start maybe not now but later.
I try to throw out mail to the list when there's something simple
that needs doing, but those haven't been gathered up into a TODO list
or anything. While not a good thing, it increases their odds of
making it out, at the expense of things falling off the end of the
world.
Michael Scott
create an html tree from the pod, inline stuff included.
I cleaned up all the pod errors last week and was going to report on
that but got sidetracked when I realised that POD::Checker diverged
somewhat from Perl's own pod standards, and that POD-Simple was the way
to go. See http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.pod-people/1092 for the
details.
Once we have an html tree, I'm expecting that problems with the content
will be more apparent and hence quicker to identify and solve.
For the moment the idea is just to build the html locally, though when
it is respectable it would be good to have it also online.
I'll aim to have something decent in place for next release, so we can
toot toot about it.
Mike
Simon Glover
Well, one thing that people can contribute that doesn't require much
(if any) knowledge of the internals is tests (whether in PASM, PIR,
or one of the other languages that run on top of Parrot). Tests that
uncover bugs are particularly helpful!
Simon
Dan Sugalski
Absolutely. I definitely don't want to underestimate the value of
tests -- they're amazingly helpful. They also don't have to
necessarily be dull "grab one op, make sure it works, move on" sorts
of things, though those are good. More abusive tests of IMCC's
allocators (using lots of .local or temp variables), or the garbage
collector (allocating and freeing up masses of data) are also quite
useful, as are tests designed specifically to make parrot fall down
and die in as nasty a way as possible. Destruction testing is handy
if you're trying to make sure you can't be destroyed... :)
Herbert Snorrason
> If there are any shy lurkers out there please speak now or forever hold
> your peace.
Poit. That's me.
Harry Jackson
> At 5:01 PM +0000 1/12/04, Harry Jackson wrote:
>
>> Tim Bunce wrote:
>
>
>
>> and am always worried about making an ass of myself when posting.
>
>
> Dammit, and here I was trying to lead by example. It's OK! :)
>
>>
>>> Smoothing the path for newcommers, of both types, is very important.
>>
>>
>> I spent quite a bit of time fishing around the outskirts for stuff to
>> do ie looking for some simple tasks etc and was dismayed to find none.
>> There are no lists of things anywhere although I believe Leo compiled
>> one which got warnocked.
>>
>> I know its a pain but a list of easy to complete tasks would be rather
>> helpful for any shy lurkers with some pointers on where to start maybe
>> not now but later.
>
>
> I try to throw out mail to the list when there's something simple that
> needs doing, but those haven't been gathered up into a TODO list or
> anything. While not a good thing, it increases their odds of making it
> out, at the expense of things falling off the end of the world.
I have noticed a few of them and I think they should be compiled into a
list.
In fact, there's a job for someone if they want it.
One of the shy lurkers who emailed me off list (you know who you are)
suggested something similar to what the linux kernel guys have. I have
no idea how successful this is:
http://janitor.kernelnewbies.org/
Would people be interested in a similar thing to this. This question is
really aimed at the lurkers who are willing to contribute some of their
time, so speak up if you're one of them.
Harry
Matt Fowles
You have outlined my situation exactly. I completely agree.
Matt
Kevin Smith
where to start. Given Dan's suggestion, I think I might start looking at
some more abusive-type tests. Destruction and dissection can be fun. I'd
be happy to help out in other newbie-type ways, too.
--Kevin
Paul Cochrane
> your peace.
I'll admit to being a shy lurker... (and have rudimentary C knowledge, but a
bit low on the elbow grease atm :-/)
This also gives me an opportunity to mention to anyone with more time (and
possibly ability) than me, that parrot is having problems on LinuxPPC. The
specifics are:
- parrot hangs on t/op/arithmetics when doing make test
- make gives an implicit declaration of posix_memalign, but doesn't seem
to have problems beyond this
- a lot of warnings about implicitly truncating to unsigned type
- a lot of warnings about discarding qualifiers
(I don't know how much people worry about these kinds of things, but I
found with the software I'm working on atm, that implicity truncation to
unsigned was a problem found only on LinuxPPC, but not on LinuxX86,
something to do with differences between the gcc's)
Here's some more info that may help.
$ uname -a
Linux 2.4.19-r6 #7 Tue Apr 22 16:54:53 EST 2003 ppc 740/750 GNU/Linux
$ gcc --version
2.95.3
$ perl --version
This is perl, v5.8.0 built for powerpc-linux
I hope any of this helps, and if it's possible for me to contribute, even some
reasonably trivial task (something possibly like what Melvin mentioned earlier
in the week re: macros) would be ok.
I'm really impressed with the amount of work people are doing on parrot and
related stuff. Keep up the good work! :-)
Later
Paul
--
coch...@physics.uq.edu.au
Department of Physics
University of Queensland
St Lucia
Brisbane
Queensland 4072
Australia
Quantum Mechanics: the dreams stuff is made of.
Harry Jackson
>>If there are any shy lurkers out there please speak now or forever hold
>>your peace.
>
>
> I'll admit to being a shy lurker... (and have rudimentary C knowledge, but a
> bit low on the elbow grease atm :-/)
Another one, we are getting more and more of them pop up from all over
the place, so come on you lot speak up and I might compile a list of
things to do if its any help.
> This also gives me an opportunity to mention to anyone with more time (and
> possibly ability) than me, that parrot is having problems on LinuxPPC. The
> specifics are:
> - parrot hangs on t/op/arithmetics when doing make test
I had this exact same error. I still have no idea what caused it but
thanks for confirming I am not going crazy.
I tried all of the following
deleted the source tree and started again ---- nope
Upgraded gcc --- nope
Upgraded Perl --- nope
reinstalled every perl module I could think of ----- nope
Replaced redhat AS with Debian ----- yep
The last item was a last resort because I had spent to much time faffing
around trying to find out what caused the error at that time thinking it
was local to my machine/me, obviously not.
> Here's some more info that may help.
>
> $ uname -a
> Linux 2.4.19-r6 #7 Tue Apr 22 16:54:53 EST 2003 ppc 740/750 GNU/Linux
>
> $ gcc --version
> 2.95.3
>
> $ perl --version
>
> This is perl, v5.8.0 built for powerpc-linux
I was on 5.6.1 when I got the arithmetic error.
> I hope any of this helps, and if it's possible for me to contribute, even some
> reasonably trivial task (something possibly like what Melvin mentioned earlier
> in the week re: macros) would be ok.
Well it certainly made me feel better.
> I'm really impressed with the amount of work people are doing on parrot and
> related stuff. Keep up the good work! :-)
I don't know where some of them get the time.
Harry
Jeffrey Dik
the coolest software projects out there, count me in.
I have some rudimentary C skills and I'm sure there's some elbow grease
around here somewhere...
Jeff
Vishal Vatsa
I guess, I fit the bill...
Lurker type present and ready to be counted.
--
Vishal Vatsa
Dept. of Computer Sc.
NUI Maynooth
Mark Solinski
Mark Solinski
mark.s...@sap.com
mar...@ameritech.net
Harry Jackson
> I'm also a shy lurker but would love to help in any way I can. I have twenty+ years experience in C/C++/OOP. Is there a reasonable place to start?
Bloody hell man, what took you so long ;-). With that amount of
experience, take your pick.
http://www.parrotcode.org/todo
Harry
Vladimir Lipsky
0x4C56
Who says that the copy-paste antipattern is bad?
Matt Diephouse
> Harry Jackson
>
> If there are any shy lurkers out there please speak now or forever hold
> your peace.
Alright, that's me too. I've been lurking for a couple years, actually,
and have only made one post on perl6-language, I think. I just
downloaded parrot again last week after a year or so of just reading the
list. I have a basic C knowledge and good perl skills. If I can find
something to do, I'd like to donate some time to the project.
matt diephouse
-------------------------
http://matt.diephouse.com
Robin Redeker
>
> If there are any shy lurkers out there please speak now or forever hold
> your peace.
>
Well, here i speak ;-)
I have some (minor) skills in C, Perl, Networking, compiling, and other
stuff. I also downloaded Parrot some months ago, and keep my local cvs
tree a bit up to date.
But i didn't find any good documentation, and no real point at parrot
to help for. All big issues, like GC and Threading (for example) are too
big for me.
So i decided just to follow this mailinglist, maybe i would get here a
small overview of parrot and what could be done...but not much clue
yet...
At the moment i'm writing some toy-compiler, but i kept away from
parrot's internal stuff.
I also don't have _that_ much time ATM, cause of school and work.
But i would be happy if i could spent some of my time helping this
project.
cya
(Hope i'm not sounding that foolish)
--
Robin Redeker el...@x-paste.de http://www.x-paste.de/
Andrew Dougherty
> This also gives me an opportunity to mention to anyone with more time (and
> possibly ability) than me, that parrot is having problems on LinuxPPC. The
> specifics are:
> - parrot hangs on t/op/arithmetics when doing make test
> - make gives an implicit declaration of posix_memalign, but doesn't seem
> to have problems beyond this
> - a lot of warnings about implicitly truncating to unsigned type
> - a lot of warnings about discarding qualifiers
> (I don't know how much people worry about these kinds of things, but I
> found with the software I'm working on atm, that implicity truncation to
> unsigned was a problem found only on LinuxPPC, but not on LinuxX86,
> something to do with differences between the gcc's)
Wordsize errors are one common type of error that show up on PPC
(and SPARC) more readily than on x86, due to byte-order issues.
When reporting problems, it's often a good idea to include the ./myconfig
file in the parrot build directory -- it includes information about the
variable types and sizes used in building parrot. These sizes may depend
on your gcc version, how it was configured, and how it was called.
--
Andy Dougherty doug...@lafayette.edu
Paul Cochrane
>
> --- Paul Cochrane <coch...@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
> > Yeah, I don't think you're going crazy. The funny thing is that
> > about a three
> > weeks ago my cvs checkout worked fine. I did a cvs update, and then
> > Configure.pl didn't work[1], so I re-checkedout the whole source tree
> > again, and
> > basically that was when the problems started. So, my guess is that
> > something
> > snuck in only recently.
> > I'm using Gentoo linux, and I'm not going to install Yellowdog or
> > whatever just to sort this problem out. (sorry).
>
> Chromatic has currently got the exact same problem as you now and Leo
> is trying to help get it sorted. Email the list if you are still
> getting the problem with version numbers of gcc etc.
I know I'm a bit late replying, but yeah, parrot hangs on the tests on my
machine too, although, where it once hung on the arithmetic tests, it now
hangs on the t/src/extend test.
System info:
Gentoo Linux PPC
uname -a:
Linux <snip> 2.4.19-r6 #7 Tue Apr 22 16:54:53 EST 2003 ppc 740/750 GNU/Linux
gcc -v:
gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)
perl -v:
This is perl, v5.8.0 built for powerpc-linux
I hope that this information is of use. If anyone wants any more info, or
more detailed stuff, then just let me know.
Later
Paul
Paul Cochrane
>
> Wordsize errors are one common type of error that show up on PPC
> (and SPARC) more readily than on x86, due to byte-order issues.
>
> When reporting problems, it's often a good idea to include the ./myconfig
> file in the parrot build directory -- it includes information about the
> variable types and sizes used in building parrot. These sizes may depend
> on your gcc version, how it was configured, and how it was called.
Ok. I should have put this into my reply to Harry Jackson, but here 'tis
anyway.
cat myconfig:
Summary of my parrot 0.0.13 configuration:
configdate='Tue Jan 20 17:51:28 2004'
Platform:
osname=linux, archname=powerpc-linux
jitcapable=1, jitarchname=ppc-linux,
jitosname=LINUX, jitcpuarch=ppc
execcapable=1
perl=/usr/bin/perl
Compiler:
cc='gcc', ccflags='-DPERL5 -DDEBUGGING -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE
-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64',
Linker and Libraries:
ld='gcc', ldflags=' -L/usr/local/lib',
cc_ldflags='',
libs='-lpthread -lnsl -ldl -lm -lcrypt -lutil'
Dynamic Linking:
so='.so', ld_shared='-shared -L/usr/local/lib',
ld_shared_flags=''
Types:
iv=long, intvalsize=4, intsize=4, opcode_t=long, opcode_t_size=4,
ptrsize=4, ptr_alignment=4 byteorder=4321,
nv=double, numvalsize=8, doublesize=8
Later
Paul
Tim Bunce
> At 11:52 AM +0000 1/12/04, Tim Bunce wrote:
> >Has a date been set for the next release?
>
> Nope. I suppose we could shoot for another holiday release, if
> someone's got a good february one.
>
> >Are the docs (especially the PDDs) upto date on best practices?
>
> Alas not, no.
>
> >If not, will that be a goal for the next release?
>
> Yeah, I think getting the docs better will be an aggressive goal for
> the next release.
How's this all looking now we're in Feb?
Tim.
p.s. Apart from docs I'd *really* like to see a clean way to make
method calls as it's a fundamental part of the DBDI API.
Leopold Toetsch
>> Yeah, I think getting the docs better will be an aggressive goal for
>> the next release.
> How's this all looking now we're in Feb?
There is still a lot of outdated (or unimplemented?) stuff in assembly
related docs.
WRT release :)
,--[ p6i ]---------------------------------------------
| The low-level object design will be done by Jan 30th.
| -- Dan 2004.01.12
`------------------------------------------------------
> Tim.
leo
Tim Bunce
Great. The DBDI project is basically stalled till then.
(See my other email about that.)
Tim.