[MacPerl] What the Walrus said about MacPerl...

[Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>]

Right now, I have a little time & perspective to update you on my plans for the
immediate future of MacPerl. The first section (SCHEDULE) is for the general
audience, while the rest is intended for those who have volunteered to help
with MacPerl or intend to volunteer.

SCHEDULE

This Summer, my PhD thesis is, I hope, finally entering its last and critical
stage (I'm writing about Scheduling/Load Balancing on Heterogeneous Workstation 
Clusters, in case anyone cares). For MacPerl this means that my erratic mail
answering habits, occasional attacks of nastyness, and unpredictable release 
schedules will get even worse. Take the following predictions with a grain of
salt.

- I would like to release MacPerl 5.1.0r2 around the end of June. It will be
based on Unix Patchlevel 2 or later, will be more reliable in some matters
("my" variables), will fix some regressions (Dev:Pseudo brokenness), will come
with an improved extension build and installation system, and possibly with
CFM-68K support.

- Concurrently, I will keep thinkering with OSA Perl. Now that the AppleEvents
groundwork has been done, it is possible that a version of OSA Perl featuring
AppleEvent support and scripting contexts (which more or less would make it a
first class OSA language) will appear this summer.

- I'm also working on porting Jack Jansen's excellent Python aete compiler to
MacPerl.

TO DO FOR MACPERL 5.1.0 (VOLUNTEERS WANTED!)

The persons I'm naming below have, I think, volunteered for the tasks I list
them in. If you're feeling slandered, contact me :-)

- The core of MacPerl needs some more work plugging memory leaks, which I will 
  do myself.
- The extensions are being worked on:
  - I will revise the current toolbox (:ext:Mac) modules and maybe add a few 
    more.
  - Tim Endres is working on CFM-68K support and thus has exclusive rights to
    modifying :ext:DynaLoader from now on.
  - Bill Middleton has ported :ext:IO, is currently raising Penguin and maybe 
    working on further extensions.
  - We could use more ported extensions and Toolbox interfaces.
- The library needs additional work:
  - I will do what needs to be done on File:: and ExtUtils::
  - Paul Schinder will take over Mail:: and LWP::
  - We could use more ported libraries.
- Testing:
  - I will get the core test suite to run.
  - Each library and extension maintainer is expected to maintain the 
    corresponding test suite.
- Documentation work:
  - Janis Greenberg has written a good tutorial that answers many of the 
    routine questions asked on the mailing list. We might want to include
    it in the distribution, assuming Janis agrees with it. Similarly, we
    might want to integrate Sandra Silcot's and Hal Wine's work.
  - Does anybody have a MacPerl CGI FAQ or is willing to write one?
  - Traditionally, the PODs concerning the ported parts of Perl are wildly
    inaccurate on the Mac. Furthermore, PODs have no conditional directive
    for platform dependend material. Anyone interested in fact-checking the
    PODs and negotiating conditional directives with Tom Christiansen and
    the perl5-porters?
  - Bob Dalgleish has written excellent PODs for the currently existing 
    toolbox modules, and I hope he will continue with that job as more
    modules emerge.

So, as you see, we need:

 - *Porters* for extension modules. They should own Metrowerks Codewarrior
   and be willing to work with the CW MPW Tools (unless somebody is willing
   to do the work for other compilers and/or make working with other   
   environments than MPW feasible. The interfaces of dynamically loaded modules
   with Perl should be compiler independent, so vendors should not be afraid 
   to be locked out).
 - *Library Porters* for library modules. They simply should be competent Perl 
   5 programmers.
 - *Documenters* who have a way with words.