Dave writes: Last month I continued looking into race conditions in threads and threads::shared. I have now reached the point where the threads-related test suite can run cleanly under valgrind --tool=helgrind. But there is still an occasional crash in blocks.t when run repeatedly for many hours in parallel on 20 terminals, which I am currently working on. I'm hopeful that once that is fixed, the branch will be ready to

Paul writes: April kept me busy lining up PPC0030 in the hope of putting that into 5.45.1, with a couple of other items of interest. 7.5 Continue progress on PPC0030 https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24304 1.5 Assisting veesh with the implementation of the optional chaining PPC 1 Managing various PPC documents Total: 10 hours My next focus will be to continue to get these various items ready for merge at the start of

Tony writes: 2026/04/01 Wednesday 0.08 #24335 follow-up 1.18 #24337 try to review 2.03 #24005 work on docs 0.30 #24251 comments 0.12 #24134 re-check and trivial comment 1.35 #24005 more docs 5.06 2026/04/02 Thursday 0.53 ppc/discussion/84 research and comment 0.82 #24308 read updates, try to find clarity with a correction 0.57 #24105 follow-up on #24294 0.58 #24304 review updates

Tony writes: 2026/03/02 Monday 1.55 #24228 follow-up comment, check updates, research and comment 0.75 #24187 review updates, mark comment resolved, research 0.97 #24242 review, research 0.40 #24242 debugging and comment 1.02 #24001 debugging, research, testing 4.69 2026/03/03 Tuesday 0.15 #24242 review dicsussion 0.10 #24211 review discussion and apply to blead 0.53 #24242 comment 0.23 #24239 review and comment

Paul writes: A couple of bugfixes in March, combined with starting to line up a few development ideas to open 5.45 with. 2 Bugfix for field refalias memory leak https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24254 2 Improved field performance https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24265 3 Continue progress on implementing PPC0030 https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24304 2 Bugfix for deferred class seal https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24326 Total: 9 hours Besides working up to the 5.44 release, my main focus now will be getting

Dave writes: Last month was spent looking into race conditions in threads and threads::shared. I initially started looking at a specific ticket, where I could reproduce a specific crash by running many instances in parallel for several hours. I think I have fixed that specific bug, but that led me to the rabbit hole of dynamic thread-safety checkers such as helgrind, and I am currently plunging down the rabbit

Dave writes: Last month I worked on various miscellaneous issues, including a few performance and deparsing regressions. Summary: 3:00 GH #24110 ExtUtils::ParseXS after 5.51 prevents some XS modules to build 2:49 GH# #24212 goto void XSUB in scalar context crashes 7:19 XS: avoid core distros using void ST hack 2:40 fix up Deparse breakage 5:41 remove OP_NULLs in OP_COND execution path Total: 21:29

Paul writes: Not too much activity of my own this month here, as I spent a lot of Perl time working on other things like magic-v2 or some CPAN module ecosystem like Future::IO. Plus I had a stage show to finish building props for and manage the running of. But I did manage to do: 3 Continue work on attributes-v2 and write a provisional PR for the first stage

Tony writes: 2026/02/02 Monday 0.08 #24122 review updates and comment 0.17 #24063 review updates and apply to blead 0.28 #24062 approve with comment and bonus comment 0.92 #24071 review updates and approve 0.40 #24080 review updates, research and comment 0.18 #24122 review updates and approve 0.27 #24157 look into it and original ticket, comment on original ticket 0.58 #24134 review and

Tony writes: 2026/01/05 Monday 0.23 #24055 review, research and approve with comment 0.08 #24054 review and approve 0.12 #24052 review and comment 1.13 #24044 review, research and approve with comment 0.37 #24043 review and approve 0.78 #23918 rebase, testing, push and mark ready for review 1.58 #24001 fix related call_sv issue, testing 0.65 #24001 testing, debugging 4.94 2026/01/06 Tuesday 0.90

Dave writes: During January, I finished working on another tranche of ExtUtils::ParseXS fixups, this time focussing on: adding and rewording warning and error messages, and adding new tests for them; improving test coverage: all XS keywords have tests now; reorganising the test infrastructure: deleting obsolete test files, renaming the t/*.t files to a more consistent format; splitting a large test file; modernising tests; refactoring and improving the

Paul writes: This month I managed to finish off a few refalias-related issues, as well as lend some time to help BooK further progress implementing PPC0014 1 Clear pad after multivar foreach https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/240 3 Fix B::Concise output for OP_MULTIPARAM https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24066 6 Implement multivariable foreach on refalias https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24094 1 SVf_AMAGIC flag tidying https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/24129 2.5 Mentoring BooK towards implementing PPC0014 2 Various github code reviews Total: 15.5 hours

Dave writes: During December, I fixed assorted bugs, and started work on another tranche of ExtUtils::ParseXS fixups, this time focussing on: adding and rewording warning and error messages, and adding new tests for them; improving test coverage: all XS keywords have tests now; reorganising the test infrastructure: deleting obsolete test files, renaming the t/*.t files to a more consistent format; splitting a large test file; modernising tests;

Tony writes: 2025/12/01 Monday 0.23 memEQ cast discussion with khw 0.42 #23965 testing, review and comment 2.03 #23885 review, testing, comments 0.08 #23970 review and approve 0.13 #23971 review and approve 0.08 #23965 follow-up 2.97 2025/12/02 Tuesday 0.73 #23969 research and comment 0.30 #23974 review and approve 0.87 #23975 review and comment 0.38 #23975 review reply and approve

Paul writes: A mix of focus this month. I was hoping to get attributes-v2 towards something that could be reviewed and merged, but then I bumped into a bunch of refalias-related issues. Also spent about 5 hours reviewing Dave's giant xspod rewrite. 1 Rename THING token in grammar to something more meaningful https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/23982 4 Continue work on attributes-v2 1 BBC Ticket on Feature-Compat-Class https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/23991 2 Experiment with refalias

Tony write: In addition to the typical stream of small changes to review, Dave's second AST rebuild of ExtUtils::ParseXS arrived and I spent several hours reviewing it. In response to #23918 I worked on adding numeric comparison APIs, which are complicated by overloading, NaNs, SVs dual IV/NV implmentation, and of course by overloading. This includes some fixes for the existing sv_numeq API. You can see the current state of this

Paul writes: A mix of things this month, though I didn't get much done in the final week because of preparations for my talk at LPW2025. A useful event though because a few ideas came out of discussions that I shall be looking at for core perl soon. 4 Mentoring preparation for BooK Eric on PPC 0014 4.5 attributes-v2 branch https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/23923 3 Experiments with refalias in signatures in XS::Parse::Sublike

Dave writes: Last month was relatively quiet. I worked on a couple of bugs and did some final updates to my branch which rewrites perlxs.pod which I intend to merge in the next few days. Summary: 10:33 GH #16197 re eval stack unwinding 4:47 GH #18669 dereferencing result of ternary operator skips autovivification 2:06 make perl -Dx display lexical variable names 10:58 modernise perlxs.pod Total: 28:24 TOTAL

Dave writes: Last month was mostly spent doing a second big refactor of ExtUtils::ParseXS. My previous refactor converted the parser to assemble each XSUB into an Abstract Syntax Tree and only then emit the C code for it This new work extends that so that the whole XS file is now one big AST, and the C code is only generated once all parsing is complete. As well as fixing

Tony writes: 2025/10/02 Thursday 1.03 #23782 testing, comments 0.23 #23794 review change, research and comment 0.32 #23787 review and approve 0.27 #23777 review, research and comment 0.17 #23775 review and comment 0.48 #23608 research and comment 2.50 2025/10/03 Friday 1.30 #21877 code review, find another possible bug 0.08 #23787 review updates, has other approval, apply to blead 0.68 #21877 bug