Google Summer of Code 2008 Wrap Up written by Eric Wilhelm: Google's Summer of Code 2008 is wrapping up now and I'm very pleased with how well The Perl Foundation's students and mentors have done. The five projects which survived the halfway point have all finished with great results. Many thanks to all of the mentors and students as well as everyone in the community who helped or supported the

Our colleagues, the organizers of the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop, asked us to help get the word out about PPW and to remind people that they are currently accepting talk proposals, up until September 12. You can get more details on their web site at "http://pghpw.org/ppw2008/":http://pghpw.org/ppw2008/ This will be the third year of the event. The past 2 years it has shown itself to be an exceptional and fun Perl gathering.

This is the final report for the Smolder grant, by Michael Peters: Here are the original deliverables from my grant proposal: Remove custom XML format in favor of using plain TAP and TAPx::Parser. Extend Smolder to handle small CPAN style modules more easily and automatically. Setup a Smolder server for the CGI::Application community to serve as a testing ground and public display for their 110+ CPAN modules. Add per-project and

Christopher Laco on Mango Grant: It has been over two years since I received a grant from the TPF to start work on Mango. What started as a fast paced 3 month project has turned into a 2 year project that has come to crawl. At this point in time, the TPF and I agree that it is best to label this project as 'done as-is' so the grant manager

This is the third biweekly report. These are the news on currently running grants: Mango Christopher Laco This grant will be closed in the next few days, and a report published here. Porting PyYAML to Perl Ingy döt Net Ingy gave some updates on his grant. YAML::XS is completed, and a pure Perl implementation is being started. A new deadline was defined: Christmas 2008. Improving Smolder Michael Peters As said

Apologies for the long delay in this report, I've had some ongoing health problems over the summer. Allison wrote this report to bring us up-to-date, and then we'll continue with the two-monthly schedule. Parrot releases continue on their monthly schedule. The 0.6.0 release in March reflected major improvements to both the Parrot VM and the Perl 6 implementation on Parrot The most notable change for Parrot was the implementation of

Unfortunately TPF is unable to fund all the proposed grants as they exceed the funds available for Grants. Thus, TPF GC ranked proposals accordingly with its relevance to the community, and the first few were funded. These are the funded proposals: "Perl cross-compilation for linux and wince":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_perl_cro.html "Barcode support in Act":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_barcode.html "Tcl/Tk access for Rakudo":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_tcltk_ac.html "Embedding perl into C++ applications":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_libperl.html "Extending BSDPAN":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/08/2008q3_grant_proposal_extendin.html Follow the proposals that, although accepted, will not

Hi. This is the second biweekly report for August. These are the news on the running grants: Mango Christopher Laco No updates/feedback. Porting PyYAML to Perl Ingy döt Net No updates/feedback. Improving Smolder Michael Peters No updates. Still waiting for a conclusion report. Perl on a Stick Adam Kennedy Accordingly with Adam's blog "I'm happy to report that phase 2 of the Perl on a Stick grant is now completed."

The following statement was written by Roberta Cairney, councel to The Perl Foundation. The Perl Foundation has participated in the Jacobsen v. Katzer amicus brief as the license in dispute, Artistic 1.0, is very popular in the Perl community and is one of the licenses under which Perl 5 is released. A decision was rendered on August 13, 2008 in the Jacobsen v. Katzer case by the U.S. Court of

Starting this month, the Grant Committee will publish reports about running grants each two weeks While it is normal that not all grants have updates they will appear in the listing as well with a 'no updates' message. Currently running TPF grants are: "Mango":http://www.perlfoundation.org/christopher_laco_mango Christopher Laco No updates. "Porting PyYAML to Perl":http://www.perlfoundation.org/ingy_dot_net_port_pyyaml_to_perl Ingy döt Net No updates. "Improving Smolder":http://www.perlfoundation.org/michael_peters_improving_smolder Michael Peters Grant is finished. A final report should be published

To this post follows a set of posts with proposals received by the Perl Foundation grants committee during the third call for grant proposals for 2008. This worked pretty well on previous round, and thus, we are using the same approach now. These proposals are published here for public discussion. You are invited to comment each proposal about its relevance and objectives. During the month of July we received the

Author Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson Title Improve POE::Component::IRC Synopsis: I will improve POE::Component::IRC by overhauling its test suite, adding more features, fixing bugs and writing more documentation. Author Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson, hinrik.sig@gmail.com Title Improve POE::Component::IRC Synopsis I will improve POE::Component::IRC by overhauling its test suite, adding more features, fixing bugs and writing more documentation. Benefits PoCo::IRC is the most modern IRC client module for Perl out there. It is used for

Author: Colin Smith Title: Extending BSDPAN Synopsis: Refactor the BSDPAN module into a generic and extensible solution for bridging CPAN with UNIX packaging systems. Author Colin Smith Title Extending BSDPAN Synopsis Refactor the BSDPAN module into a generic and extensible solution for bridging CPAN with UNIX packaging systems. Benefits to the Perl Community The wealth of freely available code CPAN represents is one of the Perl language's greatest strengths. Tighter

Author: Vadim Konovalov Title: Perl cross-compilation for linux and wince Synopsis: Right now cross-compilation is largerly incomplete. The proposal is to develop current cross-compiling of perl into the normal quality stage. Author Vadim Konovalov Title Perl cross-compilation for linux and wince Synopsis Right now cross-compilation is largerly incomplete. The proposal is to develop current cross-compiling of perl into the normal quality stage. Benefits to the Perl Community From time to

Author: Vadim Konovalov Title: Tcl/Tk access for Rakudo Synopsis: Implement Tk GUI interface for Rakudo. Author Vadim Konovalov Project Title Tcl/Tk access for Rakudo Synopsis Implement Tk GUI interface for Rakudo. Benefits to the Perl Community Powerful console-based utility is useful, but it becomes much more attractive when it has ability to easily create interfaces, so demos and screenshots will be better looking. Given that Tk 8.5 as compared to

Author: Andrew Shitov Title: Barcode support in Act Synopsis: Integrate a set of tools into A Conference Toolkit that will allow on-site registration with barcodes. Name Andrew Shitov Project Title Barcode support in Act Synopsis Integrate a set of tools into A Conference Toolkit that will allow on-site registration with barcodes. Benefits to the Perl Community Using barcodes during the registration process allows speeding up on-site registration at Perl workshops

Author: Kieren Diment Title: The Perl Survey From "Pilot" to Production Synopsis: In 2007 Kirrily Robert organised and administered the Perl survey to provide a snapshot of the Perl community. In particular she made significant effort to recruit as many people as possible, resulting in a sample size of around 4500 responses Author Kieren Diment Project Title The Perl Survey From "Pilot" to Production Synopsis In 2007 Kirrily Robert organised

Authors: Igor Sanchez-Puls and Rene Sanchez-Puls Title: Rufus Synopsis: Build a preprocessor for PASM and a language with PASM like syntax Name Igor Sanchez-Puls and Rene Sanchez-Puls Project Title Rufus Synopsis Build a preprocessor for PASM and a language with PASM like syntax Benefits to the Perl Community A nice approach "bottom-up" from PASM and tools for making easier PASM programming. Deliverables A PASM preprocessor "Rufus preprocessor" and a "Rufus

Author: John Beppu Title: Squatting On Everything Synopsis: Squatting is unique among web frameworks, because it has the ability to embed itself into other frameworks. This ability has been demonstrated with the Squatting::On::Catalyst module that shows that you can take a whole Squatting application and embed it directly into a Catalyst application. I'd like to expand Squatting's range by writing adapters for more frameworks and environments. Author John Beppu Title

Author: Michael G Schwern Title: CPAN Stability Project Synopsis: The CPAN Stability Project is intended to improve the usability of CPAN over long term use by providing a way to choose between safe releases vs newest releases as well as to better guarantee that upgrading will not break anything. It draws heavily on Debian's release management and tiers Name Michael G Schwern Title CPAN Stability Project Synopsis The CPAN Stability