Posts for December 2022

2022-12-25: rra-c-util 10.3

This is a minor feature and bug fix release of my collection of utilities and tests intended for copying into other packages I maintain.

The new feature is an additional Perl test using Test::Kwalitee to check a few more things about the Perl packaging, and a MANIFEST.SKIP file that is suitable for copying as-is into most Perl packages.

On the bug fix side, the portable/getnameinfo test now skips some tests rather than failing on systems that are strange enough that someone has put 0.0.0.0 into DNS, and some small fixes for M4 macros. All the bug fixes are thanks to Julien ÉLIE.

You can get the latest release from the rra-c-util distribution page.

2022-12-25 09:17 — Permanent link

2022-12-25: podlators 5.01

podlators is the Perl distribution providing Pod::Man and Pod::Text, along with related modules and supporting scripts.

The primary change in this release is the addition of configurable guesswork for Pod::Text, paralleling Pod::Man. I had forgotten that Pod::Text also had complex heuristics for whether to quote C<> text that have the same Perl-specific properties as Pod::Man. This is now configurable via a guesswork option, the same as in Pod::Man, although the only type of guesswork supported is quoting. I also updated the default regexes, which include some fixes from Pod::Man.

Thanks to discussion with G. Branden Robinson, I now understand quoting in roff considerably better, which let me fix a few obscure bugs with strange page titles or configured quote characters. Pod::Man now avoids quoting macro arguments when the quoting is unnecessary, which should hopefully produce slightly more readable output.

Finally, I had started using a Pod::Simple feature introduced in 3.26 in Pod::Text but forgot to update the dependency, resulting in test failures on some old versions of Perl. (The same tests didn't fail in GitHub CI, which is probably related to how I install dependencies.) That's been fixed in this release.

You can get the latest version from CPAN or from the podlators distribution page.

2022-12-25 09:56 — Permanent link

2022-12-29: Last 2022 haul

It's been a while since I posted a haul, and I've been reading primarily recent purchases, so I've already read and reviewed a bunch of these.

Ilona Andrews — Sweep of the Heart (sff)
Becky Chambers — A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (sff)
Lauren Groff — Matrix (mainstream)
Tendai Huchu — The Library of the Dead (sff)
N.K. Jemisin — The World We Make (sff)
Courtney Milan — The Governess Affair (romance)
Tamsyn Muir — Nona the Ninth (sff)
Naomi Novik — The Golden Enclaves (sff)
Rebecca Solnit — Orwell's Roses (non-fiction)
T. Kingfisher — Illuminations (sff)

I've been trying to slow down on new acquisitions until I finish more of the recent books I bought (with some success!).

2022-12-29 21:19 — Permanent link