HLL interop in Blizkost status report

[Stefan O'Rear]

From the #parrot summit meeting:

<@allison> - HLL interop TT #556, #557, #558
<@allison> someone mentioned they were working on this now?
<@sorear> with regards to most HLL interop issues, I think that the spec needs to be delayed until we have a more complete implementation
<@sorear> i.e. I'm treating the PDDs as guidelines, not rules, and will update them once blizkost is working
<@allison> sorear: that's reasonable
<@allison> sorear: as you diverge from the current spec, could you raise the changes for discussion on parrot-dev?
<@dukeleto> PL/Parrot will need a well-defined HLL interop layer for datatypes
<@japhb> For me HLL interop is in general fairly high priority, but HLL -> Parrot module loading is very high.
<@allison> sorear: don't want you to get to the end and then get an overwhelming slurry of comments
<@allison> sorear: that should keep everyone involved in your thinking
<@sorear> allison: ok
<@japhb> It would be really nice if we could get at least a little time with sorear, Tene, pmichaud, and me together (though I'm the least important)
<@japhb> Does anyone know if pmichaud is able to schedule an hour yet?
<@chromatic> +1 to that
<@allison> japhb: good idea
<@allison> pmichaud's availability varies still
<@allison> but, he's good at passing along his general ideas to a delegate
<@japhb> OK

Here is where I stand on deviations from the PDDs for Blizkost;

* I am following closest to pdd31_hll.pod.  pdd31_hll_interop.pod and
  pdd21_namespaces.pod also think they define the HLL interface, but their
  definitions work much less well.

* I don't like parse_name.  In Perl5 name splitting is extremely context
  sensitive, and it's not possible to implement parse_name in a way which is
  correct in all contexts.  To capture the same functionality, I'm implementing
  a get_module_namespace method which produces a namespace object for a module
  being imported; this will allow qualified import to work without requiring
  other HLLs to walk Perl5 namespace trees.

* (Not really related, but) Lvalue semantics are extremely confusing.  A
  resolution to #1524 would help a lot.

Actually suprisingly few.

-sorear
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