Upgrade Information for Changes Due to IO Grant Work

2017-04-02

As previously notified, there are changes being made to IO routines. This notice is to provide details on changes that may affect currently-existing code.

When?

Barring unforeseen delays, the work affecting version 6.c language is planned to be included in 2017.04 Rakudo Compiler release (planned for release on April 17, 2017) on which next Rakudo Star release will be based.

Some or all of the work affecting 6.d language may also be included in that release and will be available if the user uses use v6.d.PREVIEW pragma. Any 6.d work that doesn't make it into 2017.04 release, will be included in 2017.05 release.

If you use development commits of the compiler (e.g. rakudobrew), you will receive this work as-it-happens.

Why?

If you only used documented features, the likelihood of you needing to change any of your code is low. The 6.c language changes due to IO Grant work affect either routines that are rarely used or undocumented routines that might have been used by users assuming they were part of the language.

What?

This notice describes only changes affecting existing code and only for 6.c language. It does NOT include any non-conflicting changes or changes slated for 6.d language. If you're interested in the full list of changes, you can find it in the IO Grant Action Plan

The changes that may affect existing code are:

  • role IO together with its IO.umask method have been removed without any replacement
  • Methods .watch, .chmod, .IO, .e, .d, .f, .s, .l, .r, .w, .x, .modified, .accessed, .changed, and .mode have been removed from IO::Handle. You can call these on the path returned by IO::Handle.path method to obtain the same behaviour
  • :test parameter on &chdir, IO::Path.chdir, and &indir routines have been changed to issue a deprecation warning and will be removed in 6.d language. In addition, the default test performed by these routines has been changed to be only a test for whether the path is a directory. To upgrade your code for this change, simply use named parameters for the test. e.g replace chdir :test<r w x> … with chdir :r, :w, :x …
  • binary mode in IO::Handle.Supply is now controlled by whether the handle is in binary mode (e.g. opened with .open(:bin …)). The :bin argument to .Supply is now ignored.
  • In 2017.03 release, IO::Path.lines was made non-lazy (slurps the whole file). This has now been reverted. To ensure the filehandle gets closed, you need to exhaust the returned Seq (simply iterate through it; eager it explicitly or implicitly (e.g. by assigning to array); or call .sink on it)
  • The order of arguments to &link and &symlink has been reversed. It now follows $existing-thing, $thing-we-are-creating pattern adhered to by ln command line tool as well as &move, &copy and &rename routines
  • IO::Handle.lock no longer takes an Int:D argument, but a pair of named arguments instead. By default, it makes an exclusive, blocking lock. Use :shared named argument to make a shared lock instead and :non-blocking to make the method fail instead of waiting for lock.
  • IO::Path.new-from-absolute-path is now a private method. Use .IO coercer or IO::Path.new: $the-path instead
  • &homedir has been removed. Use $*HOME dynamic variable directly.
  • &tempdir has been removed. Use $*TMPDIR dynamic variable directly.
  • IO routines that used to throw will now fail instead.

Help and More Info

If you need help or more information, please join our IRC channel and ask there. You can also contact the person performing this work via Twitter @zoffix or by talking to user Zoffix in our dev IRC channel