Dictionary

pumpking en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈpʌm(p)kɪŋ/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ˈpʌm(p)ˌkɪŋ/ (General-American)
• (Australia) audio

Etymology

Blend of pumpkin + king, anecdotally from the use of a stuffed pumpkin toy that was handed between employees as a token of permission to make changes, ensuring that only one person could make changes at any particular time.

Meanings

1. (slang) A Perl user working on shared source code who has been temporarily designated as the only person who is allowed to make changes.
   • Releases are coordinated by a ‘patch pumpkin holder’, or ‘pumpking’ – a quality controller who, with help from Larry [Wall], decides which contributions make the grade and when and bears the heavy responsibility of releasing a new Perl. 2000, Simon Cozens, with Peter Wainwright, Beginning Perl, Birmingham, West Midlands: Wrox Press, →ISBN, page 24:
   • In addition, various people are pumpkings for different areas. For example, Andy Dougherty and Jarkko Hietaniemi share the Configure pumpkin, and Tom Christiansen is the documentation pumpking. 1999 winter, Nathan Torkington, “Hacking the Perl Core”, in The Perl Journal, volume 4, number 4 (number 16 overall), Boston, Mass.: Readable Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 31 Oct 2020:
   • Each release of Perl is assigned a "pumpking." This person controls all changes to the actual source code of the language itself. The pumpking for 5.6 was Gurusamy Sarathy, and the pumpking for 5.8 is Jarkko Hietaniemi. 2002, Clinton Pierce, “Basic Perl”, in Charlotte Clapp, editor, Perl Developer’s Dictionary, Indianapolis, Ind.: Sams Publishing, →ISBN, page 6:
   • Thanks to Doug Miles, the Phoenix Perl Mongers Pumpking, for his tireless dedication to the Phoenix Perl community, which he brought together. Writing Perl in the valley would be a lot lonelier without his hard work. 2005, Scott Walters, Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5 (Expert’s Voice in Open Source), Berkeley, Calif.: Apress, →ISBN, page xxii:

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