On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m happy to announce the March 2015 release of Rakudo Perl 6 #86 “Cluj”. Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Moar Virtual Machine[^1] and the Java Virtual Machine. The tarball for this release is available from <http://rakudo.org/downloads/rakudo/>.
Please note: This announcement is not for the Rakudo Star distribution[^3] --- it’s announcing a new release of the compiler only. For the latest Rakudo Star release, see <http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/>. As described by pmichaud in a recent blog post: http://pmthium.com/2015/02/suspending-rakudo-parrot/ this is the first release of Rakudo that does *not* support Parrot [^2] as a backend. Whether Parrot support can be restored at some point in the future, really depends on people with tuits making the necessary changes. In that light, I would like to emphasize the last paragraph of said blog post: If there are people that want to work on refactoring Rakudo’s support for Parrot so that it’s more consistent with the other VMs, we can certainly point them in the right direction. For the GLR this will mainly consists of migrating parrot-specific code from Rakudo into NQP’s APIs. For the NSA and NFG work, it will involve developing a lot of new code and feature capabilities that Parrot doesn’t possess. The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each release named after a Perl Mongers group. This release is named after Cluj.pm which just celebrated its third birthday. Some of the changes in this release are outlined below: These are only some of the changes in this release. For a more detailed list, see “docs/ChangeLog”. + Incompatible changes and deprecations: + renamed internal hash/array/code/* methods: - OLD NEW - at_pos AT-POS - exists_pos EXISTS-POS - delete_pos DELETE-POS - assign_pos ASSIGN-POS - bind_pos BIND-POS - at_key AT-KEY - exists_key EXISTS-KEY - delete_key DELETE-KEY - assign_key ASSIGN-KEY - bind_key BIND-KEY - invoke CALL-ME - Supply.on_demand Supply.on-demand - Supply.schedule_on Supply.schedule-on + renamed traits - hidden_from_backtrace hidden-from-backtrace - hidden_from_USAGE hidden-from-USAGE + Deprecated use MONKEY_TYPING for use MONKEY-TYPING. + Deprecate IO::Handle.input-line-separator for .nl + Features + Allow Buf.AT-POS to return an l-value. + Implement method ^foo($) { ... } syntax. + Implemented PairMap (the simple case only, for now). + Implemented .antipairs (pairs with value => key). + Implemented .pairup for creating pairs from lists. + Implemented LEXICAL, OUTERS and CALLERS pseudo-packages + Add a array[T], usable for native int/num (MoarVM only for now) + Other native improvements, e.g. my int $a; $a++ + Implement IO::Path.resolve on r-m/POSIX + Fixes + Fix JVM runner generation on Windows. + Make $?TABSTOP immutable + Make CALLER::<&?ROUTINE> work + Errors like "expected Array[Str] but got Array[Str]" have been fixed. + Optimizations + Make my int/num @a = Range about 1000x faster + Make s/// up to 25% faster + Make substr(-rw) about 10% faster + Test.pm changes + Add simple use-ok implementation + NativeCall.pm changes + 'is native' will also accept Callables to allow runtime library detection + Implemented nativesizeof(T) + Add typed Pointer type as replacement for OpaquePointer The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for making Rakudo Perl possible, as well as those people who worked on Parrot, the Perl 6 test suite, MoarVM and the specification. The following people contributed to this release: Elizabeth Mattijsen, Jonathan Worthington, Larry Wall, Tobias Leich, ugexe, Alexander Moquin, Moritz Lenz, Timo Paulssen, Pepe Schwarz, Andrew Egeler, Christian Bartolomäus, Kamil Kułaga, Solomon Foster, Geoffrey Broadwell, Jonathan Scott Duff, Paul Cochrane, Carl Masak, Will "Coke" Coleda, raydiak, Donald Hunter, Stefan Seifert, Rob Hoelz, sue spence, Brad Gilbert, Ven, Steve Mynott, [Tux], Nicholas Clark, avuserow If you would like to contribute, see <http://rakudo.org/how-to-help>, ask on the <perl6-compi...@perl.org <mailto:perl6-compi...@perl.org>> mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on freenode. The next release of Rakudo (#87), is scheduled for 23 April 2015. A list of the other planned release dates and code names for future releases is available in the “docs/release_guide.pod” file. A Rakudo development release typically occurs a few days (often two) after the third Tuesday of each month. The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements, cool discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback -- get in touch with us through (the above-mentioned) mailing list or IRC channel. Enjoy! [^1]: See <http://moarvm.org/> [^2]: See <http://parrot.org/> [^3]: What’s the difference between the Rakudo compiler and the Rakudo Star distribution? The Rakudo compiler is a compiler for the Perl 6 language. Not much more. The Rakudo Star distribution is the Rakudo compiler plus a selection of useful Perl 6 modules, a module installer, the most recent incarnation of the “Using Perl 6” book, and other software that can be used with the Rakudo compiler to enhance its utility. Rakudo Star is meant for early adopters who wish to explore what’s possible with Rakudo Perl 6 and provide feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what else they would like to see included in the distribution.
