Add announcement for 2018.10 release

post/announce-rakudo-star-release-2018-10.md

@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+%% title: Announce: Rakudo Star Release 2018.10
+%% date: 2018-11-11
+
+On behalf of the Rakudo and Perl 6 development teams, I'm pleased to announce
+the October 2018 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable production
+distribution of Rakudo.  The tarball for this release is available from
+<https://rakudo.perl6.org/downloads/star/>.  
+
+Binaries for macOS and Windows (64 bit) are also available at the same
+location.
+
+This is a post-Christmas (production) release of Rakudo Star and implements
+Perl v6.c. It comes with support for the MoarVM backend (all module tests pass
+on supported platforms).  Currently, Star is on a quarterly release cycle. 
+
+Please note that this release of Rakudo Star is not fully functional with the
+JVM backend from the Rakudo compiler. Please use the MoarVM backend only.
+
+We make a distinction between the language ("Perl 6" or "Raku") and specific
+implementations of the language such as "Rakudo".
+
+This Star release includes [release 2018.10] of the [Rakudo compiler],
+version 2018.10 [MoarVM], plus various modules, documentation, and other
+resources collected from the community.
+
+[release 2018.10]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rakudo/rakudo/2018.10/docs/announce/2018.10.md
+[Rakudo compiler]: http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo
+[MoarVM]: http://moarvm.org/
+
+The Rakudo compiler changes since the last Rakudo Star release are now listed
+in "2018.08.md" and 2018.09.md" under the "rakudo/docs/announce" directory of
+the source distribution.
+
+This is the first Rakudo Star release that comes with an additional JS backend.
+See `6pad` project at  <https://perl6.github.io/6pad/> for running Perl 6 code
+directly in your browser.
+
+Important Rakudo bug fixes are now listed at <https://alerts.perl6.org/>
+
+Also see Rakudo Star errata at <https://perl6.org/downloads/>
+
+Deprecation:
+
+  * LWP::Simple is deprecated and will be removed. Please use "HTTP::UserAgent".
+  * panda-sub which pointed user to zef now removed.
+
+Notable changes in modules shipped with Rakudo Star:
+
+  * openssl: Bump version 0.1.21.
+  * tap-harness6: Bump version to 0.0.4 for coloring
+  * zef: version 0.5.3
+
+There are some key features of Perl 6 that Rakudo Star does not yet
+handle appropriately, although they will appear in upcoming releases.
+Some of the not-quite-there features include:
+
+  * advanced macros
+  * some bits of Synopsis 9 and 11
+
+There is an online resource at <http://perl6.org/compilers/features>
+that lists the known implemented and missing features of Rakudo's
+backends and other Perl 6 implementations.
+
+In many places we've tried to make Rakudo smart enough to inform the
+programmer that a given feature isn't implemented, but there are many
+that we've missed. Bug reports about missing and broken features are
+welcomed at <rakudobug@perl.org>.
+
+See <https://perl6.org/> for links to much more information, including
+documentation, example code, tutorials, presentations, reference materials,
+design documents, and other supporting resources.  Tutorials are available
+under the "docs" directory in the release tarball.
+
+The development team thanks all of the contributors and sponsors for
+making Rakudo Star possible. If you would like to contribute, see
+<http://rakudo.org/how-to-help>, ask on the <perl6-compiler@perl.org>
+mailing list, or join us on IRC \#perl6 on freenode.