On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m happy to announce the September 2015 release of Rakudo Perl 6 #91 “Zürich”. Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Moar Virtual Machine1 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 distribution2 --- it’s announcing a new release of the compiler only. For the latest Rakudo Star release, see http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/.
The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each release named after a Perl Mongers group. This month’s release is named after Zürich Perl Mongers, hosts of the recent Swiss Perl Workshop.
Some of the changes in this release are outlined below:
- Great List Refactor - See http://design.perl6.org/S07.html
- All Deprecations removed in preparation for Christmas release
- Added support for calling into C++ libraries and calling methods on C++ classes
- New slurpy parameter, +args or +@args, to allow for one-argument style binding
- New with/orwith/without conditionals allow you to check for .defined but topicalize to the actual value returned
- New
supply,wheneverandreactblocks for easy reactive programming - All Unicode digits can now be part of literal numbers
-
val()and allomorphic types implemented - Most European quoting styles are now supported
- New
$[...] and $ {...} constructs allow prefix itemization - The .gist and .perl methods can now deal with self-referential structures
These are only some of the changes in this release. For a more detailed list, see "docs/ChangeLog".
Apologies, there are a few failures in the JVM test suite this month, as we’ve been focusing on our primary backend, MoarVM. Please bear with us.
The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for making Rakudo Perl possible, as well as those people who worked on the design docs, the Perl 6 test suite, MoarVM and the specification.
The following people contributed to this release:
Jonathan Worthington, Stefan Seifert, Elizabeth Mattijsen, Tobias Leich, Moritz Lenz, Pawel Murias, Larry Wall, Faye Niemeyer, Rob Hoelz, skids, Jimmy Zhuo, Timo Paulssen, Will "Coke" Coleda, Solomon Foster, Paul Cochrane, Pepe Schwarz, David Warring, Jonathan Scott Duff, Christian Bartolomäus, Nick Logan, niner, laben, Brent Laabs, Carl Masak, Kamil Kułaga, Francois Perrad, Bart Wiegmans, Ben Tyler, Geoffrey Broadwell, Leon Timmermans, Will Coleda, Justin DeVuyst, Steve Mynott, alexghacker, vendethiel, Tim Smith, Jonathan Stowe, David Warring, Carl Mäsak, sergot, Stéphane Payrard, Daniel Dehennin, Mike Francis, Sue Spence, Zoffix Znet
If you would like to contribute, see http://rakudo.org/how-to-help, ask on the perl6-compiler@perl.org mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on freenode.
The next release of Rakudo (#92), is scheduled for 22 October 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!
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.
Footnotes
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See http://moarvm.org/ ↩
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What’s the difference between the Rakudo compiler and the Rakudo Star distribution? ↩