The beginnings of a release announcement

docs/announce/2011.10

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+    Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #45 ("Houston")
+
+On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm happy to announce the
+October 2011 release of Rakudo Perl #45 "Houston".  Rakudo is an 
+implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual Machine (see 
+<http://www.parrot.org>). The tarball for this release
+is available from <http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads>.
+
+Please note: This announcement is not for the Rakudo Star distribution[*] --
+it's announcing a new release of the compiler only.  For the latest
+Rakudo Star release, see <http://github.com/rakudo/star/downloads>.
+
+The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each
+release named after a Perl Mongers group.  The October 2011 release is
+code named after the Houston Perl Mongers because Houston is a large
+city in Texas and because Perl 6 could always use more features from 
+Texas.  Oh ... and Houston also hosted YAPC::NA 2007 and had a nice Perl 6
+hackathon.  :-)
+
+This is the first compiler release from the latest development branch
+of Rakudo. It brings many exciting improvements, but also some
+regressions, which we are working on. 
+
+If your primary interest is that
+your existing code running on Rakudo Perl continues to work, we
+suggest sticking with the Rakudo Star distribution release for a
+little longer. If instead you want to play with the latest in Rakudo
+development - including meta-programming and performance improvements
+- try this release.
+
+Some of the specific changes and improvements occurring with this
+release include:
+
+We briefly regress on a few features since the previous release.
+Most notably, new regex engine has not implemented proto regexes
+yet, and only integer-based enums are available.
+
+For a more detailed list of changes, see "docs/ChangeLog".
+
+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 and the specification.
+
+The following people contributed to this release:
+
+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 (#46) is scheduled for November 20, 2011. a
+list of the other planned release dates and code names for 2011 is
+available in the "docs/release_guide.pod" file.  In general, Rakudo
+development releases are scheduled to occur soon after each Parrot
+monthly release.  Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month.
+
+As always ...  Have fun!
+
+
+[*] What's the difference between the Rakudo compiler and the Rakudo
+    Star distribution?  
+
+    The Rakudo compiler is just the compiler for the  Perl 6 language.
+    Nothing else.
+
+    The Rakudo Star distribution is the Rakudo compiler plus a selection
+    of useful Perl 6 modules, the most recent incarnation of the "Using
+    Perl 6" book, and other software that can be used with the Rakudo
+    compiler to enchance 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.
+