-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 41
Commit
This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.
Preliminary work on Rakudo Star 2013.09 announcement
- Loading branch information
Showing
1 changed file
with
92 additions
and
0 deletions.
There are no files selected for viewing
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Original file line number | Diff line number | Diff line change |
---|---|---|
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@ | ||
# Announce: Rakudo Star Release 2013.09 | ||
|
||
## A useful, usable, "early adopter" distribution of Perl 6 | ||
|
||
On behalf of the Rakudo and Perl 6 development teams, I'm happy to | ||
announce the September 2013 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable | ||
distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the September 2013 release is | ||
available from <http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/>. A Windows .MSI | ||
version of Rakudo star will usually appear in the downloads area | ||
shortly after the tarball release. | ||
|
||
In the Perl 6 world, we make a distinction between the language | ||
("Perl 6") and specific implementations of the language such as | ||
"Rakudo Perl". This Star release includes [release 2013.09] of the | ||
[Rakudo Perl 6 compiler], version 5.5.0 of the [Parrot Virtual | ||
Machine], plus various modules, documentation, and other resources | ||
collected from the Perl 6 community. | ||
|
||
[release 2013.09]: | ||
https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/announce/2013.09.md | ||
[Rakudo Perl 6 compiler]: http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo | ||
[Parrot Virtual Machine]: http://parrot.org | ||
|
||
Some of the new features added to this release include: | ||
|
||
+ candidate argument to bless removed (per spec change) | ||
+ @a.VAR.name and %h.VAR.name implemented | ||
+ The $var.++ and $var.() syntaxes work | ||
+ tr/// implemented | ||
+ Sockets on JVM implemented | ||
+ Sets/Bags/KeySet/KeyBag now up to spec, except for the empty set symbol '∅' | ||
|
||
This release also contains a range of bug fixes, improvements to error | ||
reporting and better failure modes. | ||
|
||
Please note that this release of Rakudo Star does not support the JVM | ||
backend from the Rakudo compiler. While the JVM backend mostly implements | ||
the same features as the Parrot backend, many small IO bits are still | ||
missing, rendering some crucial parts like the module installer unusable. | ||
We hope to provide a JVM-based Rakudo Star release soon. | ||
|
||
The following features have been deprecated or modified from previous | ||
releases due to changes in the Perl 6 specification, and are planned | ||
to be removed or changed as follows: | ||
|
||
* `postcircumfix:<[ ]>` and `postcircumfix:<{ }>` will become | ||
multi-subs rather than multi-methods *IN THE NEXT RELEASE* of Rakudo | ||
Star. Both at_pos and at_key will remain methods. | ||
|
||
* All unary hyper ops currently descend into nested arrays and | ||
hashes. In the future, those operators and methods that are | ||
defined "nodal" will behave like a one-level map. | ||
|
||
* The Str.ucfirst builtin is deprecated; it will be replaced by | ||
Str.tc. In the next Rakudo Star release, use of Str.ucfirst will actually | ||
generate a warning upon first usage. | ||
|
||
* Leading whitespace in rules and under :sigspace will no longer be | ||
converted to `<.ws>`. For existing regexes that expect this | ||
conversion, add a `<?>` in front of leading whitespace to make it | ||
meta again. | ||
|
||
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 | ||
* threads and concurrency | ||
* Unicode strings at levels other than codepoints | ||
* interactive readline that understands Unicode | ||
* non-blocking I/O | ||
* much 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 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 <http://perl6.org/> for links to much more information about | ||
Perl 6, including documentation, example code, tutorials, reference | ||
materials, specification documents, and other supporting resources. A | ||
draft of a Perl 6 book is available as docs/UsingPerl6-draft.pdf 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. |