[Chicago-talk] Perl 6 on Parrot is now called Rakudo

[Andy Lester]

http://www.rakudo.org/2008/01/the-compiler-formerly-known-as.html

[Patrick Michaud explains the newly discovered name for the Perl 6 on  
Parrot project. -- Andy]

We've finally come up with a name for the Perl 6 on Parrot compiler,  
it's now "Rakudo Perl", or just "Rakudo" for short. This name was  
suggested by Damian Conway -- he writes:

     Some years ago, Con Wei Sensei introduced a new martial art: "The  
Way Of The Camel". Or, in Japanese: "Rakuda-do". This name quickly  
became abbreviated to "Rakudo", which happens to mean "paradise" in  
Japanese.

     Perhaps "rakudo" would suit, since:

         *
         * "Of The Camel" clearly connotes Perl
         * Perl on Parrot is definitely the Way
         * The name meets Hugo's Obscurity-for-Search criterion (at  
least for non-Japanese-language searches)
         * It's nevertheless a real word (in one language)
         * It may help us steal back mindshare from Ruby in its home  
market

For the time being Rakudo will continue to live in the languages/ 
perl6/ subdirectory of the Parrot repository, and we'll continue to  
build the bytecode and executable as perl6.pbc and perl6(.exe). My  
current expectation is that someday Rakudo will live in its own  
repository separate from Parrot, and we can decide then if any file  
renaming needs to take place.

So, we're now at the point where we can say that the term "Perl 6"  
strictly refers to a language specification, while terms such as  
"Pugs", "Rakudo", and "kp6" refer to implementations of Perl 6.  
Hopefully this will reduce some confusion.

Several people have also inquired about a release numbering scheme for  
Rakudo. My current position on this topic is to postpone any decision  
until we start making releases that are separate from Parrot releases.  
I think a postponement here is especially appropriate since we're  
still in the "rapid expansion phase" of the implementation. In the  
meantime, whenever we need to reference a specific version of Rakudo  
we can use either a specific date or a subversion revision number from  
the Parrot repository.

Diggs appreciated: http://digg.com/programming/Perl_6_on_Parrot_is_now_known_as_Rakudo

Thanks,
xoxo,
Andy

--
Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance