SPUG: Rakudo Perl 6 release 21 ("Seattle")

[jerry gay]

thanks all, for your support.

i'd love for you to give rakudo a try, if you haven't already.  sure,
it only passes 15k+ tests, but heck, for small, everyday
problem-solving, that's kinda a lot.  i'd really love to see more
local folks give rakudo a try, and let me and the other devs know what
you think.  heck, it's not even that hard to become a rakudo
developer, you can write the source for the operators in perl 6.

i was really hoping to do a practice release live last tuesday night,
and announce that i intended to name the september release after the
emerald city, but i didn't get my shit together in time for a meeting
(and neither did anyone else, for that matter).  hope to see you all
next month, and hear live and in person about your experience with the
seattle release of rakudo.

~jerry

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 21:23, Andrew Sweger <andrew at sweger.net> wrote:
> Wow. I didn't expect this (I mean I expected the release, just not the
> naming it "Seattle"):
>
> particle writes
>
>> On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm pleased to announce the
>> September 2009 development release of Rakudo Perl #21 "Seattle".
>> Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual Machine.
>> The tarball for the September 2009 release is available from
>> http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads .
>>
>> Due to the continued rapid pace of Rakudo development and the frequent
>> addition of new Perl 6 features and bugfixes, we recommend building
>> Rakudo from the latest source, available from the main repository at
>> github. More details are available at
>> http://rakudo.org/how-to-get-rakudo.
>>
>> Rakudo Perl follows a monthly release cycle, with each release code
>> named after a Perl Mongers group. September 2009 is code named
>> "Seattle" for the enthusiasm they have shown for Perl 6 during monthly
>> meetings, and the feedback, encouragement and support given me for the
>> past several years.
>>
>> Since the 2009-08 release, Rakudo Perl builds from an "installed
>> Parrot" instead of using Parrot's build tree. This release of Rakudo
>> requires Parrot 1.6.0. For the latest information on building and
>> using Rakudo Perl, see the README file section titled "Building and
>> invoking Rakudo". (Quick note: the "--gen-parrot" option still
>> automatically downloads and builds Parrot as before, if you prefer
>> that approach.)
>>
>> Also, unlike previous versions of Rakudo Perl, the "perl6" (or
>> "perl6.exe") executables only work when invoked from the Rakudo root
>> directory until a "make install" is performed. Running "make install"
>> will install Rakudo and its libraries into the Parrot installation
>> that was used to build it, and then the executables will work when
>> invoked from any directory.
>>
>> Some of the specific major changes and improvements occuring with this
>> release include:
>>
>> * Rakudo is now passing 15,497 spectests, an increase of 3,128 passing
>>   tests since the August 2009 release. With this release Rakudo is now
>>   passing 71.5% of the available spectest suite.
>>
>> * Rakudo now supports contextual variables.
>>
>> * Rakudo now supports the rational (Rat) data type.
>>
>> * Rakudo now supports overloading of many of the builtin operators,
>>   many of which are now defined in the core setting. Many have also
>>   been improved to be more faithful to the specification with respect
>>   to types and coercions.
>>
>> * Substantially improved support for trait handling. Most of the "built-
>>   in" traits are now defined in the core setting.
>>
>> * The %*ENV variable now works properly for modifying the process
>>   environment.
>>
>> Since the Perl 6 specification is still in flux, some deprecated
>> features have been removed from Rakudo. Prominently among those are:
>>
>> * '=$handle' is deprecated in favor of '$handle.get' (one line) and
>>   '$handle.lines' (all lines).
>>
>> * 'int $obj' is deprecated in favor of '$obj.Int'.
>>
>> The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for
>> making Rakudo Perl possible. If you would like to contribute, see
>> http://rakudo.org/how-to-help , ask on the perl6-compiler at perl.org
>> mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on freenode.
>>
>> The next release of Rakudo (#22) is scheduled for October 22, 2009. A
>> list of the other planned release dates and codenames for 2009 is
>> available in the "docs/release_guide.pod" file. In general, Rakudo
>> development releases are scheduled to occur two days after each Parrot
>> monthly release. Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month.
>>
>> Have fun!
>
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