Check it out!<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Jonathan Scott Duff</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:perlpilot@gmail.com">perlpilot@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:07 AM<br>Subject: Rakudo Perl 6 development release #22 ("Thousand Oaks")<br>To: <a href="mailto:perl6-announce@perl.org">perl6-announce@perl.org</a><br>Cc: <a href="mailto:perl6-language@perl.org">perl6-language@perl.org</a>, <a href="mailto:perl6-users@perl.org">perl6-users@perl.org</a><br>
<br><br>Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 development release #22 ("Thousand Oaks")<br>
<br>
On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm pleased to announce the<br>
October 2009 development release of Rakudo Perl #22 "Thousand Oaks".<br>
Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual Machine<br>
(see <a href="http://www.parrot.org" target="_blank">http://www.parrot.org</a>). The tarball for the October 2009 release<br>
is available from <a href="http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads" target="_blank">http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads</a><br>
<br>
Due to the continued rapid pace of Rakudo development and the frequent<br>
addition of new Perl 6 features and bugfixes, we recommend building Rakudo<br>
from the latest source, available from the main repository at github.<br>
More details are available at <a href="http://rakudo.org/how-to-get-rakudo" target="_blank">http://rakudo.org/how-to-get-rakudo</a>.<br>
<br>
Rakudo Perl follows a monthly release cycle, with each release code<br>
named after a Perl Mongers group. The October 2009 is code named<br>
"Thousand Oaks" for their amazing Perl 6 hackathon, their report at<br>
<a href="http://www.lowlevelmanager.com/2009/09/perl-6-hackathon.html" target="_blank">http://www.lowlevelmanager.com/2009/09/perl-6-hackathon.html</a>, and<br>
just because I like the name :-)<br>
<br>
Since the 2009-08 release, Rakudo Perl builds from an installed Parrot<br>
instead of using Parrot's build tree. This means that, unlike previous<br>
versions of Rakudo Perl, the "perl6" (or "perl6.exe") executables only<br>
work when invoked from the Rakudo root directory until a "make install"<br>
is performed. Running "make install" will install Rakudo and its<br>
libraries into the Parrot installation that was used to build it, and<br>
then the executables will work when invoked from any directory.<br>
<br>
This release of Rakudo requires Parrot 1.7.0.<br>
<br>
For the latest information on building and using Rakudo Perl, see the<br>
readme file section titled "Building and invoking Rakudo". (Quick note:<br>
the "--gen-parrot" option still automatically downloads and builds<br>
Parrot as before, if you prefer that approach.)<br>
<br>
Some of the specific changes and improvements occuring with this<br>
release include:<br>
<br>
* Rakudo is now passing 32,582 spectests, an increase of 17,085 passing<br>
tests since the September 2009 release. With this release Rakudo is<br>
now passing 85.0% of the available spectest suite.<br>
<br>
* We have a huge increase in the number of spectests relating to the<br>
Complex and Rat numeric types.<br>
<br>
* Complex numbers are now implemented as a Perl 6 class, and supports all<br>
trigonometric functions from the specification.<br>
<br>
* Rakudo has a new signature binder which makes calling routines<br>
and operators much faster, and allows binding of positional<br>
arguments by name.<br>
<br>
* Rakudo has improved signature introspection, better errors relating to<br>
signatures and signature literals are now supported.<br>
<br>
* Rakudo now supports accessing outer lexical variables from classes and<br>
packages.<br>
<br>
* Some new variants of the series operator are now implemented.<br>
<br>
* When configuring Rakudo with --gen-parrot, the --optimize flag is now<br>
passed to Parrot's Configure.pl<br>
<br>
The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for<br>
making Rakudo Perl possible. If you would like to contribute,<br>
see <a href="http://rakudo.org/how-to-help" target="_blank">http://rakudo.org/how-to-help</a> , ask on the <a href="mailto:perl6-compiler@perl.org">perl6-compiler@perl.org</a><br>
mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on freenode.<br>
<br>
The next release of Rakudo (#23) is scheduled for November 19, 2009.<br>
A list of the other planned release dates and codenames for 2009 is<br>
available in the "docs/release_guide.pod" file. In general, Rakudo<br>
development releases are scheduled to occur two days after each<br>
Parrot monthly release. Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month.<br>
<br>
Have fun!<br>
<br>
<br>
-Scott<br>
<font color="#888888">--<br>
Jonathan Scott Duff<br>
<a href="mailto:perlpilot@gmail.com">perlpilot@gmail.com</a><br>
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