[Purdue-pm] new release of Perl 6

[Mark Senn]

Purdue Perl Mongers,

I thought I was happy with Perl 5.  Now that I've used Perl 6 I don't
want to use Perl 5 again.  A new development version of Perl 6 has been
released.  The Perl 6 developers hope to release Perl 6 version 1.0
before Christmas.  As anybody who writes software knows, sometimes
unexpected delays happen in software development.  That's why it is
called the "Christmas" instead of Christmas release below.

The Purdue Perl Mongers plans to have a Perl 6 release party at our
regular meeting in January with cake, some swag, etc., along with
the normal talk(s).

Mark Senn



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Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 08:43:29 -0500
Subject: Announce: Rakudo Perl 6_compiler, Development Release "Bend"
From: Will Coleda <will at coleda.com>
To: "perl6-compiler at perl.org" <perl6-compiler at perl.org>

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m very happy to announce
the November 2015 release of Rakudo Perl 6 #93 “Bend”. Rakudo is an
implementation of Perl 6 on the Moar Virtual Machine[^1] and the Java
Virtual Machine.

This is the final pre-Christmas release of Rakudo Perl 6. It’s the
second release candidate/beta of the compiler for the anticipated 6.0
“Christmas” release.

The “Christmas” release will occur on or about 17 December 2015,
assuming no critical bugs are found between now and then. Please try
the release, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

The tarball for this release is available from
<http://rakudo.org/downloads/rakudo/>.

Please note: This announcement is not for the Rakudo Star
distribution[^2] --- it’s announcing a new release of the compiler
only. For the latest Rakudo Star release, see
<http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/>.

The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each
release named after a Perl Mongers group. This month’s release is
named after the Bend chapter, because we’re nearly around the bend
with the upcoming
Christmas release.

Some of the changes in this release are outlined below:

New in 2015.11:
   + Initial shaped array support
   + \r\n (Carriage Return/LineFeed) is now a single (synthetic) grapheme
   + Unicode support adheres to Unicode Annex #29
   + Unicode quotes are now also allowed in regular expressions
   + Improved newline support with "use newline" and updates to IO::Handle
   + Added List.head, List.tail, List.repeated methods
   + Str.encode now allows :replacement parameter for unencodable sequences
   + Str.split now accepts multiple strings to split on
   + New Range.int-bounds returns first/last value for integer ranges
   + Auto-generated meta-ops vivified by referring to them, instead of executing
   + Illegal assignment of different Numeric values now caught at compile time
   + &nextcallee implemented, which returns the routine that nextsame
would invoke
   + Many speedups

These are only some of the changes in this release. For a more
detailed list, 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 the
design docs, the Perl 6 test suite, MoarVM and the specification.

The following people contributed to this release:

Jonathan Worthington, Elizabeth Mattijsen, Larry Wall, Pawel Murias,
Will "Coke" Coleda, Christian Bartolomäus, Pepe Schwarz, Timo
Paulssen, Tobias Leich, Mike Francis, Nicholas Clark, Dagfinn Ilmari
Mannsåker, Moritz Lenz, Steve Mynott, Jens Rehsack, cygx, Stefan
Seifert, Jimmy Zhuo, Nick Logan, Lucas Buchala, Zoffix Znet, Donald
Hunter, Lloyd Fournier, Ronald Schmidt, Bart Wiegmans, Tomasz
Konojacki, Sterling Hanenkamp, Vladimir Lettiev, Faye Niemeyer,
johnspurr, Tim Smith, Rob Hoelz, grondilu

If you would like to contribute or find out more information, visit
<http://perl6.org>, <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 (#94), is tentatively scheduled for 17
December 2015. Because that release will correspond with the Perl 6
Christmas version of the specification, we may end up delaying the
release to insure the best possible release, but we will release by
the 25th at the latest.

A list of the other planned release dates and code names for future
releases is available in the “docs/release_guide.pod” file.

The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do
get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements,
cool discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback -- get in
touch with us through (the above-mentioned) mailing list or IRC
channel. Enjoy!

[^1]: See <http://moarvm.org/>

[^2]: What’s the difference between the Rakudo compiler and the Rakudo
Star distribution?

The Rakudo compiler is a compiler for the Perl 6 language. Not much more.

The Rakudo Star distribution is the Rakudo compiler plus a selection
of useful Perl 6 modules, a module installer, the most recent
incarnation of the “Using Perl 6” book, and other software that can be
used with the Rakudo compiler to enhance 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.

-- 
Will "Coke" Coleda