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+Announce: Rakudo Star - 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 February 2012 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and
+usable distribution of Perl 6.  The tarball for the February 2012
+release is available from <http://github.com/rakudo/star/downloads>.
+
+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 #49 of the
+Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 4.1 of the Parrot Virtual
+Machine [2], and various modules, documentation, and other
+resources collected from the Perl 6 community.
+
+Here are some of the major improvements in this release over the
+previous distribution release.
+
+* The FatRat type is implemneted, and Rat arithmetic now properly
+  defaults to Num if the denominator is too big
+
+* Object hashes are implemented, and can be declared with the syntax
+  my %h{Any} (for a hash with keys of type Any)
+
+* The <Some::Grammar::rulename> syntax is now implemented in regexes;
+  <foo> can also be used to call predeclared lexical rules
+
+* The Int($x) coercion syntax is implemented
+
+* &rename and &copy are now implemented
+
+* Improvements to the reduction meta-operator (order of magnitude faster,
+  some parsing issues fixed)
+
+* The <prior> regex built-in is now available, and matches whatever the
+  last successful match matched
+
+* A $match.make(...) method is available to set the AST for a match
+  object not stored in the $/ variable
+
+* Improved backtraces
+
+This release also contains a range of bug fixes, improvements to error
+reporting and better failure modes. Many more exceptions are thrown
+as typed exceptions.
+
+Due to continued evolution of and convergence with the Perl 6 spec, there
+are some changes to existing functionality that may affect your code:
+
+* You may no longer use the $.x form in submethods and attribute
+  initializers, as per spec; use the non-virtual $!x instead.
+
+* The LHS of the xx operator is now thunked
+
+* .conjugate is now called .conj
+
+* Enumeration values .gist to just the key, not the full name
+
+* An empty Buf is now False in boolean context
+
+Currently, we have maintained backwards compatibility with some
+changed pieces of syntax, but will drop them in an upcoming release:
+
+* "<...>" in proto regex bodies; now this should be written "*"
+
+* The use of "**" with a separator in regexes; this is now done by
+  using "%" or "%%" on another quantifier
+  
+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:
+  * pack and unpack
+  * macros
+  * threads and concurrency
+  * Unicode strings at levels other than codepoints
+  * pre and post constraints, and some other phasers
+  * interactive readline that understands Unicode
+  * non-blocking I/O
+  * much of Synopsis 9
+
+There is a new online resource at http://perl6.org/compilers/features 
+that lists the known implemented and missing features of Rakudo Star
+2012.02 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.
+An updated 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.
+
+[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo
+[2] http://parrot.org/