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+# Announce: Rakudo Star Release 2016.11
+
+## A useful and usable production distribution of Perl 6
+
+On behalf of the Rakudo and Perl 6 development teams, I'm pleased to
+announce the November 2016 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable
+production distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the November 2016 release
+is available from <http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/>.
+
+This is the fifth post-Christmas (production) release of Rakudo Star and
+implements Perl v6.c. It comes with support for the MoarVM backend (all
+module tests pass on supported platforms).
+
+Please note that this release of Rakudo Star is not fully functional with
+the JVM backend from the Rakudo compiler. Please use the MoarVM backend
+only.
+
+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 2016.11] of the [Rakudo Perl 6 compiler],
+version 2016.11 of [MoarVM], plus various modules, documentation, and
+other resources collected from the Perl 6 community.
+
+[release 2016.11]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rakudo/rakudo/2016.11/docs/announce/2016.11.md
+[Rakudo Perl 6 compiler]: http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo
+[MoarVM]: http://moarvm.org/
+
+
+The changes in this release are outlined below:
+
+New in 2016.11:
+ + Fixes:
+    + Various improvements to warning/error-reporting
+    + Fixed assigning values to shaped arrays through iterators [839c762]
+    + Fixed Str.Int not failing on numerics with combining characters [d540fc8]
+    + [JVM] Fixed <a b c>.antipairs breakage [dd7b055]
+    + defined routine now correctly authothreads with Junctions [189cb23]
+    + Fixed poor randomness when .pick()ing on ranges with >32-bit numbers [34e515d]
+    + Fixed infix:<x> silencing Failures [2dd0ddb]
+    + Fixed edge case in is-approx that triggers DivByZero exception [f7770ed]
+    + (Windows) Fixed returning of an error even when succeeding in mkdir [208a4c2]
+    + (Windows) Fixed precomp unable to rename a newly compiled file [44a4c75]
+    + (Test.pm) Fixed indent of multi-line diag() and test failure messages [43dbc96]
+    + Fixed a callframe crash due to boxing of NULL filenames [200364a]
+    + ∞ ≅ ∞ now gives True [4f3681b]
+    + Fixed oversharing with grammars used by multiple threads [7a456ff]
+    + Fixed incorrect calculations performed by acotan(num) [8e9fd0a]
+    + Fixed incorrect calculations performed by asinh(num)/acosh(num) [a7e801f]
+    + Fixed acosh return values for large negative numbers [5fe8cf7]
+    + asinh(-∞) now returns -∞ instead of NaN [74d0e36]
+    + atanh(1) now returns ∞ instead of throwing [906719c][66726e8]
+    + Fixed missing close in IO::Path.slurp(:bin) [697a0ae]
+    + :U QuantHashes now auto-vivify to their correct type and not Hash [79bb867]
+    + Mix/MixHash.Bag/BagHash coersion now ignores negative weights [87bba04]
+    + arity-0 infix:<Z> now returns a Seq instead of a List [3fdae43]
+    + Fix augment of a nested package [87880ca]
+    + Smartmatch with Regex variable now returns a Match instead of Bool [5ac593e]
+    + Empty ()[0] now returns Nil instead of False [f50e39b]
+    + Failed IO::Socket::Async connection no longer produces unexpected crash [f50e39b]
+    + Quitting Supplies with no QUIT phasers no longer unexpectedly crash [f50e39b]
+    + Fixed NativeCall issues on big endian machines [627a77e]
+    + Fixed broken handling of $/ in some uses of `.match` [ba152bd]
+    + Fixed Lock.protect not releasing the lock on control exceptions [48c2af6]
+    + MoarVM now builds on any version of macOS [b4dfed2]
+    + Fixed concurrency crashes due to garbage collection [6dc5074]
+    + Fixed race condition in EmptyIterator [ed2631c]
+    + Fixed hang with multi-threaded long-running NativeCall calls [f99d958]
+    + Made my @a[10] = ^Inf work [aedb8e7]
+    + Fixed [;]:delete [3b9c4c9]
+    + Fixed incorrect handling of negative weights in ∪ operator [e10f767]
+    + duckmap now preserves types of Iterables [43cb55f]
+    + Fixed premature overflow to Inf with large Num literals [729d7e3]
+    + Fixed race condition in NativeCall callsite used by multiple threads [49fd825]
+    + Fixed instabilities in programs launching many threads at startup [0134132]
+    + Fixed crash when reporting X::Composition::NotComposable or
+        X::Inheritance::Unsupported exceptions [a822bcf]
+    + Fixed clock_gettime issue on macOS [ee8ae92]
+    + Fixed SEGV in multi-threaded programs with strings-as-strands [395f369]
+    + `regex` TOP Grammar rule will now backtrack if needed [4ccb2f3]
+    + Fixed .rotate/.reverse on 1-dimmed arrays assigning to self [2d56751]
+    + Fixed exponentiation involving zeros for Complex numbers [7f32243]
+    + Fixed Label.gist [29db214][53d7b72]
+    + Fixed certain edge cases of incorrect stringification of Rationals
+        with .Str, .perl, and .base [b5aa3c5]
+ + Additions:
+    + Added TWEAK submethod for object construction [fdc90a2][9409d68]
+    + Added DateTime.hh-mm-ss [bf51eca]
+    + Added parse-base routine [7e21a24]
+    + is-approx with no explicit tolerances now uses more complex algorithm to
+        choose a tolerance to use (same as old is_approx) [82432a4]
+    + on failure, is-approx now displays actual values received [b4fe680]
+    + Added Iterator.skip-one to skip a single value [71a01e9]
+    + Added Iterator.skip-at-least to skip several values [8d357af]
+    + Re-imagined Str.match [b7201a8]:
+        + the family of :nth is now lazy will return whatever can find
+        + non-monotonically increasing :nth iterator values will now die
+    + Str.match/subst/subst-mutate now have :as adverb [1b95636][c9a24d9][aaec517]
+    + &infix:<eqv> now works with Setty objects [d92e1ad]
+    + :ov and :ex adverbs are now illegal in Str.subst [b90c741]
+    + Made nextwith/samewith/nextsame/callwith to be real subroutines [70a367d]
+    + Added CX::Emit and CX::Done control exceptions [07eeea8]
+    + Setty.Mix/.MixHash coercers now use Int weights instead of Bool [7ba7eb4]
+    + Implemented :kv,:p,:k,:v on 1-element multidim [;] [764cfcd]
+    + .chrs can now also accepts codepoint numbers as Str [4ae3f23]
+    + Added support for compilation of Rakudo on Solaris [a43b0c1]
+    + IterationEnd.perl/gist/Str now returns text "IterationEnd" [59bb1b1]
+    + Added X::Syntax::Number::InvalidCharacter exception [2faa55b]
+    + .reverse/rotate on 1-dimmed arrays are now nodal [cd765e6]
+    + .line and .file on core Code now references original source files [b068e3a]
+    + .rethrow now works on unthrown exceptions [58a4826]
+    + All Reals now accept `Whatever` as the second argument to .base() [c1d2599]
+    + sub MAIN usage message shows possible Enum values if param is
+        named and is an Enum [a3be654]
+ + Efficiency:
+    + Made slip(@a) about 1.2x faster [37d0e46]
+    + Made initialization of 2+dimmed array 10x to 16x faster [dfb58d4]
+    + Str.match is now about 5% faster [4fc17df]
+    + Str.match with :nth feature is now about 2x faster [41e2572]
+    + my @a = Str.match(...) is now about 5% faster [e472420]
+    + Str.comb(Regex) is now about 7x faster [1794328]
+    + Simple Str.subst/subst-mutate is now about 30% faster [364e67b]
+    + Match.Str|prematch|postmatch is now about 2x faster [e65d931]
+    + Match.Bool is now about 1% faster (not much, but used a lot) [1fce095]
+    + Made ~~ /foo/ faster: 2% for successful/6% for failed matches [05b65d0]
+    + Made <foo bar baz> ~~ /foo/ about 2x faster [e4dc8b6]
+    + Made %h ~~ /foo/ about 2x faster [33eeb32]
+    + Frequent accesses of multiple adverbs (e.g. %h<a>:p:exists)
+        is now 2x faster [f22f894]
+    + Made infix:<eqv> faster: Str: 14x, type: 10x, Range: 3.5x,
+        Int|Seq|Hash: 1.5x, Array: 1.2x [bc7fcc6]
+    + IO::Spec::Unix.canonpath is now 7x to 50x faster [f3f00fb]
+    + Baggy.roll/pick is now about 10% faster [fc47bbf]
+    + Made copying shaped arrays 10x to 20x faster [a1d8e93][0cf7b36][d27ecfa]
+    + Made setting up a shaped array 2x as fast [f06e4c3]
+    + Made creation of typed shaped arrays 15% faster [f5bf6c1]
+    + Made 2d/3d array accesses about 7x as fast [d3a0907]
+    + Made AT-POS on 1,2,3dim arrays about 20x faster [feb7bcb]
+    + Made creating a shaped array about 50% faster [1293188][576f3a1]
+    + Made .AT-POS on 3+ dimmed arrays 20% faster [1bb5aad]
+    + Made over-indexed .AT-POS on 1,2,3 dimmed arrays about 10% faster [1bb5aad]
+    + Made multi-dimmed ASSIGN-POS about 30% faster [5b2bdeb]
+    + Made .ASSIGN-POS for 1,2,3dimmed arrays about 40x faster [050cf72]
+    + Made n-dimmed .EXISTS-POS about 1.5x faster [006f008]
+    + Made .EXISTS-POS for 1,2,3dimmed arrays about 10x faster [b1c41b7]
+    + Made n-dimmed DELETE-POS about 1.3x faster [6ccecb1]
+    + Made .DELETE-POS for 1,2,3dimmed arrays about 20x faster [55b9e90]
+    + Made n-dimmed BIND-POS about 1.3x faster [2827edb]
+    + Made .BIND-POS for 1,2,3dimmed arrays about 20x faster [9f94525]
+    + Made @a[10].STORE at least as fast as @a.STORE [8064ff1]
+    + Made .kv on shaped Arrays about 4x faster [e42b68e]
+    + Made .pairs/.antipairs on shaped Arrays about 2.8x faster [0f2566a][f608a33]
+    + Made List.kv about 30% faster [7a2baf4]
+    + for loops on 1-dimmed arrays are now 3x faster [ed36e60]
+    + .kv on 1-dimmed arrays is now 7x faster [608de26]
+    + .pairs/.antipairs on 1-dimmed arrays is now 3x faster [b7d9537][1c425f9]
+    + postcircumfix[;] on 2/3 dimmed arrays is now 9x faster [0b97362]
+    + Assignment to [;] for 2/3 dimmed arrays is now 10x faster [ce85ba3]
+    + [;]:exists for 2/3 dimmed arrays is now 7x faster [e3e3fef]
+    + [;]:delete for 2/3 dimmed arrays is now 10x faster [3b9c4c9]
+    + [;] := foo for 2/3 dimmed arrays is now 10x faster [eaf4132]
+    + .iterator and .values on shaped arrays are now about 4x faster [736ab11]
+    + Fixed optimization of shaped arrays that gives 10% gain on simple `for`
+        loops and likely will give larger gains on bigger programs [b7e632e]
+    + Made starting MappyIterator faster, affecting all Hash/Map/Baggy iterator
+        methods. 2-elem Hash iteration is 1.6x faster [97fb6c2]
+    + Made starting a grepper faster: .grep on with no adverbs on 2-element list
+        is now 20% faster [077c8f0]
+    + Made Date/DateTime creation 20% faster [0e7f480]
+    + Hashes now use 4 (32-bit) or 8 (64-bit) bytes less memory per stored item  [395f369]
+    + Rational.Str is now about 40% faster [b5aa3c5]
+    + Rational.base is now about 30% faster [b5aa3c5]
+    + Various streamlining of code that's hard to measure the final impact of
+
+Notable changes in modules shipped with Rakudo Star:
+
+    + DBIish: Prepare tests for lexical module loading and do not rely on your dependencies to load modules
+    + Pod-To-HTML: Bump version and use a separate element as anchor for "to top" links
+    + Terminal-ANSIColor: Update Pod documentation and support 256-color and 24-bit RGB modes
+    + doc: Large number of changes - too many to detail here
+    + json_fast: Incredible speed gains
+    + panda: Explicitly use Panda::Project as we use it in class Panda
+    + perl6-lwp-simple: Change to http.perl6.org since the main site is going https and add NO_NETWORK_TESTING
+    + perl6-pod-to-bigpage: add dep IO::Socket::SSL
+
+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:
+
+  * advanced macros
+  * non-blocking I/O (in progress)
+  * some bits of Synopsis 9 and 11
+
+There is an online resource at <http://perl6.org/compilers/features>
+that lists the known implemented and missing features of Rakudo's
+backends 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, presentations,
+reference materials, design documents, and other supporting resources.
+Some Perl 6 tutorials are available under the "docs" directory 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.