Move skel/ into top-level directory, to try building directly from the repo.

1 files changed, 157 insertions, 27 deletions

diff --git a/README b/README
index faa2aa7..2194532 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,35 +1,165 @@
-Rakudo Star -- a useful, usable, "early adopter" distribution of Perl 6
+This is Rakudo Star, a useful, usable Perl 6 distribution for "early adopters".
 
-Rakudo Star is a distribution of Perl 6 aimed at early adopters.
-This git repository isn't the distribution itself; the repository
-contains the tools and scripts used to create a distribution.
+This is the 2012.08 release of Rakudo Star.
 
-If you're looking to simply download and run the latest release
-of Rakudo Star, please download a .tar.gz file from
-http://github.com/rakudo/star/downloads .
+Rakudo Star is Copyright (C) 2010 - 2012 by the Rakudo Star Team.
 
-If you're still reading this, we assume you're a Rakudo Star
-release manager, or someone that is looking to create new
-Perl 6 distributions based on the tools here.  Run 
-"make VERSION=yyyy.mm" to populate a distribution image
-into the rakudo-star-yyyy.mm/ directory.
+License Information
+-------------------
+Rakudo Star is distributed under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0.
+This distribution contains software collected from other sources; see the
+individual source subdirectories (in parrot/, rakudo/, and modules/) for
+copyright and licensing information of those components.
 
-The build system assumes that you have the following tools available:
 
-    * perl
-    * make
-    * git
-    * wget
-    * cp
-    * find
-    * tar
-    * touch
+Build Prerequisites
+-------------------
+To build Rakudo Star you need at least a C compiler, a 'make' utility,
+and Perl 5.8.4 or newer.  You probably also want a machine with a fair
+amount of memory available: 1GB is known to be too small for building 
+Rakudo, while 1.5GB is generally known to be sufficient.
 
-See <https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/wiki/What's-going-into-Rakudo-*%3F> for a list
-of modules we want included in the distribution.
+In order to fully support Unicode, you'll also want to have the
+ICU library installed (http://site.icu-project.org/).
+Rakudo can run without ICU, but some Unicode-related features
+will not work properly.
 
-The skel/ directory contains the basic layout of documentation and
-other support files, other components are then populated into
-the target directory via the make command above.
+On Debian GNU/Linux or Ubuntu Linux, the necessary components
+for building Rakudo can be installed via the command
+
+    aptitude install build-essential libicu-dev
+
+Readline support also requires the "libreadline-dev" library.
+
+On RedHat/Fedora/CentOS, the components can be installed with
+
+    yum groupinstall development-tools
+    yum install libicu-devel readline-devel
+
+
+Building Rakudo Star
+--------------------
+The basic steps to build Rakudo Star are:
+
+    $ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot
+    $ make
+    $ make install
+
+This will build a Perl 6 executable and install selected
+Perl 6 modules into the install/ subdirectory, which resides
+inside the source archive directory. Running make install
+will *not* install anything into /usr/local. Programs can
+then be run directly using a command like:
+
+    $ ./perl6 hello.pl
+
+Programs can also be run by adding the "install/bin" directory
+to your PATH environment variable.
+
+The "--gen-parrot" option above tells Configure.pl to automatically
+build and install the version of Parrot that is distributed with 
+Rakudo Star.  The "--prefix=" option can be provided to Configure.pl
+to change the location of the install directory.
+
+If your system already has an installed Parrot, Configure.pl will
+look for "parrot_config" in your execution PATH, or the location
+of parrot_config can be explicitly provided to Configure.pl via
+the "--parrot_config" option:
+
+    $ perl Configure.pl --parrot-config=/path/to/bin/parrot_config
+
+If the Rakudo compiler is invoked without an explicit script to
+run, it enters a small interactive mode that allows Perl 6 statements
+to be executed from the command line.
+
+
+Running the Perl 6 test suite
+-----------------------------
+Entering "make rakudo-test" will run a small test suite that comes
+bundled with Rakudo.  This is a simple suite of tests, designed
+to make sure that the Rakudo compiler is basically working and that
+it's capable of running a simple test harness.
+
+Running "make spectest" in the rakudo/ subdirectory  will import 
+the official Perl 6 test suite from the roast repository 
+(https://github.com/perl6/roast/) and run all of these tests 
+that are currently known to pass.
+
+If you want to automatically submit the results of your spectest run
+to a central server, use 'make spectest_smolder' instead. You need
+the Perl 5 module 'TAP::Harness::Archive' and an active internet
+connection for that.
+
+For more details about running tests, see rakudo/README .
+
+
+Release information
+-------------------
+Information about the current release is placed in the docs/
+directory, here is a brief overview:
+
+    docs/cheatsheet.txt   —   Perl 6 cheat sheet
+    docs/announce/        —   detailed release announcements
+
+
+Where to get help or answers to questions
+-----------------------------------------
+The http://perl6.org/ website contains a great many links to
+resources for Perl 6 development, and is generally the starting
+point for information about Perl 6.
+
+There are several mailing lists, IRC channels, and wikis available
+with help for Perl 6 and Rakudo on Parrot.  Figuring out the right
+one to use is often the biggest battle.  Here are some rough
+guidelines:
+
+If you have a question about Perl 6 syntax or the right way to
+approach a problem using Perl 6, you probably want the
+perl6-users@perl.org mailing list.  This list is primarily
+for the people who want to use Perl 6 to write programs, as
+opposed to those who are implementing or developing the Perl 6
+language itself.
+
+Questions about the Rakudo compiler for Parrot and the Parrot compiler 
+tools can go to perl6-compiler@perl.org.  Discussion about Parrot itself 
+generally takes place on parrot-dev@lists.parrot.org.
+
+The Rakudo and Parrot development teams tend to hang out on IRC a fair
+bit, on irc.freenode.net/#perl6 and irc.parrot.org/#parrot, respectively.
+
+Rakudo's official web site is http://rakudo.org/ , where you can
+find useful information for developers and users alike. 
+
+
+Reporting bugs
+--------------
+Bug reports about Rakudo Star or the Perl 6 specification should be 
+sent to rakudobug@perl.org with the moniker [BUG] (including the brackets) 
+at the start of the subject so that it gets appropriately tagged in the 
+RT system (https://rt.perl.org/rt3/).  Please include or attach any sample 
+source code that exhibits the bug, and include either the release name/date 
+or the git commit identifier. You find that information in the output from
+"perl6 --version".  There's no need to Cc: the perl6-compiler
+mailing list, as the RT system will handle this on its own.
+
+
+Submitting patches
+------------------
+Patches to the Rakudo compiler itself should be submitted to
+'rakudobug@perl.org'.  Patches for individual modules should be
+submitted to the module authors (see the module source code for
+details).
+
+We'll generally accept patches in any form if we can get them to work,
+but unified diff from the 'git' command is greatly preferred.
+See further instructions in the rakudo/ subdirectory for more details.
+Other ways to create and submit patches are discussed at
+http://wiki.github.com/rakudo/rakudo/steps-to-create-a-patch.
+
+AUTHOR
+------
+Patrick Michaud (pmichaud@pobox.com) is the primary author and
+maintainer for Rakudo Star. See docs/CREDITS for further Rakudo
+Star authors, and */CREDITS for authors of other collected
+components.
 
-To create a candidate release tarball, try "make release VERSION=yyyy.mm".