From 24eab1504974e7d6229373109b28bfb632056d2e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: jnthn Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:35:50 +0100 Subject: Add a 2013.01 release announcement. --- docs/announce/2013.01 | 97 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 97 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/announce/2013.01 diff --git a/docs/announce/2013.01 b/docs/announce/2013.01 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7864620 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/announce/2013.01 @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +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 January 2013 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and +usable distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the January 2013 +release is available from . +A Windows .MSI version of Rakudo star will usually appear in +the downloads area shortly after the tarball release. + +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 2013.01 [0] of the +Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 4.10.0 of the Parrot Virtual +Machine [2], and various modules, documentation, and other +resources collected from the Perl 6 community. + +Some of the new features added to this release include: + +* Sink context (what some other languages call void context) is now enforced + correctly. This means that for-loops are now lazy by default. It fixes the + bug where a map in sink context would not execute, and also means that a + Failure returned to sink context will be properly thrown. + +* 'require' now works with indirect module names + +* Restored socket read semantics to returning the requested number of bytes + +* $obj.Some::Role::meth() now passes the correct $obj + +* try/CATCH now returns Nil when the CATCH is triggered, rather than the + exception; this brings it in line with try without a CATCH + +* whatever-star cases of splice now implemented + +* can now import multis with the same name from different modules, + provided all dispatchers are onlystar + +This release also contains a range of bug fixes, improvements to error reporting +and better failure modes. + +The following features have been deprecated or modified from previous +releases due to changes in the Perl 6 specification, and are being removed +or changed as follows: + +* postcircumfix:<[ ]> and postcircumfix:<{ }> will become multi-subs rather + than multi-methods. Both at_pos and at_key will remain methods. + +* Unary hyper ops currently descend into nested arrays and hashes. + This will change to make them equivalent to a one-level map. + +* The Str.ucfirst builtin is deprecated; it will be replaced by Str.tc. + +* Leading whitespace in rules and under :sigspace will no longer be + converted to <.ws> . For existing regexes that expect this conversion, + add a in front of leading whitespace to make it meta again. + +* The ?-quantifier on captures in regexes currently binds the capture + slot to a List containing either zero or one Match objects; i.e., it + is equivalent to "** 0..1". In the future, the ?-quantifier will + bind the slot directly to a captured Match or to Nil. Existing code + can manage the transition by changing existing ?-quantifiers to + use "** 0..1", which will continue to return a List of matches. + +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 + * threads and concurrency + * Unicode strings at levels other than codepoints + * interactive readline that understands Unicode + * non-blocking I/O + * much of Synopsis 9 + +There is an online resource at http://perl6.org/compilers/features +that lists the known implemented and missing features of Rakudo +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 . + +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. +A draft of a Perl 6 book is available as +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 , ask on the perl6-compiler@perl.org +mailing list, or join us on IRC #perl6 on freenode. + +[0] https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/announce/2013.01 +[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo +[2] http://parrot.org/ -- cgit v1.1