From 27a8b2028b864130d0e0e9104e5a2ae15249c12b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: pmichaud Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:13:27 -0500 Subject: Add draft release announcement for 2012.09 . --- docs/announce/2012.09 | 100 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 100 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/announce/2012.09 diff --git a/docs/announce/2012.09 b/docs/announce/2012.09 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86e5694 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/announce/2012.09 @@ -0,0 +1,100 @@ +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 September 2012 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and +usable distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the September 2012 +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 2012.09 [0] of the +Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 4.8 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: + +* Basic macro support! + +* Support for Perl 5 (m:P5/.../) regex syntax! + +* Indirect type names in routine and type declarations are supported. + +* We now support the "is export" trait on constant declarations. + +* Str.wordcase is now implemented. + +* Compilation is now slightly faster than before. + +* Tie-breaking with constraints now selects the first matching + constraint rather than demanding mutual exclusion. + +This release also contains a range of bug fixes, improvements to error +reporting and better failure modes. More exceptions are thrown as typed +exceptions, and more meta-model errors have been fixed to properly +report line numbers. + +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: + +* Iterable is now a role instead of a class, and no longer inherits + from Cool. + +* Parameters preceded by a | or \ can no longer have a sigil. + +* IO::Path.dir (which returns the directory part of the path) has been + renamed to IO::Path.directory. IO::Path.dir will be removed or + re-purposed. + +* The Str.ucfirst builtin is deprecated; it will be replaced by Str.tc. + +* The (experimental) LAZY statement prefix will soon be removed. + +* 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 Star +2012.08 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/2012.09 +[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo +[2] http://parrot.org/ -- cgit v1.1