From 68c7b810aac92c2e60290a608dac46a0e790dc6b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: jnthn Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:53:42 +0100 Subject: First draft of the 2012.01 release announcement for Star. --- skel/docs/announce/2012.01 | 122 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 122 insertions(+) create mode 100644 skel/docs/announce/2012.01 diff --git a/skel/docs/announce/2012.01 b/skel/docs/announce/2012.01 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4b95b4d --- /dev/null +++ b/skel/docs/announce/2012.01 @@ -0,0 +1,122 @@ +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 2012 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and +usable distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the January 2012 +release is available from . + +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 #48 of the +Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 4.0.0 of the Parrot Virtual +Machine [2], and various modules, documentation, and other +resources collected from the Perl 6 community. + +Significantly, this is the first distribution release based on the +"nom" (New Object Model) development branch of Rakudo. This work +has been carried out with the aim of increasing performance and +correctness, as well as providing a better base for taking on a +range of missing features. Here are some of the major improvements +in this release over the previous distribution release. + +* Greatly improved performance in many areas. For some scripts, this + release offers an order of magnitude performance improvement. + +* POD6 support, including the $=POD variable to make the POD available + at runtime and a --doc option to get at the POD + +* The Int type now has big integer semantics + +* Initial work on native types, which can be used to write much + more efficient code + +* LTM-driven protoregexes + +* Meta-programming support, including custom meta-classes, overriding + method dispatch and much more + +* Exception handling is much closer to the specification, and thus much + more useful + +* Better package handling, including true separate compilation, lexical + packages and better nested package handling + +* An optimizer, which improves generated code as well as catching + a range of issues at compile-time that previously made it to runtime + +* Backslash sequences in character classes + +* Stubbed methods from roles are now required, providing interface + style functionality + +* Typed arrays and hashes, as well as supporting for binding to + array and hash elements + +Due to improvements in the Perl 6 language specification, and +changes to Rakudo to track them, some existing code will need +changes. Here are some of the major differences to be aware of. + +* Attributes can no longer be initialized using "new" unless they + are declared as having an accessor; either give them one or write + a BUILD submethod + +* The proto keyword is no longer used to declare a multi-dispatch + fallback + +* You may no longer do 'filename'.lines; use 'filename'.IO.lines + +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 + +While this release does contain a great number of improvements, +unfortunately we have regressed in a few places. Of note: + +* Some cases of auto-vivification do not work + +* The binding of a capture against a signature literal is + broken + +We will be working to restore this functionality for future +Rakudo Star releases; if you depend heavily on it, you may +wish to stick with the previous Rakudo Star release for +another month. + +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: + * binary objects, 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 +2012.01 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. +An updated 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. + +[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo +[2] http://parrot.org/ -- cgit v1.1