From dcfcdafd8b139ca5b7454c7041f7fdee837cc736 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Moritz Lenz Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 22:30:48 +0200 Subject: add announcement for 2013.08 release --- docs/announce/2013.08.md | 90 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 90 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/announce/2013.08.md (limited to 'docs/announce/2013.08.md') diff --git a/docs/announce/2013.08.md b/docs/announce/2013.08.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8d8ee4d --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/announce/2013.08.md @@ -0,0 +1,90 @@ +# Announce: Rakudo Star Release 2013.08 + +## 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 August 2013 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable +distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the August 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 2013.08] of the +[Rakudo Perl 6 compiler], version 5.5.0 of the [Parrot Virtual +Machine], plus various modules, documentation, and other resources +collected from the Perl 6 community. + +[release 2013.08]: + https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/announce/2013.08.md +[Rakudo Perl 6 compiler]: http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo +[Parrot Virtual Machine]: http://parrot.org + +Some of the new features added to this release include: + +* `is default` traits on variables are now implemented +* assigning Nil restores the default value +* `Buf` is now a role, and Buf objects are immutable. +* `printf` now correctly handles big integers +* fixed handling of indented heredocs +* `dir()` is now lazy + +This release also contains a range of bug fixes, improvements to error +reporting and better failure modes. + +Please note that this release of Rakudo Star does not support the JVM +backend from the Rakudo compiler. While the JVM backend mostly implements +the same features as the Parrot backend, many small IO bits are still +missing, rendering some crucial parts like the module installer unsable. +We hope to provide a JVM-based Rakudo Star release soon. + +The following features have been deprecated or modified from previous +releases due to changes in the Perl 6 specification, and are planned +to be 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. + +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 +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 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 docs/UsingPerl6-draft.pdf 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 +mailing list, or join us on IRC \#perl6 on freenode. -- cgit v1.1