From 17159f385caa1cb2754b59a0d687c3085d76974a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: pmichaud Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:49:36 -0500 Subject: Add a 2010.09 release announcement draft. --- skel/docs/announce/2010.09 | 78 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 78 insertions(+) create mode 100644 skel/docs/announce/2010.09 (limited to 'skel/docs') diff --git a/skel/docs/announce/2010.09 b/skel/docs/announce/2010.09 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..54edcd8 --- /dev/null +++ b/skel/docs/announce/2010.09 @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +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 2010 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable +distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the September 2010 release is +available from . + +Rakudo Star is aimed at "early adopters" of Perl 6. We know that +it still has some bugs, it is far slower than it ought to be, and +there are some advanced pieces of the Perl 6 language specification +that aren't implemented yet. But Rakudo Perl 6 in its current form +is also proving to be viable (and fun) for developing applications +and exploring a great new language. These "Star" releases are +intended to make Perl 6 more widely available to programmers, grow +the Perl 6 codebase, and gain additional end-user feedback about the +Perl 6 language and Rakudo's implementation of it. + +In the Perl 6 world, we make a distinction between the language +("Perl 6") and specific implementations of the language such as +"Rakudo Perl". The September 2010 Star release includes release #33 +of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 2.8.0 of the Parrot +Virtual Machine [2], and various modules, documentation, +and other resources collected from the Perl 6 community. + +This release of Rakudo Star adds the following features over the +previous Star release: + * Several performance improvements have been implemented; + notably in the slurp() and reverse() functions + * The series operator has been refactored and updated to the current + specification + * Temporal objects (DateTime, Date, Instant, and Duration) are now + completely implemented + * Enumeration objects now conform much closer to the specification + * 'now' and 'time' are now terms instead of functions. This means + you can write 'time - 1' and it will do what you mean, but + 'time()' is no longer valid. + +There are some key features of Perl 6 that Rakudo Star does not +yet handle appropriately, although they will appear in upcoming +releases. Thus, we do not consider Rakudo Star to be a +"Perl 6.0.0" or "1.0" release. Some of the not-quite-there +features include: + * nested package definitions + * binary objects, native types, pack and unpack + * typed arrays + * macros + * state variables + * threads and concurrency + * Unicode strings at levels other than codepoints + * pre and post constraints, and some other phasers + * interactive readline that understands Unicode + * backslash escapes in regex <[...]> character classes + * non-blocking I/O + * most of Synopsis 9 + * perl6doc or pod manipulation tools + +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. + +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. + +Rakudo Star releases are created on a monthly cycle or as needed +in response to important bug fixes or improvements. The next planned +release of Rakudo Star will be on October 26, 2010. + +[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo +[2] http://parrot.org/ -- cgit v1.1