From db9dd4c18d0fc28fa0766a9caafef75b93544a62 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: pmichaud Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:35:03 -0500 Subject: Updated release announcement with many suggestions from others. --- skel/docs/announce/2010.07 | 124 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 118 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) (limited to 'skel/docs') diff --git a/skel/docs/announce/2010.07 b/skel/docs/announce/2010.07 index 321cb10..b46c37f 100644 --- a/skel/docs/announce/2010.07 +++ b/skel/docs/announce/2010.07 @@ -1,8 +1,120 @@ - Announce: Rakudo Star Distribution Release 1 +Announce: Rakudo Star - a useful, usable, "early adopter" distribution of Perl 6 -On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm pleased to announce the first -"Rakudo Star" release. It is a distribution release containing the Rakudo -Perl 6 compiler, modules and documentation, aiming to be a useable development -environment. +On behalf of the Rakudo and Perl 6 development teams, I'm happy to +announce the July 2010 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable +distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the July 2010 release is +available from . -This is not a Perl 6 production release, or a finalized 6.0 release. +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". "Rakudo Star" is a distribution that includes +release #31 of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 2.6.0 of +the Parrot Virtual Machine [2], and various modules, documentation, +and other resources collected from the Perl 6 community. We +plan to make Rakudo Star releases on a monthly schedule, with +occasional special releases in response to important bugfixes or +changes. + +Some of the many cool Perl 6 features that are available in this +release of Rakudo Star: + * Perl 6 grammars and regexes + * formal parameter lists and signatures + * metaoperators + * gradual typing + * a powerful object model, including roles and classes + * lazy list evaluation + * multiple dispatch + * smart matching + * junctions and autothreading + * operator overloading (limited forms for now) + * introspection + * currying + * a rich library of builtin operators, functions, and types + * an interactive read-evaluation-print loop + * Unicode at the codepoint level + * resumable exceptions + * ...others? + +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: + * binary objects, native types, pack and unpack + * macros + * state variables + * hypothetical variables + * threads and concurrency + * Unicode strings at levels other than codepoints + * pre and post constraints, and other phasers + * ...others? + +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. + +More information about many aspects of Perl 6 is available from +http://perl6.org/ . + +Rakudo Star also bundles a number of modules; a partial list of +the modules provided by this release include: + * Blizkost + - enables some Perl 5 modules to be used from within Rakudo Perl 6 + * MiniDBI + - a simple database interface for Rakudo Perl 6 + * Zavolaj + - call C library functions from Rakudo Perl 6 + * SVG and SVG::Plot + - create scalable vector graphics + * HTTP::Daemon + - a simple HTTP server + * XML::Writer + - generate XML + * YAML + - dump Perl 6 objects as YAML + * Term::ANSIColor + - color screen output using ANSI escape sequences + * Test::Mock + - create mock objects and check what methods were called + * Math::Model + - describe and run mathematical models + * Config::INI + - parse and write configuration files + * File::Find + - find files in a given directory + * LWP::Simple + - fetch resources from the web + +These are not considered "core Perl 6 modules", and as module +development for Perl 6 continues to mature, future releases +of Rakudo Star will likely come bundled with a different set +of modules. Deprecation policies for bundled modules will be +created over time, and other Perl 6 distributions may choose +different sets of modules or policies. More information about +Perl 6 modules can be found at http://modules.perl6.org/. + +Rakudo Star also contains a draft of a Perl 6 book -- see + 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 August 24, 2010. + +[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo +[2] http://parrot.org/ -- cgit v1.1