From c060cfce1feaca4cb2cc0df7d4b05324942f25d2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: pmichaud Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:50:25 -0500 Subject: Add draft 2011.07 announcement. --- skel/docs/announce/2011.07 | 80 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 80 insertions(+) create mode 100644 skel/docs/announce/2011.07 (limited to 'skel') diff --git a/skel/docs/announce/2011.07 b/skel/docs/announce/2011.07 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c44b6b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/skel/docs/announce/2011.07 @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +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 July 2011 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable +distribution of Perl 6. The tarball for the July 2011 release is +available from . + +IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT UPCOMING RELEASES: This is the last Rakudo Star +release to use a compiler from the current "master" branch of Rakudo. +For the past several months, Rakudo compiler development has +primarily occurred in a separate "nom" ("New Object Model") branch of +its repository. Shortly after this release, the "nom" branch will +become the new "master" branch and will be the source for future +compiler and Star releases. + +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 July 2011 Star release includes release #43 +of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 3.6.0 of the Parrot +Virtual Machine [2], and various modules, documentation, +and other resources collected from the Perl 6 community. + +The Rakudo team plans to issue another distribution release +in August 2011 based on the new "nom" compiler. The new +compiler contains many improvements over the current line +of development (including vastly improved performance), but also +will not be 100% backwards-compatible due to changes in the +Perl 6 language specification and elimination of some workarounds. +Existing Rakudo Star users looking for stability should continue +to use the July 2011 release as the new distribution releases +stabilize over the next several months. + +Details about deprecations and migration guidelines will be +provided in future releases and on rakudo.org . + +This release of Rakudo Star adds the following features over the +previous Star release: + * 10%-30% improvement in compile and execution speed + * New gcd (greatest common divisor) and lcm (largest common multiple) operators + * Int.base + * Call counter for Perl 6-level subroutines + * Better handling of &infix:<=> right associativity + * Fix bug in exponentiation of negative numbers + * Fix building on systems with smaller RAM + +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: + * 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 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