This is Rakudo Star, a useful, usable Rakudo Perl 6 production distribution. This is the 2019.03 release of Rakudo Star for the 6.d version of Perl 6. Rakudo Star is Copyright (C) 2010 - 2019 by the Rakudo Star Team. License Information ------------------- Rakudo Star is distributed under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0. This distribution contains software collected from other sources; see the individual source subdirectories (in rakudo/, MoarVM/ and modules/) for copyright and licensing information of those components. Overview -------- The Rakudo Perl 6 compiler can target MoarVM and the JVM. Rakudo Star fully supports MoarVM; not all modules work on the JVM at present. You can choose to build and install Rakudo for one or more of these virtual machines at configure time. Build Prerequisites for Rakudo on MoarVM ---------------------------------------- To build Rakudo Star on MoarVM, you need at least a 'make' utility, a C compiler, and Perl 5.10.0 or newer. Building Rakudo on MoarVM needs a machine with a gigabyte of memory; for a 32-bit build, you may get by with less. Build Prerequisites for Rakudo on the JVM ----------------------------------------- Please note that this release of Rakudo Star is *not* fully functional with the JVM backend from the Rakudo compiler. Use the JVM backend only if you are trying to help with fixing JVM support (which is best done upstream with the monthly Rakudo release). This is a known issue and it's not worth reporting JVM failures as bugs unless you have patches. To build an experimental Rakudo Star on the JVM, you need at least a 'make' utility, both 'java' and 'javac' available in your path, and Perl 5.10.0 or newer. The 'java' and 'javac' are obtained by installing a Java Development kit, for example openjdk-8 or the Oracle JDK. The newer the JDK you have the better; due to bugs in the invokedynamic instruction in early releases, JDK 8 or above is needed. The build can complete within a gigabyte of memory. Configuring Rakudo Star ----------------------- The easiest way to build Rakudo Star for a particular backend is: $ perl Configure.pl --backend=moar --gen-moar # MoarVM $ perl Configure.pl --backend=jvm --gen-nqp # JVM You can also build for all backends: $ perl Configure.pl --backend=moar,jvm --gen-moar Note that --gen-moar automatically builds a MoarVM for you, and implies --gen-nqp, which builds NQP, a subset of Perl 6 that is used to implement Rakudo. Configured this way, one or more Perl 6 executables and selected Perl 6 modules will be installed into the install/ subdirectory, which resides inside the source archive directory. Running make install will *not* install anything into /usr/local. If you want to change this behavior, specify the install prefix using the --prefix option. Configuring with the --prefix option ------------------------------------ If you want to install rakudo into a system-wide directory, you must either have root privileges or own the desired installation directory. Assuming you are root, use any of the desired configuration commands shown above and add "--prefix=$INSTDIR" to the end where $INSTDIR is the installation directory of choice. Building Rakudo Star -------------------- After configuration, build Rakudo Star on a UNIX-like system with: $ make $ make install Rakudo Star can be built on Windows either using Microsoft tools (MSVC) and nmake or using gcc and gmake as bundled with Strawberry Perl. In the latter case use cmd.exe rather than bash as a shell. Note that possible platform-specific errata may be covered under: https://perl6.org/downloads/ Setting up the environment -------------------------- To set up the environment under a UNIX type system you will need to add the absolute path of the local "install/bin" directory under your source build directory or system-wide "${INSTDIR}/bin" directory (if you used the --prefix option) to your PATH environment variable. Note also that other executable scripts such as "p6doc" will be installed under "${INSTDIR}/share/perl6/site/bin" so you also need to add that to the PATH for development convenience. You will have to append the %PATH% in a similar way under Windows. You may have to use Windows type directory path separators. You will be reminded of the two additions to the PATH by a welcome message after the source build completes. Once Rakudo Star is installed (and assuming perl6 is in your PATH), you can run Perl 6 programs by doing: $ perl6 hello.p6 If the Rakudo compiler is invoked without an explicit script to run, it enters a small interactive mode that allows Perl 6 statements to be executed from the command line. Running the Perl 6 test suite ----------------------------- Entering "make rakudo-test" will run a small test suite that comes bundled with Rakudo. This is a simple suite of tests, designed to make sure that the Rakudo compiler is basically working and that it's capable of running a simple test harness. Running "make rakudo-spectest" will run the Perl 6 specification test suite ("roast") that was bundled with the Rakudo compiler release. Running "make modules-test" will run the test suites of any installed modules. The modules currently have to be installed (via 'make install' or 'make modules-install') before the tests can be run. Currently a number of roast tests may be reported as missing due to a known issue with test suite versioning. This can be ignored and it's hoped this will be fixed shortly. Perl 6 Documentation -------------------- The official documentation site is https://docs.perl6.org/ This distribution also contains documentation in the docs/ directory: docs/cheatsheet.txt — Perl 6 cheat sheet docs/2015-spw-perl6-course.pdf — A short Perl 6 course docs/perl6intro.pdf — Recent snapshot of https://perl6intro.com/ docs/announce/ — Detailed release announcements https://perl6intro.com/ is available in multiple languages, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Bulgarian, Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Indonesian and Russian at the time of writing. Installing Perl 6 Modules ------------------------- zef is a module installer bundled with Rakudo Star. See https://github.com/ugexe/zef for zef documentation. A list of modules available in the "ecosystem" is at https://modules.perl6.org/ Git is useful for zef. When upgrading between versions of perl 6 it may be necessary to remove ~/.perl6 and/or ~/.zef due to a possible toolchain bug. If you see this issue please email details as suggested in the "Reporting Bugs" section below. Where to get help or answers to questions ----------------------------------------- 'p6doc faq' will display a version of the FAQ. Also see https://faq.perl6.org/ There are several mailing lists, IRC channels, and wikis available with help for Perl 6 and Rakudo. A friendly IRC channel for new starter questions is irc.freenode.net/#perl6 The Rakudo and MoarVM development teams tend to hang out on IRC a fair bit, on irc.freenode.net/#perl6-dev and irc.freenode.net/#moarvm, respectively. IRC tends to be busier than the mailing lists but if you have a question about Perl 6 syntax or the right way to approach a problem using Perl 6, you could use the perl6-users@perl.org mailing list. This list is primarily for the people who want to use Perl 6 to write programs, as opposed to those who are implementing or developing the Perl 6 language itself. Questions about the Rakudo compiler can go to perl6-compiler@perl.org. The https://perl6.org/ website contains a great many links to resources for Perl 6 development, and is generally the starting point for information about Perl 6. Rakudo's official web site is https://rakudo.org/, where you can find useful information for developers and users alike. Reporting bugs -------------- Bug reports about Rakudo Star or the Perl 6 specification should be sent to rakudobug@perl.org with the moniker [BUG] (including the brackets) at the start of the subject so that it gets appropriately tagged in the RT system (https://rt.perl.org/rt3/). Please include or attach any sample source code that exhibits the bug, and include either the release name/date or the git commit identifier. You find this information in the output from "perl6 --version". There's no need to Cc: the perl6-compiler mailing list, as the RT system will handle this on its own. Submitting patches ------------------ Patches to the Rakudo compiler itself should be submitted to 'rakudobug@perl.org'. Patches for individual modules should be submitted to the module authors (see the module source code for details). We'll generally accept patches in any form if we can get them to work, but unified diff from the 'git' command is greatly preferred. See further instructions in the rakudo/ subdirectory for more details. Other ways to create and submit patches are discussed at https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/wiki/contrib-introduction AUTHOR ------ Patrick Michaud (pmichaud@pobox.com) was originally the primary author and maintainer for Rakudo Star. See docs/CREDITS for further Rakudo Star authors, and */CREDITS for authors of other collected components.