On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m happy to announce the January 2015 release of Rakudo Perl 6 #84 “Gotanda”. Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Moar Virtual Machine[^1], the Java Virtual Machine and the Parrot Virtual Machine[^2]. The tarball for this release is available from <http://rakudo.org/downloads/rakudo/>.
Please note: This announcement is not for the Rakudo Star distribution[^3] --- it’s announcing a new release of the compiler only. For the latest Rakudo Star release, see <http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/>. The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each release named after a Perl Mongers group. This release is named after Gotanda.pm Some of the changes in this release are outlined below: These are only some of the changes in this release. For a more detailed list, see “docs/ChangeLog”. INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES: + None this release Other notable changes: + All deprecated features will be removed with 6.0.0 (sometime in 2015) + Startup on the JVM has improved by 20% + Many improvements to Java interop for the JVM backend + New simple way of creating an object hash: :{} + Substitution now supports assignment meta-op, e.g. s[\d+] += 2 + Many memory and CPU optimizations + Supply.for deprecated in favour of Supply.from-list The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for making Rakudo Perl possible, as well as those people who worked on Parrot, the Perl 6 test suite, MoarVM and the specification. The following people contributed to this release: Elizabeth Mattijsen, Moritz Lenz, Pepe Schwarz, Jonathan Worthington, Larry Wall, Tobias Leich, ab5tract, Christian Bartolomäus, Rob Hoelz, Donald Hunter, Timo Paulssen, raydiak, Geoffrey Broadwell, Alexander Moquin, Yun SangHo, skids, Lucas Buchala, Will Coleda, Solomon Foster, Steve Mynott, ugexe, Carl Mäsak, pmurias, woolfy If you would like to contribute, see <http://rakudo.org/how-to-help>, ask on the <perl6-compi...@perl.org> mailing list, or ask on IRC \#perl6 on freenode. The next release of Rakudo (#85), is scheduled for 19 February 2015. A list of the other planned release dates and code names for future releases is available in the “docs/release_guide.pod” file. A Rakudo development release typically occurs a few days (often two) after the third Tuesday of each month. The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements, cool discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback -- get in touch with us through (the above-mentioned) mailing list of IRC channel. Enjoy! [^1]: See <http://moarvm.org/> [^2]: See <http://parrot.org/> [^3]: What’s the difference between the Rakudo compiler and the Rakudo Star distribution? The Rakudo compiler is a compiler for the Perl 6 language. Nothing else. The Rakudo Star distribution is the Rakudo compiler plus a selection of useful Perl 6 modules, a module installer, the most recent incarnation of the “Using Perl 6” book, and other software that can be used with the Rakudo compiler to enhance its utility. Rakudo Star is meant for early adopters who wish to explore what’s possible with Rakudo Perl 6 and provide feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what else they would like to see included in the distribution.