Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #50 ("Argentina") On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm happy to announce the March 2012 release of Rakudo Perl #50 "Argentina". Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual Machine (see <http://www.parrot.org>). The tarball for this release is available from <http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads>. Please note: This announcement is not for the Rakudo Star distribution[*] -- it's announcing a new release of the compiler only. For the latest Rakudo Star release, see <http://github.com/rakudo/star/downloads>. The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each release named after a Perl Mongers group. The March 2012 release is code named after Argentina, because that's where one of our core contributors went to relax this month after adding some significant Perl 6 features to Rakudo. Some of the specific changes and improvements occurring with this release include: * greatly reduced startup time * significantly reduced memory usage during compilation of modules and of Rakudo itself. * implemented ENTER, LEAVE, KEEP, UNDO and START phasers * basic macros We are still regressed on a few features compared to the 2011.07 release of Rakudo, the most notable of which is autovivification. These regressions should be rectified in coming releases. Note that Rakudo now dies on 'our multi' declarations, which have poorly defined semantics. Please either declare an 'our proto' that re-dispatches to individual multis, or use exporting instead of package variables. For a more detailed list of changes, see "docs/ChangeLog". 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 and the specification. The following people contributed to this release: Jonathan Worthington, Moritz Lenz, Carl Masak, Tadeusz SoÅnierz, Siddhant Saraf, not_gerd, Filip Sergot, TimToady, Michael Schroeder, Patrick R. Michaud, sisar, lumi, Felix Herrmann, flussence, felher If you would like to contribute, see <http://rakudo.org/how-to-help>, ask on the perl6-compiler@perl.org mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on freenode. The next release of Rakudo (#51) is scheduled for April 19, 2012. A list of the other planned release dates and code names for 2012 is available in the "docs/release_guide.pod" file. In general, Rakudo development releases are scheduled to occur soon after each Parrot monthly release. Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month. On behalf of the development team, I admonish you to try the new release, to live life to its fullest, to cherish each day, and to have fun. [*] 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, 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.