    Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release 2012.04.1

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm happy to announce an
out-of-schedule release of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler. 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>.

This release is a point release in addition to the regular, monthly
releases.  It contains some of the results of the Perl 6 Patterns
hackathon in Oslo. It is intended to be used as the basis for the
next Rakudo Star release. The Rakudo developers would like to thank
the organizers from Oslo.pm.

Some of the specific changes and improvements occurring with this
release include:

* Support for autovivification.
* More robust module precompilation
* $.foo, @.foo and %.foo style calls now properly contextualize

The 'lib' directory is not in the default search path for modules anymore.
Module authors and users can adjust the PERL6LIB environment variable
accordingly.

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:

Moritz Lenz, Jonathan Worthington, Patrick R. Michaud, Carl Mäsak,
Will "Coke" Coleda, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Marcus Ramberg, Timo Paulssen,
Felix Herrmann, Geir Amdal, spider-mario, benabik, timotimo, TimToady


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 (#52) is scheduled for May 17, 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 encourage you to try the new release.
have fun, and let us know about your experience.

[*] 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.
