    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 Sośnierz,
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.
