    Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #61 ("drinkers")

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm proud to announce the
February 2013 release of Rakudo Perl #61 "drinkers". 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://rakudo.org/downloads/rakudo/>.

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://rakudo.org/downloads/star/>.

The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each release
named after a Perl Mongers group. The February 2013 release is code-named
after drinkers.pm, as even a camel needs to have a drink from time to time.

Some of the changes in this release are outlined below:

+ "Did you mean ..." suggestions for symbol-not-found errors
+ Compile-time optimization of some cases of junctions in boolean context
+ IO::Socket.get now works again with non-Unicode characters
+ constant folding for routines marked as 'is pure'
+ natively typed variables and better error reporting in the REPL
+ speed up eqv-comparison of Bufs
+ warnings for useless use of (some) literals, variables and constant
  expressions in sink context

This is only a small subset of the changes in this release. For a more
detailed list, 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:

Timo Paulssen, Moritz Lenz, Jonathan Worthington, Tobias Leich, 
Arne Skjærholt, Carl Mäsak, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Will Coleda, 
Christoph Otto and Solomon Foster.

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 (#62), is scheduled for March 21, 2013. 
A list of the other planned release dates and code names for future releases 
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,
to live life to its fullest, to cherish each moment, 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.
