    Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #56 ("Perl")

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm thrilled to announce the
September 2012 release of Rakudo Perl #56 "Perl". 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 September 2012 release is
code-named after Perl.pm, a group located in scenic Perl in Saarland,
Germany, where an important meetup took place on August 16th-19th
concerning the reunification of Perl 5 and Perl 6.

This release brings changes; some of them are outlined below:

- basic macro unquoting
- basic support for m:P5/.../ regexes
- support for indirect type names in routine and type declarations
- support for "is export" traits on constants
- Str.wordcase implemented
- slightly faster compilation (thanks to switching NQP over to QAST)
- tie-breaking with constraints now picks the first matching one rather than
  demanding they be mutually exclusive

A possibly breaking change:

- class Iterable does not inherit from class Cool anymore

This is only a small peek at 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:

Jonathan Worthington, Moritz Lenz, Carl Mäsak, Salve J. Nilsen, Patrick R.
Michaud, Gerhard R, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Will "Coke" Coleda, Geoffrey Broadwell,
diakopter, PerlJam, cognominal, Larry Wall

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 (#57) is scheduled for October 18, 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,
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.
