    Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #59 ("Warszawa")

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm proud to announce the
December 2012 release of Rakudo Perl #59 "Warszawa". 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 December 2012 release is code-named
after Warszawa, home of Tadeusz Sośnierz (tadzik), whose contributions to
Rakudo and the Perl 6 ecosystem during 2012 have been significant.

Some of the changes in this release are outlined below:

+ The .indent method now has better handling of empty lines
+ Parse errors are much improved, and follow STD, the standard parser,
  much more closely; they are more accurate and more information is given
+ Rakudo now keeps parsing after some less serious errors
+ Better errors for various parse failures
+ The junction autothreader is now an order of magnitude faster
+ Texas versions of the Set and Bag operators implemented
+ Nested Pairs now give correct .perl output
+ { a => $_ } now correctly considered a block, not a hash as before

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:

Jonathan Worthington, Moritz Lenz, Tobias Leich, Solomon Foster, Timo Paulssen,
Will "Coke" Coleda, Patrick R. Michaud, Amir E. Aharoni, Carl Mäsak, Geoff
Broadwell, Shrivatsan Sampathkumar

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 (#60), assuming the world doesn't end today, is
scheduled for January 17, 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.
