    Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #52 ("MadMongers")

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm glad to announce the
May 2012 release of Rakudo Perl #52 "MadMongers". 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 May 2012 release is
code named after MadMongers.

This release includes a whole lot of changes since the last one, including:

* -I and -M command-line options
* support for non-Int enums
* 'use' now accepts positional arguments and is able to import by tag name
* 'import' now works
* basic support for Version literals
* %*ENV now propagates into subprocesses
* basic implementation of pack and unpack ported from 'ng' branch
* fff flip-flop operator is now implemented, ff has been improved
* various new regex features and improvements

Rakudo now also includes the lib.pm module.

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:

Moritz Lenz, Jonathan Worthington, Patrick R. Michaud,
Jonathan Scott Duff, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Carl Masak, Will "Coke" Coleda,
Marcus Ramberg, kboga, TimToady, Kyle Hasselbacher, Geir Amdal, JimmyZ,
benabik and gfldex.

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 (#53) is scheduled for June 21, 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.
