Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #54 ("Tallinn") On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm glad to announce the July 2012 release of Rakudo Perl #54 "Tallinn". Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual Machine (see ). The tarball for this release is available from . 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 . The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each release named after a Perl Mongers group. The July 2012 release is code-named after Tallinn, a fine old capital where jnthn and masak had much useful discussions about Perl 6 macro design last year. This release includes a lot of changes since the last one, including: - Built-in meta-objects (e.g. Metamodel::ClassHOW) now inherit from Any - &open now supports :enc/:encoding - Changed &dir to return IO::Path objects, not strings - Deprecated .bytes, .ucfirst, and .lcfirst on Str - recognize obosolete rand() and rand(N) forms at compile time - anonymous subset types 'subset :: of Int where { $_ > 0 }' 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: Patrick R. Michaud, Moritz Lenz, Jonathan Worthington, Jonathan Scott Duff, Carl Mäsak, ronaldxs, Felix Herrmann, harmil, Gabor Szabo, sisar If you would like to contribute, see , ask on the perl6-compiler@perl.org mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6 on freenode. The next release of Rakudo (#55) is scheduled for August 23, 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.