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perl6 and Parrot 0.5.2 Released
mAriuZ writes "Bob Rogers just released Parrot 0.5.2. This monthly release includes a couple of interesting new features. First, we've bundled Patrick Michaud's Rakudo (thats the implementation of Perl 6 on Parrot) such that you can type make perl6 on Unixy platforms and make perl6.exe on Windows and get a working standalone Perl 6 binary. This is experimental and we hope to iron out some installation and deployment issues by next months release, but it was important to demonstrate our progress. The second new feature is a toolkit for starting your own compiler. Max Mohun built a prototype several months ago, and we've added a stripped-down version for now that builds the skeleton of a compiler for you using the Parrot Compiler Tools. I mentioned the LOLCODE compiler in What the Perl 6 and Parrot Hackers Did on Their Christmas Vacation; this is how Simon and Company were able to get LOLCODE up and running so quickly."
This post is a little misleading. Perl 6 is not done, this isn't a 'Perl 6 release'. It's just another Parrot release, with the neat feature that you can finally run a perl 6 binary instead of going through the parrot one. This, by itself, is nothing major. The main reason for this post is to publicize the great amount of progress Perl 6 and Parrot have made, particularly within the last few months. And by publicizing that, to hopefully get more people involved. If you're interested in running Perl 6 now, check out www.pugscode.org -- Audrey's compiler is still further along than the official 'Rakudo' one (although it shouldn't be for too much longer ;-). However, this is still great news to Perl fans. I'm not a contributor, but I do subscribe to the parrot mailing list; the fact that the real Perl 6 interpreter (although incomplete) is finally underway and making great progress, and the momentum that comes with that, is exciting.
Even if you're not a Perl fan, the Parrot bits should still be quite interesting to anyone that enjoys language implementation. The PCT (Parrot Compiler Toolkit) is maturing nicely and many languages have working interpreters/compilers (to various levels of completion) using it. The amazing thing about it is the sheer speed that you can get a working language together. Rakudo is built on top of NQP (not-quite-perl6) -- a subset of perl 6 built in a matter of (a very few) weeks. And it's important to keep in mind that while Perl 6 is the star of the show for Parrot, Parrot is being designed to fit all dynamic languages; so don't be scared off because you think Parrot is too Perlish. I regularly see posts on the mailing list helping to make Parrot friendlier for other languages (particularly TCL) as people develop using parrot.
For open source fans, I think Parrot is our best bet for a VM to give .NET a fight (although feel free to reply with other suggestions, I don't keep up with too many others ;-).
Lol, why is parent -1 Flamebait? He should be funny.
I'm a tree-hugging, religion-hating, free software-supporting atheist, but the reason why I don't use Perl is not that Larry Wall is a Christian. It's that I want to keep my sanity.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.