[ANNOUNCE] Pugs 6.2.12 and v6.pm released!

[Audrey Tang]

Changes for 6.2.12 (r10930) - June 26, 2006

Licensing Changes

• The src/ tree and the pugs executable are now released under the permissive MIT license, in addition to Artistic and GPL
• A new third-party/ tree to hold bundled prerequisites originated from non-Pugs projects

New Perl 6 modules

• ext/Relation/ - Relation type for Perl 6 (incomplete)
• ext/Getopt-Std/ - Simple command-line parsing

Updated modules

• ext/Locale-KeyedText/ - Added export_as_hash() methods
• ext/Rosetta/: Multiple additions and rewrites
  • Merged ext/Rosetta-Engine-Native/ in, renamed to ::Example
  • Now officially incorporates "The Third Manifesto"
  • Rewrote half of Language.pod
  • Updated the DESCRIPTION and class list of Rosetta.pm
  • Added new core module Rosetta::Shell and example shell.pl
  • Added new documentation file Rosetta::SeeAlso
  • Various other documentation additions and edits
• ext/Test/: Avoid the use of junctions to make Parrot/Perl6's life easier

Perl 6 on Perl 5 (under misc/pX/Common/)

• Data-Bind - Implement Perl 6's calling/binding convention on Perl 5
• Inline-Parrot - a C version of Inline-Parrot - uses NCI for data exchange
• Module-Compile - precompile Perl 5 modules transparently
• P5_to_P6_Translation - beginning of a Perl 5.9 MAD tree parser and translater to Perl 6
• Pugs-Compiler-Perl6 - Compiler for Perl 6 (implements 'use v6-pugs'):

      use v6-pugs; say "Perl 6"; use v5; print "Perl 5"

• Pugs-Compiler-Precedence - an operator precedence parser, built around Parse::Yapp
• Pugs-Compiler-Rule - Compiler for Perl 6 Rules
• Pugs-Grammar-MiniPerl6 - translate Perl 6 rules into haskell Parsec
• Pugs-Grammar-Perl6 - a Perl 6 parser - parses Test.pm!
• lrep - a bootstrapped, very minimal Perl 6 compiler written in Perl 6
• re-override - Swaps in an alternate regexp engine:

      ./perl -we 'use re::override-perl6; print "a" =~ /<word>**{1}/';

Test, Examples and Documentations

Restored this ChangeLog's entries for v6.0.0 thru v6.0.8, which were truncated in r8916, apparently from gnome's copy-paste buffer limit

docs/Perl6/Doc hierarchy, installable 
Perl6::Doc

docs/Perl6/FAQ/Capture.pod - FAQ on the new Signature/Capture convention

docs/Perl6/FAQ/FUD.pod - Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts about Perl 6

docs/talks/p6myths2.html: Juerd's talk "Perl 6 Myths"

docs/talks/peek.spork: Gaal's OSDC talk "A Peek into Pugs Internals"

examples/concurrency/: Added sample usage on Software Transactional Memory

examples/qotw/: Added the QOTW 8 Expert solution

examples/rules/: Added a sample BASIC parser

src/Pugs/Parser - Perl 6 grammars for Capture.pg and Signature.pg 

util/cperl-mode.el - Emacs mode for Perl 6

Feature Changes




Pugs now builds in a single pass

Removed support for GHC 6.4.0 and added support for GHC 6.5

Removed support for Parrot 0.4.4 or below and added support for Parrot 0.4.5

&?SUB is replaced with &?ROUTINE; $?SUBNAME is replaced with &?ROUTINE.name

Arguments beginning in parens, such as 
f ('x')=>1
, is now always positional

Array and hash sigilled match variables, such as 
@0
, 
@<foo>
 and 
%<bar>

Assignment with non-obviously-scalar left-hand side is now in list context:


@a = 1,2,3
 now parses as 
@a = (1,2,3)


Broke down Parser and AST.Internals to smaller files so rebuilds are faster

Builtin functions no longer defaults to 
$_
; write 
.ord
 instead of 
ord

Compile 
Prelude.pm
 and 
Test.pm
, to YAML bytecode for faster loading

Declarators are now lexical: 
{ $x++ unless my $x }
 increments 
$OUTER::x

Declarators can now occur at _expression_ position: 
my $x + my $y
 works

Declarators no longer take qualified names: 
our $Foo::x
 is invalid

Experimental support for Software Transactional Memory and atomic blocks

Hash initializers now revert to bias-to-left behavior as in Perl 5

In 
{X => 1, X => 2}
, the value of X is 2, not 1

If a block ends on a line by itself, an implicit 
;
 is assumed if possible

In the interactive shell, :d and :D (dump parse tree) now continues the parse from the current environment; use :reset to reset the environment

More helpful diagnostics when calling unsafe builtins under safe mode

Multiline support in the interactive shell reports unrecoverable parsefails

Names of named arguments must always be a bareword now, such as:
    f(name=>1); f(:name(1));

New AST-dumping backends: 
Parse-Pretty
, 
Parse-YAML
, 
Parse-HsYAML

Parse-time binding 
::=
 is now fully supported 

Proper desugaring of 
.=
 expressions, such as 
@a .= map(&sqrt)

Prototype objects: 
my Dog $fifo
 now assigns 
::Foo
 into 
$fido

Removed support for 
require ::Class::Literal

Removed support for 
rx_
 macros in Prelude for user-defined rule handlers

Quotelike constructs such as 
rx
 and 
qq
 no longer takes `#` as delimiter

Support for Unicode bracket characters for quotelike operators

Support for bracketed comments: #(...), #<<< ... >>>, etc

Support for controlled backtracking and whitespace sensitivity via distinct
token/regex/rule
 delecarators

Support for environmental variables such as 
$ENV::PWD
 and 
$+PATH

Support for implicit-topic dereferences such as 
.[0]
 and 
.<foo>

Support for long dot syntax: $foo   .blah

Support for scan metaoperators: 
[+] 1,2,3
 evaluates to 
(1, 3, 6)

The 
-M
 command line switch can take import arguments: 
pugs -Mlib=foo

The parser is now much faster by being mostly predictive (non-backtracking)

The postfix infiniterange is no more; write 
1..*` instead of `1...

Two 
my $x
 declarations in the same scope is now no-op instead of an error

Use 
Data.ByteString
 for fast string representation

Using libraries from embedded Perl 5 can import functions now

Whitespace disambiguation implemented on 
if
, 
unless
 and 
for
:
   if %ENV{ 3 } { 4 }   # hash lookup on %ENV
   if %ENV { 3 } { 4 }  # %ENV by itself


YAML bytecode is now versioned to reduce incompatibilities


¬
 is now unary instead of a list operator


:!foo
 is now a shorthand for 
foo => False


bool::true
 and 
bool::false
 are renamed to 
Bool::True
 and 
Bool::False


make upload-smoke
 now uploads smoke test automatically


my $!x
 is now recognized as an alternative spelling for 
my $x
 


q:code {...}
 gives ASTs in macros


readline
 and 
=$fh
 now autochomps

Bug Fixes




(1.3 % 1) was evaluating to 0; now it evaluates to 0.3 like everybody else

An uninitialized Code is no longer nullary: 
my &f; f 1
 is not a parsefail

Chained assignments now return lvalues properly: 
$x = %y = (1,2,3,4);

Implicit variables ($^x) is no longer allowed in statemeent-level bare blocks

Implicit variables following a declarator was broken: 
{my $x; $^y}.(42)
 

In 
(@x, @y) = (1,2,3)
, the 
@y
 is now cleared into an empty list

Invalid rules in embedded Parrot no longer triggers an uncatchable 
exit

Lexical imports are no longer discarded upon block reentry 

Method invocant is 
self
 and 
$?SELF
 but no longer 
$_

Named-only subs such as 
sub f (:$x!) {}
 no longer parse as unary positional

Opening a file for writing now turns autoflushing on by default

Short-circuit operators now works again

Statement-level 
return
 and 
yield
 now propagates contexts correctly

Statement-level bare blocks now counts as one scope for 
OUTER
, not two

Statement-level bare blocks now runs under all contexts: (sub { { 3 } }).()

Strings outside ASCII range no longer raises exceptions at the PGE/Parrot bridge

The bogus comma-less block argument form 
map {$_} 1,2,3
 is no longer supported


%.foo
 and 
@.foo
 now always flattens in argument lists


&slurp
 and 
&readline
 evaluates eagerly and no longer races with 
&unlink


1.
 was parsed as a valid integer, causing ambiguities; it's now invalid


@foo.perl
 works correctly when 
@foo
 is recursive


f(())
 now passes 
&f
 an empty list, not 
undef


sign
 and 
<=>
 now fails on undefined arguments, instead of returning undef


slurp
 works correctly on UTF-8 files


sub f (@x) {}; f([1,2,3])
 now works as it's no longer under slurpy context


(Due to non-stop Hackathon since YAPC::NA, this announcement has been  
delayed
for a week. :-))

I'm glad to announce that Pugs 6.2.12 is now available from CPAN:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Perl6-Pugs-6.2.12/
    SIZE: 2693459
    SHA1: c9731da8e597591ca7e279766481ce0bece8cfa4

This release features much better performance: Building Pugs is 3  
times faster;
compiling Perl 6 programs becomes 10 times faster; running Perl 6  
programs is
now up to 2 times faster.

We also support various Perl 6 syntax changes since the last release,  
as well as
exciting new features, such as atomic code blocks with Software  
Transactional
Memory (STM) semantics.

6.2.12 marks the last release with the 6.0.x abstract syntax tree  
(AST) to
represent Perl 6 programs.  We are currently switching to a new AST that
supports the new Signature/Capture calling convention, multi-dispatch  
with
constraints, and a full Meta-Object Protocol (MOP).  We are  
developing this
new runtime simultaneously as Haskell modules and Perl 5 CPAN  
modules, to
ensure that they have identical semantics.

To this end, I'm happy to announce "v6.pm", a prototype Perl 6 Compiler
implemented entirely in Perl 5, is also available from CPAN:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/v6-pugs/

All Perl 5 components are released as separate CPAN modules.  One can
use them as pure-perl5 modules, without the Perl 6 syntax provided by
"v6.pm"; this way one can get fully-conformant Perl 6 features without
the need of using Perl 6 syntax provided by "v6.pm".

(These CPAN modules maintain their own release cycles; we will release
more components on CPAN as they are abstracted out from the Pugs  
runtime.)

The .meta API for Object/Class/Method reflection is supported by the
"Moose" and "Class::MOP" modules:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Moose/
    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Class-MOP/

The compiler and runtime for Perl 6 Grammars (top-down) and operator
precedence (bottom-up) is available as the "Pugs::Gramamr::Rule" and
"Pugs::Grammar::Precedence" modules:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Pugs-Compiler-Rule/

The calling convention with named, optional, and slurpy arguemnts is
supported by the "Data::Bind" module:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Data-Bind/

The precompile-Perl6-to-Perl5 mechanism is based on "Module::Compile", a
safe and composable replacement to source filtering:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Module-Compile/
    http://search.cpan.org/dist/Filter-Simple-Compile/

In summary: Perl 5 is now a first-class virtual machine for Pugs, and in
this journey toward self-hosting, we will share as much common structure
as possible between the Perl 5, Haskell, and the Parrot runtimes.

With a prototype end-to-end implementation written in pure Perl 5, we  
are
entering the "Hack, Hack, Hack" phase of the (imaginary) Perl 6 timeline
from nearly one year ago:

    http://pugscode.org/images/timeline.png

I'd like to thank Flavio Glock for initiating and leading the v6.pm  
effort,
and all lambdacamel and lambdamoose on irc.freenode.net #perl6 for their
relentless enthusiasm in getting Perl 6 deployed to the Real World.

See you on IRC!

Audrey

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