Announce: Niecza Perl 6 v18 This is the eighteenth release of Niecza Perl 6, as usual scheduled on the last Monday of the month. You can obtain a build of Niecza from [1]. This build contains a working compiler as a set of .exe and .dll files suitable for use with Mono or Microsoft .NET. If you wish to follow latest developments, you can obtain the source from [2]; however, you still need a binary for bootstrapping. Niecza is a Perl 6 compiler project studying questions about the efficient implementability of Perl 6 features. It currently targets the Common Language Runtime; both Mono and Microsoft .NET are known to work. On Windows, Cygwin is required for source builds only; see the README for details. List of changes [Breaking changes] substr now returns a read-only value in accordance with specification changes. To modify the substr return value, use substr-rw (new in this release). Default new() methods, when passed arguments to initialize @.attributes, now treat the argument as a whole array. In other words, (class :: { has @.foo }).new(foo => [1, 2, 3]) no longer results in an additional level of boxing. [Exciting major features] Exceptions and warnings generated within a span of call-less statements are now much more likely to give the correct line number. (Exciting to me!) Many setting operators like + are now multis and can be extended by user code. [Minor changes] Added ms// syntax (Solomon Foster). Added Rat.Rat, Rat.norm (Solomon Foster). Numerous bug fixes. Niecza::Benchmark has been rewritten and is now a bit more robust. [Major internals changes] Containerization of values is no longer mandatory; bare values are now used everywhere read-only Scalars were in v17. In particular, the NewROScalar function has been removed. Getting involved Contact sorear in irc.freenode.net #perl6 or via the sender address of this mailing. Also check out the TODO file; whether you want to work on stuff on it, or have cool ideas to add to it, both are good. [1] http://host02.appflux.net/niecza/niecza-18.zip [2] https://github.com/sorear/niecza