Rakudo's development release cycle is based on Parrot's release cycle. Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month; Rakudo will generally issue its own development release two days after the Parrot release.
Each development release is given a sequential number and a code name based on an active Perl Mongers group. Rakudo's February 2009 release is #14; prior releases were bundled as part of monthly Parrot releases.
2009-02-26 Rakudo #14 "Vienna" (pmichaud) 2009-03-20 Rakudo #15 "Oslo" (pmichaud) 2009-04-23 Rakudo #16 "Bratislava" (pmichaud) 2009-05-21 Rakudo #17 "Stockholm" (pmichaud) 2009-06-18 Rakudo #18 "Pittsburgh" (pmichaud) 2009-07-23 Rakudo #19 "Chicago" (moritz) 2009-08-20 Rakudo #20 "PDX" (kyle) 2009-09-17 Rakudo #21 "Seattle" (particle) 2009-10-22 Rakudo #22 "Thousand Oaks" (duff) 2009-11-19 Rakudo #23 "Lisbon" (masak) 2009-12-17 Rakudo #24 "Seoul" (chromatic) 2010-01-22 Rakudo #25 "Minneapolis" (pmichaud) 2010-02-18 Rakudo #26 "Amsterdam" (mberends) 2010-03-18 Rakudo #27 "Copenhagen" (smash) 2010-04-22 Rakudo #28 "Moscow" (moritz) 2010-05-20 Rakudo #29 "Erlangen" (colomon) 2010-06-17 Rakudo #30 "Kiev" (masak) 2010-07-22 Rakudo #31 "Atlanta" (Coke) 2010-08-19 Rakudo #32 "Pisa" (mathw) 2010-09-23 Rakudo #33 "Milan" (moritz) 2010-10-21 Rakudo #34 "Paris" (duff) 2010-11-18 Rakudo #35 "Melbourne" (masak) 2010-12-23 Rakudo #36 "New York" (smash) 2011-01-20 Rakudo #37 "BristolBath" (tadzik) 2011-02-17 Rakudo #38 "Toulouse" (arnsholt) 2011-03-17 Rakudo #39 "Orlando" (jdhore) 2011-04-21 Rakudo #40 "ZA" (duff) 2011-05-19 Rakudo #41 "Dahut" (jdhore) 2011-06-23 Rakudo #42 "Bruxelles" (jdhore) 2011-07-21 Rakudo #43 "Beijing" (mberends,moritz) 2011-08-18 -- none -- 2011-09-30 Rakudo #44 "Riga" (tadzik) 2011-10-20 Rakudo #45 "Houston" (duff) 2011-11-17 Rakudo #46 "London" (tadzik) 2011-12-22 Rakudo #47 "Columbus" (moritz) 2012-01-23 Rakudo #48 "Toronto" (moritz) 2012-02-23 Rakudo #49 "SPb" (masak) 2012-03-22 Rakudo #50 "Argentina" (masak) 2012-04-19 Rakudo #51 "Brazos Valley" (Coke) 2012-04-25 2012.04.1 (moritz) 2012-05-17 Rakudo #52 "MadMongers" (tadzik) 2012-06-21 Rakudo #53 "Strasbourg" (duff) 2012-07-19 Rakudo #54 "Tallinn" (masak)
Dates are based on Parrot's expected release schedule.
2012-08-23 Rakudo #55 tadzik 2012-09-20 Rakudo #56 2012-10-18 Rakudo #57 duff 2012-11-22 Rakudo #58 2012-12-20 Rakudo #59
More names can be gotten from http://www.pm.org if you can't think of one with any particular significance to Perl 6 or Rakudo.
Each Rakudo development release is timed to occur two days after a Parrot monthly release.
A few days before the Parrot release, it's a good idea to...
Remind people of the upcoming release, invite people to update the ChangeLog file, update the ROADMAP, choose a release name, etc.
Verify that the Parrot master branch is able to build Rakudo and run the spectest suite. Also check the smolder reports at http://smolder.parrot.org/app/projects/smoke_reports/5.
If Parrot's master branch exhibits any problems building or running Rakudo (that require changes to Parrot to fix), immediately report them to the Parrot development team so they can be fixed prior to Parrot's release.
Review the RT queue for tickets that might need resolving prior to the release, addressing them as needed. "Tickets that need resolving" is left your discretion. Any problem that has a large impact on users is worth addressing either as a fix or as prominent documentation (the README and/or the release announcement).
Create a draft release announcement in docs/announce/YYYY.MM . You can often use the previous release's file as a starting point, updating the release number, version information, name, etc. as appropriate.
$ git add docs/announce/YYYY.MM $ git commit docs
If it's a month relatively early in the calendar year, double-check that the copyright date in the README file includes the current year. (It's not necessary to update copyright dates in other files, unless you know that a given file has been modified in a year not reflected by the file's copyright notice.)
The short period following the Parrot release until the Rakudo release is generally intended for fixing bugs, updating documentation, and so on.
Update Rakudo's leap-second tables:
$ perl tools/update-tai-utc.pl src/core/tai-utc.pm
If a new leap second has been announced, tai-utc.pm will be modified, so commit the new version:
$ git commit src/core/tai-utc.pm
But probably there won't be any new leap seconds, in which case the file will be unchanged.
Note: this program requires the perl module Time::y2038 be installed.
As the actual release date nears, review the git log history to see if any additional items need to be added to the ChangeLog. This can be conveniently done with "git log --since=yyyy-mm-dd --reverse".
$ git commit docs/ChangeLog
When it's time to cut the release, finalize the new release announcement in docs/announce/YYYY.MM. (If one hasn't already been created, see step 1 above.) Highlight areas in which the new release is significant. If possible, also give some small details about the choice of release name. (If the details are a bit lengthy, this can often best be done as a separate section at the bottom of the announcement.)
Include a list of contributors since the last release in the announcement. You can get an automatically generated list by running
$ perl tools/contributors.pl
Note: this program requires the perl module Date::Simple be installed.
Please check the result manually for duplicates and other errors.
Update the release dates and names at the top of this file (docs/release_guide.pod). Also improve these instructions if you find any steps that are missing.
$ git commit docs/release_guide.pod
Create an NQP release with the same YYYY.MM version number as Rakudo. Follow NQP's docs/release_guide.pod file to do that.
YYYY.MM
docs/release_guide.pod
Go back to the Rakudo repository, and update the NQP dependency:
$ echo YYYY.MM > tools/build/NQP_REVISION $ git commit -m '[release] bump NQP revision' tools/build/NQP_REVISION
Enter the new version into the VERSION file, and commit the changes:
$ echo YYYY.MM > VERSION $ git commit -m '[release] bump VERSION' VERSION
Make sure any locally modified files have been pushed back to github.
$ git status $ git push
Make sure everything compiles and runs from a known clean state:
$ make realclean $ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot $ make $ make test $ make stresstest
There are many tests to run for the stresstest target. If you have a machine with multiple CPU cores, you may want to execute that last as
$ TEST_JOBS=4 make stresstest
where 4 is the number of CPU cores. This should make the total time to execute all of the tests dramatically less.
Continue adjusting things until make stresstest passes as expected. Often this means fixing a bug, fudging a test, or (temporarily?) commenting out a test file in t/spectest.data . Use your best judgment or ask others if uncertain what to do here.
Create a tarball by entering make release VERSION=YYYY.MM, where YYYY.MM is the month for which the release is being made. This will create a tarball file named rakudo-YYYY.MM.tar.gz.
make release VERSION=YYYY.MM
rakudo-YYYY.MM.tar.gz
Caution: this step removes any untracked files in t/spec. So please make a backup if you have any important data in there.
Unpack the tar file into another area, and test that it builds and runs properly using the same process in step 8. If there are any problems, fix them and go back to step 8.
Tag the release by its release month ("YYYY.MM") and its code name.
$ git tag -a -m"tag release #nn" YYYY.MM # e.g., 2010.02 $ git tag -a -m"tag release #nn" CODENAME # e.g., "Bratislava" $ git push --tags
Upload the release tarball to github's download area at http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads.
To avoid public confusion with Rakudo Star releases, we now publish compiler release announcements ONLY to perl6-compiler@perl.org. (We may restart widespread announcements of compiler releases once they are known, or we may begin publishing a single announcement for both.)
Update the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakudo.
You're done! Celebrate with the appropriate amount of fun.
Copyright (C) 2009-2012, The Perl Foundation.
To install Rakudo::Star, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Rakudo::Star
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Rakudo::Star
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.