Parrot 0.4.7 "Caique" Released!

November 14, 2006

On behalf of the Parrot team, I'm proud to announce Parrot 0.4.7, "Caique"!

What is Parrot? Parrot is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic languages. The Parrot project home page is parrotcode.org. You may now grab Parrot 0.4.7 from: http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/CHIPS/parrot-0.4.7.tar.gz

New in Parrot 0.4.7:

New languages: PHP ("Plumhead"), Forth
Updated languages: Ruby ("Cardinal"), Tcl, Lua
Active Python language development is hosted at pirate.tangentcode.com
Compilers:
- PGE updated with more expressions, latest changes to S05
- new Perl 6 grammar compiler
Integration:
- Perl 5 module "Parrot::Embed" allows easy embedding of a Parrot runtime into a Perl 5 program
PIR:
- new :init pragma for subs that must run before the main function
- new :vtable pragma to identify subs that override PMC vtable methods, eliminating the need for special subroutine names
- PIR parser/compiler does not stop on first syntax error
- Vanilla register allocator ("register alligator") greatly improves performance compiling large functions
- Eliminated limit on number of PIR macros
PMCs:
- hash lookups return null instead of None for missing keys
Design:
- PDD13 "Bytecode files: format and manipulation" - new
- PDD10 "Embedding" - new
- PDD25 "Concurrency" - rewritten
- PDD15 "Objects" - new section on redesign requirements
- PDD07 "Coding standards" - significant updates and automated tests
Test Suite:
- Many many more new tests
Build Process:
- autoconf compatible install options
Misc:
- Namespace refinements
- Coroutine improvements
- An impressive swarm of other bugfixes and enhancements

If you'd like to develop on Parrot (or help develop Parrot itself), we recommend that you keep up with the latest and best Parrot code by using Subversion or SVK to access our source code repository; see instructions).

Thanks to all our contributors for making this possible, and our sponsors for supporting this project.

Share & Enjoy!

Chip Salzenberg <chip@pobox.com>