Parrot 0.4.9 "Socorro" Released!

February 22, 2007

On behalf of the Parrot team, I'm proud to announce Parrot 0.4.9, "Socorro." Parrot is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic languages.

Parrot 0.4.9 can be obtained via CPAN (soon), or follow the download instructions. For those who would like to develop on Parrot, or help develop Parrot itself, we recommend using Subversion or SVK on our source code repository to get the latest and best Parrot code.

Parrot 0.4.9 News:

Compilers:
- IMCC: Parrot calling conventions now available in C PMCs, allowing named, optional, slurpy, and flat parameter passing
- PGE: extended support for Perl 5 Regexes
- smop: prototype object model implementation
- hllcompiler: refactored to run a configurable set of compilation stages
PAST:
- redesigned assign/binding to support Perl 6 binding semantics
Languages:
- Updated Lua, PHP ("Plumhead") Tcl ("ParTcl") perl6, perl5
- New language: PIR - a PGE-based implementation of Parrot PIR
- perl6 now supports binding (':=') and 'join'
- lua generates tail calls, and supports its own regex flavor (PGE-based)
- Pheme still works, huzzah!
Design:
- PDD21 "Objects" - rewritten
- PDD22 "I/O" - updated and 'TODO' tests added
Documentation:
- Interface stability classification standards approved
- Roles and Responsibilities documented approved
- Official 'drafts' directory created (was 'clip')
Implementation:
- More NameSpace and OS PMC methods implemented
- Parrot executable fullname and basename now available in PIR/PASM code
- new 'chomp' library function
Build:
- Major improvements in test coverage for 'ops2pm.pl'
Misc:
- many bugfixes, enhancements, and coding standard updates
- extended support for Sun Workshop Compilers
- Parrot now builds on PocketPC platform

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

Enjoy!
Pm