It is with a peevish exultation of spirit that I announce on behalf of
the Yapsi development team the September 2010 release of Yapsi -- soon
to be a major motion picture -- a Perl 6 compiler written in Perl 6.

You can download it here (or, if you happen to be on an avian-carrier-based
network, you can "pidgeon" it here):

 <http://github.com/downloads/masak/yapsi/yapsi-2010.09.tar.gz>

Yapsi is implemented in Perl 6. It thus requires a Perl 6 implementation to
build and run. This release of Yapsi has been confirmed to work on both
Rakudo Star 2010.08 and Rakudo Star 2010.07.

Yapsi is an "official and complete" implementation of Perl 6. Yapsi's
official status has been publicly confirmed by Patrick Michaud, the Rakudo
pumking. The claim about Yapsi being complete... well, it might just be
what PR people sometimes refer to as "a slight exaggeration". On the
bright side, it's becoming less so with each new release.

This month's release brings you 'unless' and 'until', as well as 'our'-scoped
variables:

$ yapsi -e 'my $a = 0; unless $a { say 42 }'
42

$ yapsi -e 'my $a = 0; until $a { say ++$a }'
1

$ yapsi -e 'our $a = 42; { my $a = 5; { say our $a } }'
42

For a complete list of changes, see doc/ChangeLog.

Quite a lot of features are within reach of people who are interested in
hacking on Yapsi. See the doc/LOLHALP file for a list of 'em. In fact,
that's how isBEKaml++ implemented 'unless' this month. (After which he
exclaimed "that was easy!" and tackled 'until'.) If you're wondering whether
you're qualified to help with the Yapsi project, that probably means you are.

Yapsi consists of a compiler and a runtime. The compiler generates instruction
code which the runtime then interprets. In Yapsi, that instruction code
(unfortunately) is called SIC[!]. Until further notice, SIC as a format changes
with each monthly release for various, mostly good reasons. However, if you
write a downstream tool that makes assumptions about the SIC format, someone
might change it just out of spite. SIC is explicitly not compatible with later,
earlier, or present versions of itself.

An overarching goal for making a Perl 6 compiler-and-runtime is to use it as
a server for various other projects, which will hook in at different steps:

* A time-traveling debugger (tardis), which hooks into the runtime.
* A coverage tool (lid), which will also hook into the runtime.
* A syntax checker (sigmund), which will use output from the parser.

Another overarching goal is to optimize for fun while learning about parsers,
compilers, and runtimes.

Have the appropriate amount of fun!
