gistfile1.perl

   Announce: Niecza Perl 6

I am happy to make the first general announcement of Niecza Perl 6[1], a Perl 6
compiler project focusing on optimization research.

I have been tinkering with this for about 6 months now and I feel I finally
have something worth sharing.

While other Perl 6 compilers have focused on exploration of semantic issues,
Niecza is exploring implementation efficiency issues.  The goal of this project
is to have fun while learning about how to make a fast Perl 6; if we
accidentally make a fast Perl 6 in the process, so much the better.

Niecza is written in Perl (currently version 5) and generates code to run on
a backend.  The only currently implemented backend targets the Common Language
Runtime (.NET or Mono).  You will, therefore, need Perl 5, several modules,
and Mono to run Niecza; see the README for details.  .NET support is expected
to be easy to add.

Rather than bore you with a long list of features that are not yet implemented,
here are some of the things that are not not yet implemented:

* Basic data types (Num, Str, Array, Hash, Sub, etc) and basic operations

* Control flow operators

* Regexes, including full LTM and cut operator support

* Lazy lists under the 'mostly eager' paradigm, supporting gather/take

* Separately compiled modules with distinct GLOBALs

* Classes, including C3 MRO computed at compile time, and nextsame

And a very small set of extensions:

* Low-level coding facilities (mostly for bootstrapping, but also for speed)

* Built-in support for JSYNC to save data structures

* Low-level access to threading facilities

Runtime performance is generally between one and two orders of magnitude slower
than Perl 5, depending on the level of tuning.  In very few cases Niecza is
faster than Perl 5.  There are assorted benchmarks in perf/ in the source tree;
any specific measurements would be unfair as these benchmarks have all received
heavy tuning.

If any of this sounds like fun to you, contact me via the Reply-To address or
'sorear' on irc.freenode.net #perl6.

No release schedule has been decided at this time.

[1] https://github.com/sorear/niecza