Re^9: Waiting for a Product, not a Compiler

[Anonymous Monk]

I think one thing that is clear, with all these discussions. When Perl 6.0.0 releases it won't be able to replace latest then released version of Perl 5.

If Perl 6 is really that big, so that you can't really give one monolithic release which covers 6.0.0. Then I guess there must be a Perl 6 release which implements all easily implementable and usable features now. That release must not break any programs in future releases. There must be good documentation, basic libraries to write some programs and CPAN compatibility. You can carry on further development and releases hence forth as required.

For the moment a release branded as a production release will suffice. It will build trust in the community that some thing working is out in the open which can be trusted upon and used now. I believe Rakudo star was aimed towards that. But unfortunately it didn't end up meeting its goals.

Currently the feeling going around is that, we are stuck in a never ending cycle of rewrites and experimentation which never leads to a serious release. That is the perception. I know that's not true. But the world goes by perceptions.

There is nothing wrong with a minimal, production release. With documentation, libraries, with backwards and CPAN compatibility. After than you can always continue to make 6 month releases, adding more features gradually.

That way you can get a working production release product, users, growing community and at the same time gradually move towards a feature complete compiler.