Parrot 2.0.0 Released!

The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface — superior though they are — can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with points we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place.

— Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep

On behalf of the Parrot team, I'm proud to announce Parrot 2.0.0 "Inevitable." Parrot is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic languages.

Parrot 2.0.0 is available on Parrot's FTP site, or follow the download instructions. For those who would like to develop on Parrot, or help develop Parrot itself, we recommend using Subversion on our source code repository to get the latest and best Parrot code.

Parrot 2.0.0 News:

  • Features

    • Context PMCs now support attribute-based introspection
    • Context and CallSignature PMCs merged into CallContext
    • .lex directive throws exceptions when used with incorrect register types
  • Platforms

    • Packaging improved for free OS distributions
    • PPC, PPC64, and ARM now tested when running Linux
  • Performance

    • Minor improvements to the profiling runcore
    • Improvements from the CallContext PMC merge
  • New deprecations

    • In/out parameters in STRING modification functions
    • Void handling in NCI signatures
    • Parameter passing opcodes order in PBC
  • Tests

    • Continued migration of core tests from Perl 5 to PIR
  • Tools

    • dependency checker improved
  • Miscellaneous

    • Deprecation cycle length changed to three months from six
    • GC accuracy improved
    • PMC freeze improvements; much more reliable
    • Makefile improvements for dependency handling

Thanks to all our contributors for making this possible, and our sponsors
for supporting this project. Our next release is 16 February 2010.

Enjoy!