# Announce: Rakudo compiler, Release 2020.08.2

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm announcing an
out-of-schedule release of the Rakudo compiler.
Rakudo is an implementation of the Raku[^1] language.

This release is a point release in addition to the regular, monthly
releases. This release fixes output of Rakudo for the case of `--show-config`
command line option passed.

As Rakudo matures, resolves old restrictions and starts to support more
building options, inevitably parts of the system are changed and the build
system turns out to be one of the less test covered parts.

The team increases test coverage to match with the issues found, the amount of
places where problems demanding point releases can hide decreases.

The tarball for this release is available from <http://rakudo.org/downloads/rakudo/>.
Pre-compiled archives will be available shortly.

The changes in this release are outlined below:

New in 2020.08.2:
  + Fixes:
    + Fix output of `--show-config` option [1a1fe7fb][f00c4198]

The following people contributed to this release:

Patrick Böker, Alexander Kiryuhin

This release implements 6.c and 6.d versions of the Raku specification.
6.c version of the language is available if you use the `use v6.c`
version pragma, otherwise 6.d is the default.

Upcoming releases in 2020 will include new functionality that is not
part of 6.c or 6.d specifications, available with a lexically scoped
pragma. Our goal is to ensure that anything that is tested as part of
6.c and 6.d specifications will continue to work unchanged. There may
be incremental spec releases this year as well.

If you would like to contribute or get more information, visit
<https://raku.org>, <https://rakudo.org/community>, ask on the
<perl6-compiler@perl.org> mailing list, or ask on IRC #raku on freenode.

Additionally, we invite you to make a donation to The Perl Foundation
to sponsor Raku development: <https://donate.perlfoundation.org/>
(put “Raku Core Development Fund” in the ‘Purpose’ text field)

The next release of Rakudo (#139), is tentatively scheduled for 2020-09-19.

A list of the other planned release dates is available in the
“docs/release_guide.pod” file.

The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do
get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements, cool
discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback -- get in touch with
us through (the above-mentioned) mailing list or IRC channel. Enjoy!

Please note that recent releases have known issues running on the JVM.
We are working to get the JVM backend working again but do not yet have
an estimated delivery date.

[^1]: See <https://raku.org/>
