Starting to look at Perl6

jbrugger has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm getting a bit confused!

Yesterday i wanted to get a start to try installing Perl6, so i went to the perl6 page.
Then i wanted to download perl6, but i did not find a clear way to do it.
there is talk about parrot, the Virtual machine designed to execute bytecode for interpreted languages efficiently. Parrot will be the target for the Perl 6 compiler. There is already a partial Perl 6 compiler as well as compilers in various stages of completion for a wide range of other languages. But no link to downloading Perl6 itself,

Then there is Pugs. An implementation of Perl 6, written in Haskell. It aims to implement the full Perl6 specification, as detailed in the Synopses. For more information, please see the overview and this interview.

Then i looked at the faq, but no section about 'getting Perl6' there...

Is Perl6 just not yet available, should i just use Pugs?, am i missing something? (i'd really like to try perl6), or should i use Parrot and Pugs together?
Please point me in the right direction.

"We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise." - Larry Wall.

Comment on Starting to look at Perl6

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Re: Starting to look at Perl6 by castaway (Parson) on Jul 11, 2005 at 05:27 UTC
An official perl6 package does not exist yet, it's all still in the design phase. If you want to try out some perl6 syntax, you can try using Pugs, which you already found. There are Pugs packages on CPAN - Perl6::Pugs to download, and http://www.pugscode.org should point to binary releases somewhere.. (To build the ones on CPAN, you will need to install Haskell.) BTW, I'm curious, what made you think that Perl6 was out already? C.	[reply]
Re^2: Starting to look at Perl6 by jbrugger (Parson) on Jul 11, 2005 at 05:36 UTC
Thanks for the replies I wasn't thinking it was out, but i wanted to try it. I do think it gives an advantage to know about Perl6 at the time it comes out, i really like to know this new implementation of Perl, from the point it starts. For my work, i mainly program in oo-Perl, and the next incarnations of our program will remain in Perl. We all know the limitations of oo in the current Perl version, thats why i'm looking out for version 6, and i like to stay 'on top' of it. Next, i thought there could be a 'beta release, since the plan is to have a working 6.0.0 compiler ready in the 3rd quarter of 2005. "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise." - Larry Wall.	[reply]
Re^3: Starting to look at Perl6 by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 11, 2005 at 05:47 UTC
since the plan is to have a working 6.0.0 compiler ready in the 3rd quarter of 2005 They upgraded that plan. Maybe you didn't get the memo? {grin} -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re^4: Starting to look at Perl6 by jbrugger (Parson) on Jul 11, 2005 at 05:51 UTC
Re: Starting to look at Perl6 by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jul 11, 2005 at 05:24 UTC
Perl 6 has not been released, or even completely specified. Pugs is what you want to get started with. It is a toy implementation of a subset of Perl 6, written in Haskell. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]
Re^2: Starting to look at Perl6 by revdiablo (Prior) on Jul 11, 2005 at 16:13 UTC
[Pugs] is a toy implementation of a subset of Perl 6 I'm sure you had the best intentions when writing this, but I think it might have the effect of demeaning Pugs in the eyes of some. Certainly it's true that Pugs is experimental, constantly changing, and doesn't (currently) aim to be a production Perl 6 environment. But it has nonetheless become very important in the Perl 6 development process. It's pushing the language design, by getting P6 into the hands of more people. It's helping to push Parrot, being The Language It Was Intended For. It's blazing the trail, so to speak, for future Perl 6 compilers. It's showing how things can be done, so they can either be either emulated or avoided as appropriate. And, in my opinion the most important thing, it's getting people excited about Perl 6 again.	[reply]
Re: Starting to look at Perl6 by polettix (Vicar) on Jul 11, 2005 at 07:55 UTC
I put my installation experiences here. Consider that the projects are evolving rapidly, so you'll have to ignore the version numbers in the post. Hope this helps you! Flavio perl -ple'$_=reverse' <<<ti.xittelop@oivalf Don't fool yourself.	[reply]
Re: Starting to look at Perl6 by tphyahoo (Vicar) on Jul 11, 2005 at 10:57 UTC
If you're on windows, try pxperl. " PXPerl is a high performance Perl binary distribution for Windows 2000/XP (Perl 5/Perl 6 aka Pugs) very easy to install and use, with nice documentation formatting, a tremendous number of installed modules, nice Tk interfaces to find documentation and configure, Explorer integration (edit/run/test scripts), nice icons..."	[reply]