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

For various reasons, I'm often and forcedly under Windows. Up until some time ago I could occasionally and happily play with pugs there thanks to the ready made binaries somebody kindly offered to the community. However now:

  1. AIUI pugs is not being that actively (update: moritz told me so!) developed any more;
  2. I cannot even used those old binaries for they require some 5.8 installation, and I'm under 5.10.

So: what which Perl 6 prototype implementation can I use nowadays to experiment with, in general, and in particular under Windows? FWIW, I really liked pugs as it were and I would cherish a similar tool, but I'm open to different incarnations of course.

--
If you can't understand the incipit, then please check the IPB Campaign.

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Re: Playing with Perl 6 (under Windows) - How to?
by moritz (Cardinal) on Jul 23, 2008 at 19:13 UTC
    Pugs isn't developed any more, but a few weeks ago audreyt made it installable via cabal (think "cpan for haskell"). I have no idea if this actually works on windows, but it worked for me to build it with perl-5.10.0 and ghc-6.8.2. (Update: Reini Urban told me on IRC that it works on windows). The INSTALL file in the pugs repo contains some hints (there are various installation methods described, for me only the one over cabal actually works).

    You can also build parrot and try out Rakudo. Afaict it's supposed to work both under cygwin and "native" windows (I know that jonathan mostly develops under windows, so it must work somehow ;-). For cygwin parrot is also pre-packaged.

    Rakudo isn't as feature complete as pugs, but it's being worked on, and continually improves. Problems with rakudo should be reported to rakudobug@perl.org If you don't want to build anything at all, and only test small snippets, you can also use your favourite IRC client, connect to irc.freenode.org, and /msg the bot p6eval, like this: 

    /msg p6eval pugs: say "hi";
/msg p6eval rakudo: say "hi";

    [download]

    The general syntax is $implementation: $code, where $implementation is one of pugs|rakudo|elf|kp6|nqp|pixie|yap6. If you chose perl6 as $implementation, it runs your program with elf, pugs and rakudo.

    Problems with p6eval should be reported via IRC to moritz_ (aka me ;-)

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      You can also build parrot and try out Rakudo. Afaict it's supposed to work both under cygwin and "native" windows (I know that jonathan mostly develops under windows, so it must work somehow ;-).

      I personally believe I'll wait to see if somebody distributes ready made parrot builds complete of Rakudo...

      Of course also ikegami's suggestion is not that bad - apart that I would be playing with an old pugs anyway: if it weren't for the issue being discussed here, I would have no need to have more than one perl on this very pc, and I somehow prefer to, but -I have to admit- for no logical reason and so it wouldn't be a problem either.

      If you don't want to build anything at all, and only test small snippets, you can also use your favourite IRC client, connect to irc.freenode.org, and /msg the bot p6eval

      At some point IIRC a machine with public access on request was being provided by some kind soul, too, to make experiments. (I was on p6l back then and it was announced there.) Is it still up and running?

      --
      If you can't understand the incipit, then please check the IPB Campaign.
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        personally believe I'll wait to see if somebody distributes ready made parrot builds complete of Rakudo...

        Good news, rurban brought parrot to cygwin, and is working a rakudo package as well.

        At some point IIRC a machine with public access on request was being provided by some kind soul, too, to make experiments. (I was on p6l back then and it was announced there.) Is it still up and running?

        Good you mentioned it, I forgot... Juerd runs feather, and happily gives out accounts to those who want to experiment with pugs & co.

        There use to be a web interface to pugs as well, but that seems to got knocked down by some apache + perl upgrades on feather.

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Re: Playing with Perl 6 (under Windows) - How to?
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jul 23, 2008 at 19:14 UTC

    I cannot even used those old binaries for they require some 5.8 installation, and I'm under 5.10.

    I have 5 Perl installs on my Windows machine. Just install them in different directories.

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