[kbenson]

Perl 6 is a spec, and different implementations are possible and encouraged. Rakudo is an implementation, and targets a few different VMs, including Parrot, MoarVM and the JVM. A lot of effort is being put into making MoarVM a good VM for the intermediate language that Rakudo uses to implement Perl 6, but AFAIK the JVM is kept up to date as well, and Parrot is also where time and expertise exist.

[RichardCA]

Thanks, my intention in asking the question was to see if there is any willingness to speak about what will ship. I don't need a pedantic explanation of the runtimes, I want to know if a decision has been made to get behind one of them. I've been waiting 15 years to hear some actual details about what I can expect when I install this thing.

[SwellJoe]

MoarVM is the closest to "ready", and seems to be what most of the developers actually using Perl 6 today are using. But, as the prior post mentioned, Rakudo-JVM and Rakuda-Parrot are also getting closer to ready. All of them will likely "ship", as long as the developers keep working on them, and Perl 6 code will likely run correctly on any of them.

Here is the current feature test statuses of the Perl 6 compilers/runtimes: http://perl6.org/compilers/features

Note that the Rakudo-MoarVM runtime is the closest to feature complete, with Rakudo-JVM close behind.

In short, you can expect you'll get whichever runtime you install, and if that runtime is ready for production you can expect that Perl 6 will work on that runtime. MoarVM will likely be the first to be ready for production.

You may have other reasons for choosing a runtime; if you have a Java/Clojure/Scala shop and wanted a powerful scripting language to integrate into your systems, the JVM runtime might be just the thing. If you wanted the fastest Perl 6 for standalone Perl 6 applications, MoarVM will likely be it (I think, I haven't looked at benchmarks, just guessing). The FFI may be easier to work with in MoarVM, if you need C or other compiled external libraries...but maybe not. I'm not at all familiar with how that works in JVM runtimes, but it seems like it would be more convoluted.

[kbenson]

Why wait? I assume it will be similar to Rakudo Star, which packages[0] Perl 6 for regular consumption on a semi-monthly (quarterly now?) basis, which you can download windows installers for here[1]. If you aren't on windows, compile, it's not that hard, directions are included in the github repo for Rakudo[2] under INSTALL.txt. You can see more info on that at the Rakudo website[3].

0: MSI installers for MoarVM and Parrot, I assume JVM bytecode it includes is in there as it stated it ships with "experimental JVM support."

1: http://rakudo.org/downloads/star/

2: https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo

3: http://rakudo.org/