This is Parrot, version 0.0.11 ------------------------------ Parrot is Copyright (C) 2001-2003 The Perl Foundation. All Rights Reserved. LICENSE INFORMATION ------------------- This code is distributed under the same license as Perl 5; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: a) the GNU General Public License as found in the directory "LICENSES" b) the "Artistic License" which can be found in the directory "LICENSES" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details. PREREQUISITES ------------- You'll need a compiler and linker, of course. A make program is currently encouraged, but we have had difficulties with some versions (like nmake), so we do have a primitive script that attempts to emulate it. You'll also need Perl 5.005 or above, compiled to support the types you wish to support in Parrot. (Parrot will make, but you'll be unable to assemble anything.) You can find what types are support by typing 'perl -V', and examining the values for ivtype and nvtype. Parrot should work with INTVALs and FLOATVALs up to those types. For most of the platforms that we are supporting initially, Parrot should build out of the box. We do not have, however, native dynamic loading ready for OS X, and are currently using Fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net) to fill that gap. Other solutions may also work. The list of targetted platforms can be found in docs/parrot.pod. The current configure system is primitive, as it's only a temporary solution. It will be happy with most any answers you decide to feed it. Garbage In, Garbage Out. You may want to peruse the list of KNOWN_ISSUES to see what other things may be unexpected. INSTRUCTIONS ------------ For now, unpack your Parrot tarball, (if you're reading this, you've probably already done that) and type perl Configure.pl to run the Configure script. This will generate a config.h header, a Parrot::Config module, and a Makefile. Next type make and the interpreter should build. You can test the assembler and interpreter by running make test Look at docs/parrot.pod and docs/intro.pod for where to go from here. If you have any problems, see the section "Reporting Problems" in docs/intro.pod. NOTES ----- On some older computers with little RAM, the computed-goto dispatch core (core_ops_cg.c) may take a while to compile or may fail to compile at all. You can pass a flag to Configure (--cgoto=0) to disable the computed-goto core, at a slight cost in runtime speed. CHANGES ------- For documentation on the user-visible changes between this version and previous versions, please see NEWS. The full changelog is available as ChangeLog. MAILING LISTS ------------- The mailing list for parrot is currently perl6-internals. Subscribe by sending mail to perl6-internals-subscribe@perl.org. It is archived at http://nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.internals WEB SITES --------- The following web sites have all the Parrot information you need: http://dev.perl.org/ http://cvs.perl.org/ http://www.parrotcode.org/ Have fun, The Parrot team.