Rakudo Star 2011.04 for Windows

I am really surprised by myself. In the last 10 years I mostly have various Linux distributions on my computers and I only used Windows at clients or in a virtual environment to make sure the perl editor works reasonably well there. Yet somehow I became the "Windows guy".

I am really surprised that somehow I am now creating installers for various things on Windows. First the Strawberry Perl with Cream - 5.12.3 v3 released and now Rakudo Star.

If you don't know, Rakudo is one of the most advanced compilers of Perl 6. Rakudo Star is a distribution that includes Rakudo, the compiler, Parrot, the virtual machine, a number of third party modules and documentation.

It is released in source code format and you can read more in the release announcement.

To make it easier to get started with it on Windows I built an installer for this package. It is a bit experimental for me as I am really new to building installers for Windows but Inno Setup makes it really easy.

Both the source code version and the Windows installer can be found on the download page of Rakudo.

There is one important limitation of Parrot I think, that the installation cannot be moved. So it will install the whole thing in the C:\rakudo directory.

If you would like to get some introduction to Perl 6, I made a series of screencasts about Perl 6.

Enjoy, and let me know how does it work out for you!