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Rakudo-Star

A user-friendly distribution of the Raku programming language.

Pre-build binary Rakudo-Star packages

• Please refer to rakudo-star-pkg releases for binary packages.

NOTE: Please provide your feedback about those binary packages in the respective GitHub repo.

- Mid-term this repo here will also release the binary packages.
- Even more, if desired by the users and community, the binary packages
    could be also uploaded to 'https://www.rakudo.org/star'

Docker Image

• Please refer to Rakudo-Star on Docker Hub for an image.
• Find the related Docker files on the "Raku Docker" GitHub repository

What's in this GIT repo

There are currently two different tools within this repo:

1. The so called RSTAR tool, which manages the Linux build and local installation.
2. The chocolatey based Powershell build script, which creates a Windows MSI package.

Both tools compile Rakudo and then add some selected modules!

1. RSTAR tool

• bash based tool, should work on any Linux OS (should also build Rakudo-Star on macOS!?).
  • The rstar (bash) tool downloads all requirements, like MoarVM, NQP, Rakudo and some Rakudo modules.
  • It then compiles everything into a local Rakudo installation and add's the modules via zef.
• More information can be found in the related Wiki page

As the rstar utility is written in bash, all additional features should also be based on bash. Using other utilities is accepted, but efforts should be made to avoid introducing new utilities.

Furthermore, all code should be linted against shellcheck and not produce any warnings.

Usage

rstar install [options] [core] [modules]

Options:

Skipping module tests:

By default, zef runs all tests when installing bundled modules. Pass -T to disable this, which can significantly speed up installation:

rstar install -T modules

You can also set the environment variable RSTAR_NO_TEST to any non-empty value to achieve the same effect without modifying the command:

RSTAR_NO_TEST=1 rstar install modules

Note: When a module fails and is retried with --force-test, tests are always run regardless of this option.

2. BUILD-WITH-CHOCO.PS1 tool

• A Powershell script, which internally uses chocolatey to create a Windows MSI package.
  • The created MSI package can be used to install Rakudo-Star (Rakudo with some additional modules) on any Windows device.
• More information can be found in the wiki

Usage

.\build-with-choco.ps1 [[-RAKUDO_VER] <version>] [-sign] [-keep] [-NoTest]

Parameters:

Skipping module tests:

By default, zef runs all tests when installing bundled modules. Pass -NoTest (or its alias -T) to disable this, which can significantly speed up the build:

.\build-with-choco.ps1 -NoTest

You can also set the environment variable RSTAR_NO_TEST to any non-empty value to achieve the same effect without modifying the command:

$env:RSTAR_NO_TEST = 1
.\build-with-choco.ps1

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3. Community Modules

Rakudo-Star's only main features is to support it's users with a number of popular community modules.

You should always prefer to use a pinned version of a module, wherever versions are available! Therefore all Rakudo modules, which are included into Star, need i.e. to have git tags.

modules.txt

This modules file contains references to all community modules to be bundled with Rakudo-Star. It is a space-separated format. The first column is the name of the module, the second the protocol to use, with the third column being the URL to fetch it from. Columns following the third have different meaning depending on the protocol.

Currently all modules are expected to be available via git (GitHub) and having git tags, similar to the version given in the modules META6.json

Bugs, Feedback and Patches

Bugs

• Please open an GitHub Issue for any found bug!
  • If you're reporting a RSTAR bug, please include the full logs of rstar with RSTAR_DEBUG=1, and the output of rstar sysinfo in your message.

Feedback

Mail and IRC

• If you have a question about Rakudo-Star, you probably want to write to the “perl6-users@perl.org” mailing list or ask the irc.libera.chat/#raku-star IRC channel.

GitHub Platform

• Knowledge and documentation related to Rakudo-Star can be published in the related wiki.
• There is also Star discussions for any kind of ongoing discussions, alignements, FAQ's, ...
  • Once things are discussed, agreed, finalized, they should be documented in the Wiki, see above!

Patches And Code Contributions

• Please send your pull requests to the RAKUDO-Star repository!
• Also, try to be generous with comments. Especially when introducing new utility functions, a little description of what it does and what problem it is intended to solve go a long way.

Various GIT Repositories

The main git repository lives at https://github.com/rakudo/star. This should be used as the reference to clone from.

Additionally, there are old mirrors of this repository at other places and from previous maintainers. You may find additional helpful information there, which can help to get a better understanding and some history of the Star package:

• https://git.sr.ht/~tyil/rakudo-star
• https://gitlab.com/tyil/rakudo-star
• https://git.tyil.nl/rakudo-star
• https://github.com/Raku/rakudo-star

License

The software in this repository is distributed under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0, unless specified otherwise.