Rakudo compiler, Release #189 (2026.01)

2026-01-24

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m very happy to announce the January 2026 release of Rakudo #189. Rakudo is an implementation of the Raku1 language.

The source tarball for this release is available from https://rakudo.org/files/rakudo. Pre-compiled archives will be available shortly.

New in 2026.01:

  • Improvements:

    • Remove meaningless command-line argument "parsetrace" [cff551c8]
    • Add infix + - / * candidates for mixed int / num [1b46f713]
    • Make -MSIL cleaner by excluding any core BBs [c7e41bd8]
    • Test .from-posix versus .from-posix-nanos [f95aefad]
    • Add profiling opts (from NQP) [6f087b06]
    • Treat .WHERE as a macro, just as .HOW and friends [a0a198dd]
    • Give "macro" DEFINITE same treatment as WHO and friends [62927745]
    • Give "macro" REPR same treatment as WHO and friends [971b2fa4]

  • Fixes:

    • Fix roast test failure caused by 1b46f7135b7776e779 [fbb967b3]
    • Rename Test's exit-ok to exits-ok [24e6ff34]
    • MoarVM alignment fix for GCC 15.1/OpenSuse Leap 16 [fb0142fe]
    • Fix an inverted logic scenerio for $type_env [3babcc69]

  • Additions:

  • RakuAST:

    • Fixup handling of =numtable [fcc0e185]
    • Allow for =table3 and friends in podification [f3ada07f]
    • Prevent execution error if no RakuAST [d1a33cd7]
    • Rename =restart to =counter [dc33497f]
    • Make rakudoc2text also take a ::CompUnit [81ea8224]

  • Internal:

    • MSI: Use $(var.VERSION) For Product Version Instead Of Hardcoded "1.0.0" [a9e53a05]
    • Update Copyrights To 2026 [e0797921][33652f14][6f69b3aa][fce89c25] [52995edb][c7e8ffb6][39d5610b][c4efa5f1][422e44d0][8676d9b4][5e10741c]

The following people contributed to this release:

Eric Forste, Elizabeth Mattijsen, Will Coleda, Tom Browder, RC Chuah, Patrick Böker, librasteve, Tim Nelson, Timo Paulssen, Justin DeVuyst, ab5tract, habere-et-dispertire, jit, rir

This release implements 6.c and 6.d versions of the Raku specification. 6.c version of the language is available if you use the use v6.c version pragma, otherwise 6.d is the default.

Upcoming releases in 2026 will include new functionality that is not part of 6.c or 6.d specifications, available with a lexically scoped pragma. Our goal is to ensure that anything that is tested as part of 6.c and 6.d specifications will continue to work unchanged. There may be incremental spec releases this year as well.

If you would like to contribute or get more information, visit https://raku.org, https://rakudo.org/community, or join us on IRC (#raku on Libera), the Discord, or the [email protected] mailing list.

Additionally, we invite you to make a donation to The Raku Foundation to sponsor Raku development: https://rakufoundation.org/donate (put “Raku Core Development Fund” in the ‘Purpose’ text field)

The next release of Rakudo (#190), is tentatively scheduled for 2026-02-21.

The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements, cool discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback are welcome through the channels listed above.

  1. See https://raku.org/ ↩