rakudo-pkg

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Relocatable Builds
• OS Repositories
• Direct Downloads
• Set the PATH
• Zef Module Manager as a Regular User
• Windows Subsystem for Linux
• Using rakudo-pkg on Travis
• Building Your Own Packages
• Other Rakudo Distributions
• Contributing

Introduction

rakudo-pkg offers native packages (OS packages and relocatable builds) of Rakudo compiler for Raku (previously known as Perl 6) that closely follow upstream development. Most of the time, the packages will be released on the same day as the Rakudo sources. At the moment, packages are provided for Alpine, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu. The relocatable builds (unpack and use) should works universally on all recent Linux distributions.

Feel free to contribute or request new packages.

rakudo-pkg aims to provide small self-contained (no dependencies, no files outside /opt/rakudo-pkg), pre-compiled native OS packages that can be used on user's computers, servers and --very importantly-- containers. Therefor, only the Rakudo compiler and the Zef package manager are provided. Third party modules can be easily installed if desired.

From a security point of view, we like to create the builds in the open: the packages are created, checksummed and automatically uploaded from the code in this repository by Travis CI to Github Releases and Bintray Repositories.

For those users, or rather System Administrators, that prefer to build their own Rakudo packages, rakudo-pkg can be used as a build framework. Because Docker containers are used when creating native Linux packages, any platform running Docker can be used as a host, including Linux, MacOS and Windows machines.

Relocatable Builds

Relocatable builds can be uncompressed and used right away, e.g. in your home directory. rakudo-pkg "*.tar.gz" releases can be downloaded from the the Github tab and, as a backup from the Bintray repo.

The relocable builds work on 64-bit distributions with a glibc at the same level or newer than than Centos 6 (2.12). 32-bit relocable builds works from the release of Ubuntu 16.04 onwards (2.23).

OS Repositories

The easiest way to install the Rakudo on Debian, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu (and their derivatives) is by using the rakudo-pkg repositories. For Alpine, see Direct Downloads.

Optionally you can install zef as a user.

Debian, Ubuntu, LMDE and Mint

To use the repos on Debian and Ubuntu, you need to add the applicable sources:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 379CE192D401AB61
$ echo "deb https://dl.bintray.com/nxadm/rakudo-pkg-debs `lsb_release -cs` main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rakudo-pkg.list
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install rakudo-pkg

If you don't have lsb_release installed, you can use the OS codename (e.g., stretch, bionic, etc.) instead of the lsb_release -cs command.

Centos and Fedora

To use the repos on CentOS, Fedora and openSUSE, you need to a repofile:

$ echo -e "[rakudo-pkg]\nname=rakudo-pkg\nbaseurl=https://dl.bintray.com/nxadm/rakudo-pkg-rpms/`lsb_release -is`/`lsb_release -rs| cut -d. -f1`/x86_64\ngpgcheck=0\nenabled=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/yum.repos.d/rakudo-pkg.repo

If you don't have redhat-lsb-core installed, you can use the OS name (e.g., CentOS, Fedora) instead of the lsb_release -is command and release (e.g. 7, 26, 27, 28) instead of the one with -rs.

Install the package on CentOS:

$ sudo yum install rakudo-pkg

Install the package on Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install rakudo-pkg

openSUSE

To use the repos on openSUSE, you need to add a repo to zypper (accept the key):

$ sudo zypper ar -f https://dl.bintray.com/nxadm/rakudo-pkg-rpms/openSUSE/`lsb_release -rs`/x86_64 rakudo-pkg
$ sudo zypper install rakudo-pkg

In case you don't have lsb-release installed, you can put the openSUSE version (e.g. 42.3) instead of the lsb_release -rs command.

Alpine

There is no Alpine repo at the moment. The apk packages can be downloaded from the releases tab.

Direct Downloads

Most modern computers have a 64-bit Operating System, so regular users should use 64-bit packages. The 32-bit are supplied for specific usages, like 32-bit images on some cloud providers. 32-bit Rakudo is not JIT enabled (upstream) and as a result a lot slower.

See the releases tab for the latest packages. You can install the downloaded packages with the regular package manager of your distribution:

• Alpine:

$ sudo apk add --allow-untrusted *.apk

• Debian and Ubuntu:

$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb

• CentOS, Fedora and openSUSE:

$ sudo rpm -Uvh *.rpm

Set the PATH

The path is set by setting a rakudo-pkg.sh profile file in /etc/profile.d. If raku/perl6 is in your path (type raku -v) you can stop reading this section and enjoy raku.

Alternatively, a script is supplied to do this automatically for you. Run it as your regular user:

$ /opt/rakudo-pkg/bin/add-rakudo-to-path

If you prefer, you can change the PATH manually. Be aware that environment files start with a '.' and are hidden by convention on graphical file browsers:

• For bourne derivated shells (like bash), add this to your .profile, .bash_profile or the corresponding environment init script for your shell:

PATH=~/.raku/bin:/opt/rakudo-pkg/bin:/opt/rakudo-pkg/share/perl6/site/bin:$PATH
export PATH

• For zsh, add this to ~/.zshenv or ~/.zprofile, depending on your distribution:

path=(~/.raku/bin /opt/rakudo-pkg/bin /opt/rakudo-pkg/share/perl6/site/bin $path[@])

Zef Module Manager as a Regular User

The installation supplies a working global Zef installation (/opt/rakudo-pkg/bin/zef). However, Rakudo takes a different approach to many other languages (including Perl 5): modules are by default installed the home directory of the user. A script is supplied to install zef as a user. Zef will be installed to ~/.raku/bin/zef and modules will reside in ~/.raku:

/opt/rakudo-pkg/bin/install-zef-as-user

Windows Subsystem for Linux

If you're using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (aka Bash or Ubuntu on Windows 10), use the repository or package for the installed Linux distribution. You'll need to strip the moarvm library of (unused) kernel functionalities that Windows does not implement yet:

$ /opt/rakudo-pkg/bin/fix-windows10

Using rakudo-pkg on Travis

You can use rakudo-pkg to speed-up the continuous integration of your Raku modules on Travis and other CI systems. Since this package is going to be downloaded in the install phase, you don't need to specify a language (by default, it will install Ruby). Don't specify perl6 since this will download and build it from source. Note that rakudo-pkg does not exist for Precise Pangolin, so use trusty(default) or newer.

A valid .travis.yml would be:

language: generic
env:
  global:
    - export PATH="/opt/rakudo-pkg/bin:/opt/rakudo-pkg/share/perl6/site/bin:$PATH"
addons:
  apt:
    sources:
      - sourceline: 'deb https://dl.bintray.com/nxadm/rakudo-pkg-debs $(lsb_release -cs) main'
        key_url: 'http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?search=0x379CE192D401AB61&op=get'
    packages:
      - rakudo-pkg
install:
  - zef install .

After this line, you should do zef install . && zef test . or whatever else you need to test your package. In case you need an specific version, older versions are kept in the repository.

Building your Own Packages

If you prefer to build your own packages instead of the ones offered in the releases tab, you can use the images from the DockerHub. The image name is nxadm/rakudo-pkg while where every image tag corresponds with an specific OS-Release-Architecture combination. Alternatively, you can build them with the Dockerfiles in the docker directory.

Ubuntu 32-bit base images

Ubuntu does not release 32-bit base images. An script is supplied to build them from official sources.

$ bin/create-baseimg.p6
$ bin/create-baseimg.p6 <Ubuntu release>
$ bin/create-baseimg.p6 18.04

Create a Package:

You need to supply the necessary environment variables to Docker:

$ docker run -ti --rm -v /var/tmp:/staging -e RAKUDO_VERSION=$RAKUDO_VERSION -e NQP_VERSION=$NQP_VERSION -e MOARVM_VERSION=$MOARVM_VERSION -e ZEF_VERSION=$ZEF_VERSION -e REVISION=$REVISION -e OS=$OS -e RELEASE=$RELEASE -e ARCH=$ARCH -e MAINTAINER=$MAINTAINER nxadm/rakudo-pkg:$TAG

Other Rakudo Distributions

What about packages provided by Operating Systems?

Our packages do not interfere with the packages included in Linux distributions and can be installed at the same time. Distribution packages that integrate with the Operating System are often a good choice. That said, Raku (previously Perl 6) reached language stability very recently. Packages that date from sources before December 2015 should be considered beta (Rakudo is a lot slower and some features where removed or added in the language). Raku and Rakudo are evolving very fast, getting better and faster. So, often you'll need a recent release to use these features.

This is the state of Rakudo packaged by the distribution themselves:

• Alpine 3.11: -
• Alpine 3.10: -
• Alpine 3.10: -
• Alpine 3.9: -
• Alpine 3.8: -
• CentOS 8: -
• CentOS 7: -
• Debian 10: 2018.05
• Debian 9: 2016.12 (avoid, predates the breaking IO changes)
• Debian 8: 2014.07 (avoid, predates the Christmas release)
• Fedora 32: 2020.02
• Fedora 31: 2019.03
• Fedora 30: 2019.03
• openSUSE 15.1: 2019.03
• Ubuntu 20.04: 2019.11
• Ubuntu 19.10: 2018.12
• Ubuntu 18.04: 2018.03
• Ubuntu 16.04: 2015.11 (avoid, predates the Christmas release)

What about Rakudo Star?

Rakudo Star for Linux is certainly a distribution for end-users worth exploring. It has a very different use case in mind than rakudo-pkg, however. While we concentrate on releasing minimalistic, self-contained packages for every Rakudo release (monthly), Rakudo Star releases quarterly and it includes a wide selection of third party modules. On Linux, it does not provide binaries. Instead it locally compiles the Rakudo compiler and the third party modules.

Contributing

Issues (bugs and ideas) and PRs are always welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.