What's Parrot

Parrot is a virtual machine used to efficiently execute bytecode for interpreted languages - specifically, Perl 6, although we would like to keep the door open for other languages in the future. As such, Parrot will be the core of the Perl interpreter; it will be the target platform to which Perl 6 code is compiled.

Where are we

Parrot source code was released to the world on Monday 10th of September 2001; since then, an army of developers have furiously been hacking away on it. Currently, we have a virtual machine to execute bytecode, an intermediate and an assembly language, a definition for abstract syntax trees, and compilers that translate these three representations to byte code.

A just-in-time compiler and a garbage collector are implemented.

There's a Perl 6 compiler being worked on, rakudo, which implements variables, control flow statements, operators, basic multi method dispatch and basic classes and objects.

How to get the code

Periodic releases will appear on CPAN; the current release is version 0.5.2, and can be found on CPAN.

For the very latest version of Parrot, check out the source from SVN. There is anonymous access to all, and commit access to those who have taken responsibility for various areas of the code or produced a large number of high-quality patches.

How to get involved

Parrot development takes place on the perl6-internals mailing list. If you follow this list, you'll be able to get an idea of what sort of things are needed. Subscribe by sending mail to perl6-internals-subscribe@perl.org or read the web archive or the nntp archive.

For more information please visit the official parrot homepage.