In the Perl 6 repository officially , changing the project's name to Raku. It is noted that despite the formal assignment of a new name to the project, which has been developing for 19 years, the name change requires a substantial amount of work, and it will take some time to complete the renaming.
For instance, replacing Perl with Raku also replacing mentions of 'perl' in directories and file names, classes, environment variables, redesigning documentation and the website. There will also be considerable work with the community and third-party sites to replace mentions of Perl 6 with Raku across various informational resources (for example, it may require adding the raku tag to materials tagged with perl6). Version numbering of the language will remain unchanged for now, and the next release will be '6.e', which will maintain compatibility with previous releases. However, discussions about transitioning to a different version numbering scheme are not excluded.
Scripts will use the extension '.raku', modules '.rakumod', tests '.rakutest', and documentation '.rakudoc' (the shorter extension '.rk' will not be used because it could be confused with the '.rkt' extension already in use by the Racket language.
The new extensions are planned to be enshrined in the 6.e specification, which will be released next year. Support for the old extensions '.pm', '.pm6', and '.pod6' will be maintained in the 6.e specification, but in the next edition 6.f these extensions will be marked as deprecated (a warning will be issued). The method '.perl', the Perl class, the variable $*PERL, '#!/usr/bin/perl6' in the script headers, and the environment variables PERL6LIB and PERL6_HOME may also be classified as deprecated. In the 6.g edition, many of the compatibility bindings to Perl may be removed.
The project will continue to develop under the auspices of the organization ''. The creation of an alternative organization may be considered if 'The Perl Foundation' decides to disengage from the Raku project. On 'The Perl Foundation' website, the Raku project is proposed to be presented as one of the languages in the Perl family, alongside RPerl and CPerl. On the other hand, the idea of creating 'The Raku Foundation' is also mentioned, as an organization solely for Raku, leaving
'The Perl Foundation' for Perl 5.
It should be noted that the main reason for the reluctance to continue developing the project under the name Perl 6 is that Perl 6 did not become a continuation of Perl 5 as initially expected, but rather an independent programming language for which no tools were prepared for a transparent migration from Perl 5. As a result, a situation arose where two independently evolving languages, incompatible with each other at the source code level and having their own developer communities, are offered under one name, Perl. The use of a single name for related but fundamentally different languages leads to confusion, and many users continue to view Perl 6 as a new version of Perl rather than as a completely different language. Meanwhile, the name Perl remains associated with Perl 5, and any mention of Perl 6 requires clarification.
Source: opennet.ru
