  Build requirements (Installing from source)
    For building Rakudo you need at least a C compiler, a "make" utility,
    and Perl 5.8 or newer. To automatically obtain and build Parrot you
    may also need a a git client, which is also needed for fetching the
    test suite.

    Building rakudo can take up to 1G of memory when compiling for the
    parrot runtime.

    In order to fully support Unicode, you'll also want to have the ICU
    library installed (<http://site.icu-project.org/>). Rakudo can run
    without ICU, but some Unicode-related features do not work properly.

    To get readline support (command history and editing), you'll also
    need the "libreadline-dev" library.

    As an example, on Debian GNU/Linux or Ubuntu Linux, the necessary
    components for building Rakudo can be installed via the command

        aptitude install make gcc libicu-dev libreadline-dev git-core

    (Perl is installed by default already). To enable parallel testing you
    also need the CPAN module Test::Harness in version 3.16 or newer; you
    can control the number of parallel jobs with the "TEST_JOBS" environment
    variable.

  Building and invoking Rakudo
    If you're wanting the bleeding-edge version of the Rakudo Perl 6
    compiler, we recommend downloading Rakudo directly from Github 
    and building it from there.

        $ git clone git://github.com/rakudo/rakudo.git

    If you don't have git installed, you can get a tarball or zip of Rakudo
    from <http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads>. Then unpack the
    tarball or zip.

    If you already have cloned Rakudo from github, you can get (pull) the
    most recent version from github like this:

        $ cd rakudo
        $ git pull

    Once you have an up-to-date copy of Rakudo, build it as follows:

        $ cd rakudo
        $ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot
        $ make

    This will create a "perl6" or "perl6.exe" executable in the current
    (rakudo) directory. Note that if you have multiple (Perl 5) "perl"s in
    your path, you may need to use a fully qualified path to the appropriate
    executable (or update your PATH environment variable).

    Programs can then be run from the build directory using a command like:

        $ ./perl6 hello.pl

    Important: To run Rakudo from outside the build directory, you must run

        $ make install

    This will install the "perl6" (or "perl6.exe" binary on windows) into
    the "install/bin" directory locally, no additional root
    privileges necessary.

    The "--gen-parrot" above option tells Configure.pl to automatically
    download and build the most appropriate version of NQP and Parrot 
    into local "nqp/" and "parrot/" subdirectories, install NQP and Parrot
    into the "install/" subdirectory, and use them for building Rakudo.
    It's okay to use the "--gen-parrot" option on later invocations of
    Configure.pl; the configure system will re-build NQP and/or Parrot 
    only if a newer version is needed for whatever version of Rakudo 
    you're working with.

    If you already have Parrot installed, you can use 
    "--with-parrot=/path/to/bin/parrot" to use it instead of
    building a new one.  This installed Parrot must include its
    development environment.  Similarly, if you already have NQP
    installed, you can specify "--with-nqp=/path/to/bin/nqp"
    to use it.  (Note that this must be NQP, not the NQP-rx that
    comes with Parrot.)

    The versions of any already installed NQP or Parrot binaries must
    satify a minimum specified by the Rakudo being built -- Configure.pl
    and "make" will verify this for you.  Released versions of Rakudo
    always build against the latest release of Parrot; checkouts of 
    Rakudo's HEAD revision from Github often require a version of Parrot 
    that is newer than the most recent Parrot monthly release.

    Once built, Rakudo's "make install" target will install Rakudo and its
    libraries into the directories specified by the Parrot installation
    used to create it.  Until this step is performed, the "perl6" 
    executable created by "make" above can only be reliably run from 
    the root of Rakudo's build directory.  After "make install" is 
    performed, the installed executable can be run from any directory 
    (as long as the Parrot installation that was used to create it 
    remains intact).

    If the Rakudo compiler is invoked without an explicit script to run, it
    enters a small interactive mode that allows Perl 6 statements to be
    executed from the command line.

    See the manual page ("docs/running.pod") for more about command-line
    options.

   Build/install problems
    Occasionally, there may be problems when building/installing Rakudo.
    Make sure you have a backup of any custom changes you have done to the
    source tree before performing the following steps:

    Try to remove the "install/" subdirectory:

        $ cd rakudo
        $ rm -r install
        $ git pull
        $ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot
        $ make

    Or, in case you are really stuck, start with a fresh source tree:

        $ rm -r rakudo
        $ git clone git://github.com/rakudo/rakudo.git

  Running the test suite
    Entering "make test" will run a small test suite that comes bundled with
    Rakudo. This is a simple suite of tests, designed to make sure that the
    Rakudo compiler is basically working and that it's capable of running a
    simple test harness.

    Running "make spectest" will import the official Perl 6 test suite from
    the "roast" repository <http://github.com/perl6/roast/> and run all
    of these tests that are currently known to pass.

    If you want to automatically submit the results of your spectest run to
    a central server, use "make spectest_smolder" instead. You need the
    Perl 5 module TAP::Harness::Archive and an active internet connection
    for that. The smoke results are collected at
    <http://smolder.parrot.org/app/projects/smoke_reports/5>

    At present we do not have any plans to directly store the official test
    suite as part of the Rakudo repository, but will continue to fetch it 
    from the roast repository.  Releases of Rakudo get a snapshot of
    the roast repository as of the time of the release.

    You can also use "make" to run an individual test from the command line:

        $ make t/spec/S29-str/ucfirst.t
        t/spec/S29-str/ucfirst.rakudo ..
        1..4
        ok 1 - simple
        ok 2 - empty string
        ok 3 - # SKIP unicode
        ok 4 - # SKIP unicode
        # FUDGED!
        ok
        All tests successful.
        Files=1, Tests=4,  1 wallclock secs ( 0.02 usr  0.00 sys +  0.57 cusr  0.06 csys =  0.65 CPU)
        Result: PASS

    If you want to run the tests in parallel, you need to install a fairly
    recent version of the Perl 5 module Test::Harness (3.16 works for sure).

  Spectest smolder requirements (Windows)
    You need recent version of either Strawberry Perl or ActiveState Perl.

    If you are working with ActiveState Perl you need the Mingw gcc compiler.

    You need msys git installed and you need "\Program Files\Git\cmd" on your
    execution path and NOT "\Program Files\Git\bin".

    You need a win32 curl program.
