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=head1 NQP - Not Quite Perl (6)
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NQP is Copyright (C) 2009-2013 by The Perl Foundation. See F<LICENSE>
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This is "Not Quite Perl" -- a lightweight Perl 6-like environment
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for virtual machines. The key feature of NQP is that it's
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designed to be a very small environment (as compared with, say, perl6
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or Rakudo) and is focused on being a high-level way to create
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compilers and libraries for virtual machines (such as the Parrot
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Virtual Machine [1], the JVM, and MoarVM [2]). Unlike a full-fledged
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implementation of Perl 6, NQP strives to have as small a runtime footprint
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as it can, while still providing a Perl 6 object model and regular expression
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engine for the virtual machine.
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[1] http://parrot.org/
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[2] https://github.com/MoarVM/MoarVM
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=head2 Building from source
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To build NQP from source, you'll just need a C<make> utility
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and Perl 5.8 or newer. To automatically obtain and build Parrot
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you may also need a git client.
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To obtain NQP directly from its repository:
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$ git clone git://github.com/perl6/nqp.git
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If you don't have git installed, you can get a tarball or zip
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of NQP from github by visiting http://github.com/perl6/nqp/tree/master
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and clicking "Download". Then unpack the tarball or zip.
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Once you have a copy of NQP, build it as follows:
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$ perl Configure.pl --gen-parrot
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This will create a "nqp" or "nqp.exe" executable in the
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current directory. Programs can then be run from the build
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directory using a command like:
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The C<--gen-parrot> option above tells Configure.pl to automatically
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download and build the most appropriate version of Parrot into a
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local "parrot/" subdirectory, install that Parrot into the
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"parrot_install/" subdirectory, and use that for building NQP.
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It's okay to use the C<--gen-parrot> option on later invocations
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of Configure.pl; the configure system will re-build Parrot only
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if a newer version is needed for whatever version of Rakudo you're
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You can use C<--parrot-config=/path/to/parrot_config> instead
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of C<--gen-parrot> to use an already installed Parrot for building
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NQP. This installed Parrot must include its development
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environment; typically this is done via Parrot's C<make install>
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target or by installing prebuilt C<parrot-devel> and/or C<libparrot-dev>
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packages. The version of the already installed Parrot must satisfy a
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minimum specified by the NQP being built -- Configure.pl will
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verify this for you. Released versions of NQP always build
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against the latest release of Parrot; checkouts of the HEAD revision
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from github often require a version of Parrot that is newer than
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the most recent Parrot monthly release.
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Once built, NQP's C<make install> target will install NQP
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and its libraries into the Parrot installation that was used to
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create it. Until this step is performed, the "nqp" executable
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created by C<make> above can only be reliably run from the root of
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NQP's build directory. After C<make install> is performed
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the executable can be run from any directory (as long as the
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Parrot installation that was used to create it remains intact).
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If the NQP compiler is invoked without an explicit script to
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run, it enters a small interactive mode that allows statements
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to be executed from the command line. Each line entered is treated
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as a separate compilation unit, however (which means that subroutines
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are preserved after they are defined, but variables are not).
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=head2 Differences from nqp-rx
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NQP is the successor implementation of "nqp-rx" [2]. Unlike nqp-rx,
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which aimed to have almost no runtime component whatsoever, this new
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version of NQP accepts that a minimal Perl 6 object metamodel,
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multidispatcher, and regular expression engine are needed on top of
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the underlying virtual machine. Also, nqp-rx only ran on Parrot,
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whereas NQP also runs on the JVM and is designed to be portable to
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[2] http://github.com/perl6/nqp-rx