# Announce: Rakudo compiler, Release #188 (2025.12)

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m happy to announce the
December 2025 release of Rakudo #188. Rakudo is an implementation of
the Raku[^1] language.

The source tarball for this release is available from
<https://rakudo.org/files/rakudo>.
Pre-compiled archives will be available shortly.

New in 2025.12:
+ Improvements:
    + Improve help message wrt --optimize [04a36dd1]
    + Support Unicode 17 (up from 15) [4d62268a][1e66a50c] 
    + varargs logic updates [f4cb406b][159288a3]

+ Fixes:
    + Cleanup for installing scripts on win [cd3b612c][635279c8]
    + Normalize rakudo-home path in script wrappers [ee706010]
    + Fixed several issues with loading of precompiled files
      from different threads [b85fb8c0][002dac33][040d145a]
    + Fix memory issue in script runner [bed55b51][2d4a8c83]
    + Make CORE.c setting build reproducibly [5154f2a1]
    + Fix bug in one(...).defined [5a742811]

+ Additions:
    + Add variable number of arguments (varargs) support to NativeCall
      [488783a7][61f09188][7a302e08][820a4a94]
    + Add support for pseudo-terminals (PTY) [1d6aae34][029cb9fd][1dfd3b5e]
      [f347d084][e246fc23][fd386dbc][81a6e768]

+ RakuAST:
    + fix issue with role composition [3e9f2527]
    + allow "constant" to be localizable [6b47541e]
    + fix subset type defaults in containers [bb4e88a2]
    + allow ≔ (2254 COLON EQUALS)as a unicode alternative for := [41a1b3cd]
    + introduce =restart RakuDoc directive [6f557f1e]

+ Internal:
    + Some refactoring around leap seconds [3b80351f][6432643b]

The following people contributed to this release:

Patrick Böker, Elizabeth Mattijsen, Will Coleda, Faye, Eric Forste,
librasteve, Geoffrey Broadwell, Timo Paulssen, ab5tract,
David Simon Schultz, David Schultz, rir, Daniel Green

This release implements 6.c and 6.d versions of the Raku specification.
6.c version of the language is available if you use the `use v6.c`
version pragma, otherwise 6.d is the default.

Upcoming releases in 2025 will include new functionality that is not
part of 6.c or 6.d specifications, available with a lexically scoped
pragma. Our goal is to ensure that anything that is tested as part of
6.c and 6.d specifications will continue to work unchanged. There may
be incremental spec releases this year as well.

If you would like to contribute or get more information, visit
<https://raku.org>, <https://rakudo.org/community>, or join us
on IRC (#raku on Libera), the Discord, or the
<perl6-compiler@perl.org> mailing list.

Additionally, we invite you to make a donation to The Raku Foundation
to sponsor Raku development: <https://rakufoundation.org/donate>
(put “Raku Core Development Fund” in the ‘Purpose’ text field)

The next release of Rakudo (#189), is tentatively scheduled for 2026-01-17.

The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do
get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements, cool
discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback are welcome
through the channels listed above.

[^1]: See <https://raku.org/>
