Perl6 Rakudo Star: Why does it take so long to install?

Question

I'm not trying to hate on Perl 6, but I'm wondering why the installation takes so long, in comparison to say Common Lisp. Thanks in advance.

-comborico1611 20th of April, 2018

Edit: On my laptop purchased 3 years ago, it takes about 25-30 minutes. In comparison, Common Lisp, via Portacle, takes like a few minutes if even that.

Update: 23 April 2018

I've been asked to clarify my question -- regarding whether I want to know how to speed up the installation. The nature of my question is "why" not "how" -- a question of curiosity, not application.

I believe this has been answer by Azsgy, but I'm not certain. I was unaware of installations being either built from scratch or "finished-build". This probably is the reason why it is slow.

Answer 1

Since it has a very fast stable release cycle (every month) and a fast "star" release cycle (every three months), in Linux it is advised that it is installed from source. This means that it is compiled from scratch in your particular system, and that is done in two phases: first the MoarVM virtual machine is compiled, and then the Rakudo compiler is compiled to code that is interpreted on that virtual machine from its Not Quite Perl (which is compiled first) and Perl 6 sources.

That takes a while, but the result is an efficient virtual machine, built to order, with all the latest bells and whistles and bug fixes installed.

If you don't want to wait, there are many other options, from binaries created for different distros, to Docker containers.

Answer 2

In the case you run Linux, I provide native packages and repos here: https://nxadm.github.io/rakudo-pkg/ (also linked from the Perl6 and Rakudo homepages).

At the moment you'll find Alpine, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu packages.