Instead, as announced by Larry last year, a normal Perl 5.10 will be released as well as Ponie 5.10 which will run on Parrot. If all goes well, Perl 5.12 may never get released, there will only be Ponie 5.12. If it doesn't go so well, I'd expect parallel Perl 5.12 and Ponie 5.12 releases. (Personally I'd bet on enough people not wanting to move that there will be parallel releases.)

Either way though, there is a clear distinction between Perl 5.10 and the version running on Parrot, Ponie 5.10.

Really? That's not the impression I get from the 5.9 snapshots. It may be that 5.12 will be based on it, but that will be the far future. I don't expect 5.10 to be out this year. If it will be out next year, it's 3 years after 5.8. If it takes another 3 years for 5.12, then we'll see a Perl on Parrot in 2008.

That will still be sooner than Perl 6 though.

Your post got me to dig around a bit. According to a thread on P5P in mid July, 5.10 will be developed in two versions, one using the old internals and one using Parrot:

http://www.mail-archive.com/perl5-porters%40perl.org/msg79665.html

"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.