Parrot

Parrot is the first virtual machine aimed to be the base of the Perl 6 compiler. The initial design of the language suggested that the source code is compiled to the bytecode, which is executed by the virtual machine. Parrot's goal was to create a virtual machine suitable for handling all the needs of Perl 6 from simple data types, such as integers, to more complicated structures, such as classes, with the ability to call methods on objects and follow the object hierarchy.

The project is available at parrot.org. After some time, Parrot started supporting other programming languages, such as Lua or Python, and the virtual machine became less focused on Perl 6 itself. For example, the Ponie project was an attempt to create a compiler that would execute Perl 5 programs using Parrot.

Parrot became one of the virtual machines inside another project, Rakudo. However, before we go to Rakudo, let's follow the historical path and talk about Pugs.