also upstream changelog):
Language features:
- Attributes and extension nodes
- Generative functors
- Module aliases
* Alternative syntax for string literals {id|...|id} (can break comments)
- Separation between read-only strings (type string) and read-write byte
sequences (type bytes). Activated by command-line option -safe-string.
Build system for the OCaml distribution:
- Use -bin-annot when building.
- Use GNU make instead of portable makefiles.
- Updated build instructions for 32-bit Mac OS X on Intel hardware.
Shedding weight:
* Removed Camlp4 from the distribution, now available as third-party software.
* Removed Labltk from the distribution, now available as a third-party library.
Type system:
* Keep typing of pattern cases independent in principal mode
- Allow opening a first-class module or applying a generative functor
in the body of a generative functor. Allow it also in the body of
an applicative functor if no types are created
* Module aliases are now typed in a specific way, which remembers their
identity. In particular this changes the signature inferred by
"module type of"
- Slight change in the criterion to distinguish private
abbreviations and private row types: create a private abbreviation for
closed objects and fixed polymorphic variants.
* Compare first class module types structurally rather than
nominally. Value subtyping allows module subtyping as long as the internal
representation is unchanged.
Compilers:
- More aggressive constant propagation, including float and
int32/int64/nativeint arithmetic. Constant propagation for floats
can be turned off with option -no-float-const-prop, for codes that
change FP rounding modes at run-time.
- New back-end optimization pass: common subexpression elimination (CSE).
(Reuses results of previous computations instead of recomputing them.)
- New back-end optimization pass: dead code elimination.
(Removes arithmetic and load instructions whose results are unused.)
- Optimization of sequences of string patterns
- Experimental native code generator for AArch64 (ARM 64 bits)
- Optimization of integer division and modulus by constant divisors
- Add "-open" command line flag for opening a single module before typing
* "-o" now sets module name to the output file name up to the first "."
(it also applies when "-o" is not given, i.e. the module name is then
the input file name up to the first ".")
* better sharing of structured constants
- new flag to keep locations in cmi files
- issue warning 3 when referring to a value marked with
the [@@ocaml.deprecated] attribute
- a new format implementation based on GADTs
* Constant exception constructors no longer allocate
- avoid unnecessary boxing in let
- Better compilation of optional arguments with default values
- ocamlopt -opaque option for incremental native compilation
Toplevel interactive system:
- New "#show_*" directives
Runtime system:
- New configure option "-no-naked-pointers" to improve performance by
avoiding page table tests during block darkening and the marking phase
of the major GC. In this mode, all out-of-heap pointers must point at
things that look like OCaml values: in particular they must have a valid
header. The colour of said headers should be black.
- Fixed bug in native code version of [caml_raise_with_string] that could
potentially lead to heap corruption.
- Blocks initialized by [CAMLlocal*] and [caml_alloc] are now filled with
[Val_unit] rather than zero.
- Fixed a major performance problem on large heaps (~1GB) by making heap
increments proportional to heap size by default
- Structural equality treats exception specifically
- efficient comparison/indexing of exceptions
- avoid using unsafe C library functions (strcpy, strcat, sprintf)
- An ISO C99-compliant C compiler and standard library is now assumed.
(Plus special exceptions for MSVC.) In particular, emulation code for
64-bit integer arithmetic was removed, the C compiler must support a
64-bit integer type.
Standard library:
* Add new modules Bytes and BytesLabels for mutable byte sequences.
- add List.sort_uniq and Set.of_list
- a faster version of "raise" which does not maintain the backtrace
- support "Unix.kill pid Sys.sigkill" under Windows
- speed improvement for Buffer
- efficient creation of uninitialized float arrays
- Improve documentation regarding finalisers and multithreading
- Trigger warning 3 for all values marked as deprecated in the documentation.
bugfixes, include:
- Labltk: updated to Tcl/Tk 8.6.
Type system:
- use well-disciplined type information propagation to
disambiguate label and constructor names
* Propagate type information towards pattern-matching, even in the presence of
polymorphic variants (discarding only information about possibly-present
constructors). As a result, matching against absent constructors is no longer
allowed for exact and fixed polymorphic variant types.
* Reject multiple declarations of the same method or instance variable
in an object
- raise an error when multiple private keywords are used in type
declarations
- parsetree rewriter (-ppx flag)
- ocamldep now supports -absname
- On "unbound identifier" errors, use spell-checking to suggest names
present in the environment
- ocamlc has a new option -dsource to visualize the parsetree
- tools/eqparsetree compares two parsetree ignoring location
- ocamlopt now uses clang as assembler on OS X if available, which enables
CFI support for OS X.
- Added a new -short-paths option, which attempts to use the shortest
representation for type constructors inside types, taking open modules
into account. This can make types much more readable if your code
uses lots of functors.
- added flag -compat-32 to ocamlc, ensuring that the generated
bytecode executable can be loaded on 32-bit hosts.
- warning on open statements which shadow an existing
identifier (if it is actually used in the scope of the open); new
open! syntax to silence it locally
* warning 3 is extended to warn about other deprecated features:
- ISO-latin1 characters in identifiers
- uses of the (&) and (or) operators instead of (&&) and (||)
- Experimental OCAMLPARAM for ocamlc and ocamlopt
- incorrect ordinal number in error message
- add signature to Tstr_include
- expose a way to inspect the current call stack,
Printexc.get_callstack
- new flag Marshal.Compat_32 for the serialization functions
(Marshal.to_*), forcing the output to be readable on 32-bit hosts.
- infix application operators |> and @@ in Pervasives
- add O_CLOEXEC flag to Unix.openfile, so that the returned
file descriptor is created in close-on-exec mode
* more efficient implementation of caml_modify() and caml_initialize().
The new implementations are less lenient than the old ones: now,
the destination pointer of caml_modify() must point within the minor or
major heaps, and the destination pointer of caml_initialize() must
point within the major heap.
- Moved debugger/envaux.ml to typing/envaux.ml to publish env_of_only_summary
as part of compilerlibs, to be used on bin-annot files.
- The test suite can now be run without installing OCaml first.
comments.
Updated buildlink3.mk to default to a full dependency (more pertinent in most
cases; usually the standard library needs to be installed for an ocaml
program to run)
Changes from 3.12 to 4.00.1 include:
OCaml 4.00.1:
-------------
Various bug fixes.
OCaml 4.00.0:
-------------
(Changes that can break existing programs are marked with a "*")
- The official name of the language is now OCaml.
Language features:
- Added Generalized Algebraic Data Types (GADTs) to the language.
See chapter "Language extensions" of the reference manual for documentation.
- It is now possible to omit type annotations when packing and unpacking
first-class modules. The type-checker attempts to infer it from the context.
Using the -principal option guarantees forward compatibility.
- New (module M) and (module M : S) syntax in patterns, for immediate
unpacking of a first-class module.
Compilers:
- Revised simplification of let-alias (PR#5205, PR#5288)
- Better reporting of compiler version mismatch in .cmi files
* Warning 28 is now enabled by default.
- New option -absname to use absolute paths in error messages
- Optimize away compile-time beta-redexes, e.g. (fun x y -> e) a b.
- Added option -bin-annot to dump the AST with type annotations.
- Added lots of new warnings about unused variables, opens, fields,
constructors, etc.
* New meaning for warning 7: it is now triggered when a method is overridden
with the "method" keyword. Use "method!" to avoid the warning.
Native-code compiler:
- Optimized handling of partially-applied functions (PR#5287)
- Small improvements in code generated for array bounds checks (PR#5345,
PR#5360).
* New ARM backend (PR#5433):
. Supports both Linux/EABI (armel) and Linux/EABI+VFPv3 (armhf).
. Added support for the Thumb-2 instruction set with average code size
savings of 28%.
. Added support for position-independent code, natdynlink, profiling and
exception backtraces.
- Generation of CFI information, and filename/line number debugging (with -g)
annotations, enabling in particular precise stack backtraces with
the gdb debugger. Currently supported for x86 32-bits and 64-bits only.
(PR#5487)
- New tool: ocamloptp, the equivalent of ocamlcp for the native-code compiler.
OCamldoc:
- PR#5645: ocamldoc doesn't handle module/type substitution in signatures
- PR#5544: improve HTML output (less formatting in html code)
- PR#5522: allow refering to record fields and variant constructors
- fix PR#5419 (error message in french)
- fix PR#5535 (no cross ref to class after dump+load)
* Use first class modules for custom generators, to be able to
load various plugins incrementally adding features to the current
generator
* PR#5507: Use Location.t structures for locations.
- fix: do not keep code when not told to keep code.
Standard library:
- Added float functions "hypot" and "copysign" (PR#3806, PR#4752, PR#5246)
* Arg: options with empty doc strings are no longer included in the usage string
(PR#5437)
- Array: faster implementations of "blit", "copy", "sub", "append" and "concat"
(PR#2395, PR#2787, PR#4591)
* Hashtbl:
. Statistically-better generic hash function based on Murmur 3 (PR#5225)
. Fixed behavior of generic hash function w.r.t. -0.0 and NaN (PR#5222)
. Added optional "random" parameter to Hashtbl.create to randomize
collision patterns and improve security (PR#5572, CVE-2012-0839)
. Added "randomize" function and "R" parameter to OCAMLRUNPARAM
to turn randomization on by default (PR#5572, CVE-2012-0839)
. Added new functorial interface "MakeSeeded" to support randomization
with user-provided seeded hash functions.
. Install new header <caml/hash.h> for C code.
- Filename: on-demand (lazy) initialization of the PRNG used by "temp_file".
- Marshal: marshalling of function values (flag Marshal.Closures) now
also works for functions that come from dynamically-loaded modules (PR#5215)
- Random:
. More random initialization (Random.self_init()), using /dev/urandom
when available (e.g. Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X, Solaris)
* Faster implementation of Random.float (changes the generated sequences)
- Scanf: new function "unescaped" (PR#3888)
- Set and Map: more efficient implementation of "filter" and "partition"
- String: new function "map" (PR#3888)
Installation procedure:
- Compiler internals are now installed in `ocamlc -where`/compiler-libs.
The files available there include the .cmi interfaces for all compiler
modules, plus the following libraries:
ocamlcommon.cma/.cmxa modules common to ocamlc, ocamlopt, ocaml
ocamlbytecomp.cma/.cmxa modules for ocamlc and ocaml
ocamloptcomp.cma/.cmxa modules specific to ocamlopt
camltoplevel.cma modules specific to ocaml
(PR#1804, PR#4653, frequently-asked feature).
* Some .cmi for toplevel internals that used to be installed in
`ocamlc -where` are now to be found in `ocamlc -where`/compiler-libs.
Add "-I +compiler-libs" where needed.
* toplevellib.cma is no longer installed because subsumed by
ocamlcommon.cma ocamlbytecomp.cma ocamltoplevel.cma
- Added a configuration option (-with-debug-runtime) to compile and install
a debug version of the runtime system, and a compiler option
(-runtime-variant) to select the debug runtime.
and various bug fixes.
natively (that is, only to byte-code).
This consists of two parts:
a) a patch to ocamldoc/Makefile to make it create the man pages using
the interpreted ocamldoc - this exists for both types of architectures,
so is safe. (This will be sent up-stream).
b) move a common shared library file to the common PLIST, and a lot of
files (natively compiled versions of the ML modules and natively compiled
versions of a few binaries) to PLIST.opt.
This has been build-tested on i386 (cross-compiled from amd64) and on
arm. unison builds and works.
"make test" shows the same amount of passed and failed tests (mostly
non-found libraries) as before; but this needs more investigation.
An additional issue to solve (with upstream) is that there's no easy way
to run the part of the test suite that would work on byte-code-only
architectures.
Some of the highlights in release 3.12 are:
* Polymorphic recursion is supported, using explicit type
declarations on the recursively-defined identifiers.
* First-class modules: module expressions can be embedded as
values of the core language, then manipulated like any other
first-class value, then projected back to the module level.
* New operator to modify a signature a posteriori: S with type
t := tau denotes signature S where the t type component is
removed and substituted by the type tau elsewhere.
* New notations for record expressions and record patterns:
{ lbl } as shorthand for { lbl = lbl }, and { ...; _ } marks
record patterns where some labels were intentionally omitted.
* Local open let open ... in ... now supported by popular demand.
* Type variables can be bound as type parameters to functions;
such types are treated like abstract types within the
function body, and like type variables (possibly generalized)
outside.
* The module type of construct enables to recover the module
type of a given module.
* Explicit method override using the method! keyword, with
associated warnings and errors.
(Changes that can break existing programs are marked with a "*" )
Language features:
- Addition of lazy patterns: "lazy <pat>" matches suspensions whose values,
after forcing, match the pattern <pat>.
- Introduction of private abbreviation types "type t = private <type-expr>",
for abstracting the actual manifest type in type abbreviations.
- Subtyping is now allowed between a private abbreviation and its definition,
and between a polymorphic method and its monomorphic instance.
Compilers:
- The file name for a compilation unit should correspond to a valid
identifier (Otherwise dynamic linking and other things can fail, and
a warning is emitted.)
* Revised -output-obj: the output name must now be provided; its
extension must be one of .o/.obj, .so/.dll, or .c for the
bytecode compiler. The compilers can now produce a shared library
(with all the needed -ccopts/-ccobjs options) directly.
- -dtypes renamed to -annot, records (in .annot files) which function calls
are tail calls.
- All compiler error messages now include a file name and location, for
better interaction with Emacs' compilation mode.
- Optimized compilation of "lazy e" when the argument "e" is
already evaluated.
- Optimized compilation of equality tests with a variant constant constructor.
- The -dllib options recorded in libraries are no longer ignored when
-use_runtime or -use_prims is used (unless -no_auto_link is
explicitly used).
- Check that at most one of -pack, -a, -shared, -c, -output-obj is
given on the command line.
- Optimized compilation of private types as regular manifest types
(e.g. abbreviation to float, float array or record types with only
float fields).
Native-code compiler:
- New port: Mac OS X / Intel in 64-bit mode (configure with -cc "gcc -m64").
- A new option "-shared" to produce a plugin that can be dynamically
loaded with the native version of Dynlink.
- A new option "-nodynlink" to enable optimizations valid only for code
that is never dynlinked (no-op except for AMD64).
- More aggressive unboxing of floats and boxed integers.
- Can select which assembler and asm options to use at configuration time.
Run-time system:
- New implementation of the page table describing the heap (two-level
array in 32 bits, sparse hashtable in 64 bits), fixes issues with address
space randomization on 64-bit OS (PR#4448).
- New "generational" API for registering global memory roots with the GC,
enables faster scanning of global roots.
(The functions are caml_*_generational_global_root in <caml/memory.h>.)
- New function "caml_raise_with_args" to raise an exception with several
arguments from C.
- Changes in implementation of dynamic linking of C code:
under Win32, use Alain Frisch's flexdll implementation of the dlopen
API; under MacOSX, use dlopen API instead of MacOSX bundle API.
- Programs may now choose a first-fit allocation policy instead of
the default next-fit. First-fit reduces fragmentation but is
slightly slower in some cases.
Standard library:
- Parsing library: new function "set_trace" to programmatically turn
on or off the printing of a trace during parsing.
- Printexc library: new functions "print_backtrace" and "get_backtrace"
to obtain a stack backtrace of the most recently raised exception.
New function "record_backtrace" to turn the exception backtrace mechanism
on or off from within a program.
- Scanf library: fine-tuning of meta format implementation;
fscanf behaviour revisited: only one input buffer is allocated for any
given input channel;
the %n conversion does not count a lookahead character as read.
Other libraries:
- Dynlink: on some platforms, the Dynlink library is now available in
native code. The boolean Dynlink.is_native allows the program to
know whether it has been compiled in bytecode or in native code.
- Bigarrays: added "unsafe_get" and "unsafe_set"
(non-bound-checking versions of "get" and "set").
- Bigarrays: removed limitation "array dimension < 2^31".
- Labltk: added support for TK 8.5.
- Num: added conversions between big_int and int32, nativeint, int64.
More efficient implementation of Num.quo_num and Num.mod_num.
- Threads: improved efficiency of mutex and condition variable operations;
improved interaction with Unix.fork (PR#4577).
- Unix: added getsockopt_error returning type Unix.error.
Added support for TCP_NODELAY and IPV6_ONLY socket options.
- Win32 Unix: "select" now supports all kinds of file descriptors.
Improved emulation of "lockf" (PR#4609).
Tools:
- ocamldebug now supported under Windows (MSVC and Mingw ports),
but without the replay feature. (Contributed by Dmitry Bely
and Sylvain Le Gall at OCamlCore with support from Lexifi.)
- ocamldoc: new option -no-module-constraint-filter to include functions
hidden by signature constraint in documentation.
- ocamlmklib and ocamldep.opt now available under Windows ports.
- ocamlmklib no longer supports the -implib option.
- ocamlnat: an experimental native toplevel (not built by default).
Camlp4:
* programs linked with camlp4lib.cma now also need dynlink.cma.
* Bug fixes
* New features:
- made configure script work on PlayStation 3
- ARM port: brought up-to-date for Debian 4.0 (Etch)
- many other small changes and bugfixes in camlp4, ocamlbuild, labltk,
emacs files
- New language features
- New tools
- Faster type-checking of functor applications.
- Referencing an interface compiled with -rectypes from a module
not compiled with -rectypes is now an error.
- Revised the "fragile matching" warning.
- Print a stack backtrace on an uncaught exception.
- Stack overflow detection on MS Windows 32 bits.
- Stack overflow detection on MacOS X PPC and Intel.
- Intel/AMD 64 bits: generate position-independent code by default.
- Fixed bug involving -for-pack and missing .cmx files.
- Fixed bug causing duplication of literals.
- C/Caml interface functions take "char const *" arguments
instead of "char *" when appropriate.
- Faster string comparisons (fast case if strings are ==).
- Other
order. Remove "@unexec rmdir" lines made redundant by the reordering.
Also, use a more succinct way to match ${OPSYS} + ${MACHINE_ARCH} by
just checking ${MACHINE_PLATFORM}.
* Bug fixes
* New features:
- otherlibs/labltk: browser uses menu bars instead of menu buttons
Changes 3.09.0:
Language features:
- Introduction of private row types, for abstracting the row in object
and variant types.
Type checking:
- Polymorphic variants with at most one constructor [< `A of t] are no
longer systematically promoted to the exact type [`A of t]. This was
more confusing than useful, and created problems with private row
types.
Native-code compiler (ocamlopt):
* Revised implementation of the -pack option (packing of several compilation
units into one). The .cmx files that are to be packed with
"ocamlopt -pack -o P.cmx" must be compiled with "ocamlopt -for-pack P".
In exchange for this additional constraint, ocamlopt -pack is now
available on all platforms (no need for binutils).
* Fixed wrong evaluation order for arguments to certain inlined functions.
* Other (see 'Changes')
files are only built and installed if "opt" is passed as a build
target. This fixes installation on platforms on which the native-code
compiler is not supported, e.g. NetBSD/amd64.
New features:
- support for ocamlopt -pack under Mac OS X (PR#2634, PR#3320)
- ignore unknown warning options for forward and backward compatibility
- runtime: export caml_compare_unordered (PR#3479)
- camlp4: install argl.* files (PR#3439)
- ocamldoc: add -man-section option
- labltk: add the "solid" relief option (PR#3343)
- compiler: ocamlc -i now prints variance annotations
Bug fixes:
- typing: fix unsoundness in type declaration variance inference.
Type parameters which are constrained must now have an explicit variant
annotation, otherwise they are invariant. This is not backward
compatible, so this might break code which either uses subtyping or
uses the relaxed value restriction (i.e. was not typable before 3.07)
- typing: erroneous partial match warning for polymorphic variants (PR#3424)
- runtime: handle the case of an empty command line (PR#3409, PR#3444)
- stdlib: make Sys.executable_name an absolute path in native code (PR#3303)
- runtime: fix memory leak in finalise.c
- runtime: auto-trigger compaction even if gc is called manually (PR#3392)
- stdlib: fix segfault in Obj.dup on zero-sized values (PR#3406)
- camlp4: correct parsing of the $ identifier (PR#3310, PR#3469)
- windows (MS tools): use link /lib instead of lib (PR#3333)
- windows (MS tools): change default install destination
- autoconf: better checking of SSE2 instructions (PR#3329, PR#3330)
- graphics: make close_graph close the X display as well as the window (PR#3312)
- num: fix big_int_of_string (empty string) (PR#3483)
- num: fix big bug on 64-bit architecture (PR#3299)
- str: better documentation of string_match and string_partial_match (PR#3395)
- unix: fix file descriptor leak in Unix.accept (PR#3423)
- unix: miscellaneous clean-ups
- unix: fix documentation of Unix.tm (PR#3341)
- graphics: fix problem when allocating lots of images under Windows (PR#3433)
- compiler: fix error message with -pack when .cmi is missing (PR#3028)
- cygwin: fix problem with compilation of camlheader (PR#3485)
- stdlib: Filename.basename doesn't return an empty string any more (PR#3451)
- stdlib: better documentation of Open_excl flag (PR#3450)
- ocamlcp: accept -thread option (PR#3511)
- ocamldep: handle spaces in file names (PR#3370)
- compiler: remove spurious warning in pattern-matching on variants (PR#3424)
- windows: better handling of InterpreterPath registry entry (PR#3334, PR#3432)
the missing bits, namely labltk and ocaml-graphics, respectively. To
simplify this, add a Makefile.common. Bump PKGREVISION to 8.
Per discussion with wiz@ a while ago.
- split out the profiled libraries in the PLIST, because they
don't get built on Darwin.
- set INSTALL_UNSTRIPPED on Darwin for both ocaml itself and
anything that directly depends on it, because the ocaml compiler
generates binaries that don't strip properly.
* For consistency use SYS_bsd for system type
on powerpc. We differ from SYS_elf (presumably Linux) on
a few points here anyway.
* Fix signal handling on powerpc which caused a
seg fault when compiling native code version of coq.
* Install ocamllex.opt, camlp4o.opt and camlp4r.opt too.
(ephaeton at gmx dot net) in PR pkg/18023. Besten Dank!
Changes from 3.04 to 3.05 (abbreviated list, full list available at
http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200207/msg00558.html):
Language features:
- Support for polymorphic methods and record fields.
- Allows _ separators in integer and float literals, e.g. 1_000_000.
Type-checker:
- Fixed subtle typing bug with higher-order functors.
- Fixed several complexity problems;
- Fixed various bugs with objects and polymorphic variants.
Bytecode compiler:
- Fixed issue with ocamlc.opt and dynamic linking.
Native-code compiler:
- Fixed GC bug related to constant constructors of polymorphic variant types.
- Fixed compilation bug for top-level "include" statements.
Toplevel interactive system:
- ocamlmktop: minimized possibility of name clashes with user-provided modules.
Run-time system:
- Better support for lazy data in the garbage collector.
- Support for float formats that are neither big-endian nor little-endian
- Fixed bug in callback*_exn functions in the exception-catching case.
Standard library:
- Protect against integer overflow in sub-string and sub-array bound checks.
- New module Complex implementing arithmetic over complex numbers.
- New module Scanf implementing format-based scanning a la scanf() in C.
- various fixes and enhancements to existing modules
Tools:
- ocamldoc part of distribution
- Debugger: now supports the option -I +dir.
- ocamllex: supports the same identifiers as ocamlc;
Changes from 3.05 to 3.06:
Type-checking:
- Apply value restriction to polymorphic record fields.
Run-time system:
- Fixed GC bug affecting lazy values.
Both compilers:
- Added option "-version" to print just the version number.
- Fixed wrong dependencies in .cmi generated with the -pack option.
Native-code compiler:
- Fixed wrong return value for inline bigarray assignments.
Libraries:
- Unix.getsockopt: make sure result is a valid boolean.
Tools:
- ocamlbrowser: improved error reporting;
> Update to version 3.04 based on patches submitted in PR#16896 by
> Marko Schuetz (MarcoSchuetz at web dot de) with minor modification by
> me, closing that PR.
(Pointed out by Takahiro Kambe)
