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OCaml 4.07.1 (4 October 2018)
-----------------------------
This release consists mostly of bug fixes. The most salient bugs were
- MPR#7820, GPR#1897: a bug in Array.of_seq (new in 4.07)
(Thierry Martinez, review by Nicolás Ojeda Bär)
- MPR#7815, GPR#1896: crash in the major GC with the first-fit policy
(Stephen Dolan and Damien Doligez, report by Joris Giovannangeli)
- MPR#7821, GPR#1908: the compiler loads more cmi, which breaks some builds
(Jérémie Dimino, review by Gabriel Scherer)
- MPR#7833, GPR#1946: typechecking failure (regression) on large GADT matchings
(Thomas Refis, report by Jerome Simeon, review by Jacques Garrigue)
See the detailed list of fixes at (Changes#4.07.1).
OCaml 4.07.0 (10 July 2018):
----------------------------
Some highlights of this release are:
- The way the standard library modules are organized internally has
changed (GPR#1010, by Jérémie Dimino):
1. the `List` module (for example) is now named `Stdlib__list`
2. a new Stdlib module contains a series of aliases
such as `module List = Stdlib__list`
3. the `Stdlib` module is implicitly opened when type-checking OCaml
programs (as `Pervasives` previously was), so that `Stdlib.List` can be
accessed as just `List`, as before.
This should be invisible to most users, although it is possible that
some tools show the `Stdlib.` or `Stdlib__` prefixes in
messages. (You might want to report these situations as usability
bugs.) The change prevents standard library modules from conflicting
with end-user filenames (please avoid `stdlib.ml` and the
`Stdlib__` prefix); we may introduce new standard library modules in
the future with less fear of breaking user code. In particular,
`Float` (GPR#1638, by Nicolás Ojeda Bär) and `Seq` (GPR#1002, by
Simon Cruanes) modules have now been added to the standard library.
- The error messages caused by various typing errors have been improved
to be easier to understand, in particular for beginners.
(GPR#1505, GPR#1510, by Arthur Charguéreau and Armaël Guéneau)
For example,
# while 1 do () done;;
^
Error: This expression has type int but
an expression was expected of type bool
now adds the extra explanation
because it is in the condition of a while-loop
- Effort has been made to reduce the compilation time of flambda
programs, and the size of the produced `.cmx` files when using
the -Oclassic optimisation level.
(GPR#1401, GPR#1455, GPR#1627, GPR#1665, by Pierre Chambart, Xavier
Clerc, Fuyong Quah, and Leo White)
- The HTML manual has benefited from various style improvements
and should look visually nicer than previous editions.
(GPR#1741, GPR#1757, GPR#1767 by Charles Chamberlain and steinuil)
The new version of the manual can be consulted at
<http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.07/>; see the
previous version for comparison at
<http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.06/>.
- Since 4.01, it is possible to select a variant constructor or
record field from a sub-module that is not opened in the current
scope, if type information is available at the point of use. This
now also works for GADT constructors.
(GPR#1648, by Thomas Refis and Leo White)
- The GC should handle the accumulation of custom blocks in the minor
heap better; this solves some memory-usage issues observed by code
which allocates a lot of small custom blocks, typically small bigarrays
(GPR#1476, by Alain Frsich)
See also the detailed list of changes: (Changes#4.07.0).
OCaml 4.06.1 (16 Feb 2018):
---------------------------
This release consists mostly of bug fixes. The most salient bugs were
- An incorrect compilation of pattern-matching in presence of
extensible variant constructors (such as exceptions), that had been
present for a long time.
(GPR#1459, GPR#1538, by Luc Maranget, Thomas Refis and Gabriel Scherer)
- An optimization of `not (x = y)` into `x <> y`, introduced in
4.06.0, is incorrect on floating-point numbers in the `nan`
case. (GPR#1470, by Leo White)
See the detailed list of fixes at (Changes#4.06.1).
OCaml 4.06.0 (3 Nov 2017):
--------------------------
- Strings (type `string`) are now immutable by default. In-place
modification must use the type `bytes` of byte sequences, which is
distinct from `string`. This corresponds to the `-safe-string`
compile-time option, which was introduced in OCaml 4.02 in 2014, and
which is now the default.
(GPR#1252, by Damien Doligez)
- Object types can now extend a previously-defined object type,
as in `<t; a: int>`.
(GPR#1118, by Runhang Li)
- Destructive substitution over module signatures can now express more
substitutions, such as `S with type M.t := type-expr` and `S with
module M.N := path`.
(GPR#792, by Valentin Gatien-Baron)
- Users can now define operators that look like array indexing,
e.g. `let ( .%() ) = List.nth in [0; 1; 2].%(1)`
(GPR#1064, GPR#1392, by Florian Angeletti)
- New escape `\u{XXXX}` in string literals, denoting the UTF-8
encoding of the Unicode code point `XXXX`.
(GPR#1232, by Daniel Bünzli)
- Full Unicode support was added to the Windows runtime system. In
particular, file names can now contain Unicode characters.
(GPR#153, GPR#1200, GPR#1357, GPR#1362, GPR#1363, GPR#1369, GPR#1398,
GPR#1446, GPR#1448, by ygrek and Nicolás Ojeda Bär)
- An alternate register allocator based on linear scan can be selected
with `ocamlopt -linscan`. It reduces compilation time compared with
the default register allocator.
(GPR#375, Marcell Fischbach and Benedikt Meurer)
- The Num library for arbitrary-precision integer and rational
arithmetic is no longer part of the core distribution and can be
found as a separate OPAM package.
See the detailed list of changes: (Changes#4.06.0).
OCaml 4.05.0 (13 Jul 2017):
---------------------------
Some highlights include:
- Instrumentation support for fuzzing with afl-fuzz.
(GPR#504, by Stephen Dolan)
- The compilers now accept new `-args/-args0 <file>` command-line
parameters to provide extra command-line arguments in a file. User
programs may implement similar options using the new `Expand`
constructor of the `Arg` module.
(GPR#748, GPR#843, GPR#864, by Bernhard Schommer)
- Many functions of the standard library that raise an exception now
have an option-returning variable suffixed by `_opt` Typical
examples of the new functions include:
int_of_string_opt: string -> int option
List.nth_opt: 'a list -> int -> 'a option
Hashtbl.find_opt : ('a, 'b) t -> 'a -> 'b option
(GPR#885, by Alain Frisch)
- The security of the runtime system is now hardened by using `secure_getenv`
to access environment variables whenever its possible, to avoid unplanned
privilege-escalation when running setuid binaries.
(GPR#1213, by Damien Doligez)
See the detailed list of changes: (Changes#4.05.0).