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 ; see the previous version for comparison at . - 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 ``. (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 ` 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).