dev-2024-02

As part of the Journey to Odin 1.0, we are cleaning up the packages that Odin provides and making explicit delineations for what is needed. A new library collection has been added: base.

This means that there are now 3 official library collections as part of the official compiler:

• base - packages which are required by the language itself, defined by the language specification, and all compilers must implement (implementations may different, but interface must be the same)
  • All platforms (including freestanding) will be supported in this library collection
• core - packages which are core to most programming development and supported by most platforms.
  • Most platforms will be supported in this library collection
• vendor - third-party packages with first-party support which are useful for numerous projects (graphics APIs, audio, window management, specialized networking, etc).
  • Many platforms will be supported in this library collection

Packages which have been moved to the new base library collection:

• core:builtin -> base:builtin (previous is still valid as an alias)
• core:intrinsics -> base:intrinsics (previous is still valid as an alias)
• core:runtime -> base:runtime (previous is still valid as an alias)

New Language Features

• builtin.quaternion call must name the elements with x y z w or real imag jmag kmag rather than be positional
• struct #field_align(N)
  • It sets the minimum alignment for the fields within a struct. This cannot be used with #packed, but can be used with #align(N).
  • If #align(N) is less than #field_align(N), then a warning will be printed.
• Removal of incl and excl built-in procedures. Prefer:
  • s += {.A,} for incl(&s, .A)
  • s -= {.A,} for excl(&s, .A)

Compiler Improvements

• @(entry_point_only) attribute to mark a procedure which can only be called within main (the entry point procedure)
• Move builtin matrix procedures to intrinsics
  • They can be either accessed from base:intrinsics or core:math/linalg etc packages
• Fix calling conventions for the core:simd/x86 calling conventions
• Expand -subsystem option on Windows
• -default-to-panic-allocator
• Numerous typo fixes

New Packages

Package Improvements

• Use "system" calling convention everywhere "stdcall" was previous used
  • This allows cross platform use of packages which were originally Windows only but not any more
• core:mem/virtual
  • virtual.map_file
• core:dynlib
  • dynlib.initialize_symbols
  • dynlib.last_error
• core:c/libc
  • libc.to_stream
• core:math/fixed improvements
• Fix vendor:raylib IsGestureDetected binding
• Fixes for wasm targets
• Remove any cyclic dependencies that base:runtime previously depended on (e.g. core:os)

dev-2024-01

New Language Features

Compiler Improvements

• -obfuscate-source-code-locations flag to hash location strings
• MacOS:
  • -no-crt now works
  • Fix the duplicate -lSystem linker warning
  • Default to SDK version for -minimum-os-version to avoid linker warnings
• #load now works with absolute paths
• Fix a bug that caused running tests twice
• General compiler crash fixes

New Packages

Package Improvements

• Fixes:
  • Default temp_allocator/arena edge cases
  • Dynamic array assign_at_elems bug
• core:sys/linux: syscall additions
• core:sys/windows: HIDPI, Error codes enum
• vendor:raylib: update to version 5
• core:slice: reduce_reverse, filter_reverse, repeat, unique, unique_proc
• core:log: Allocator print formatted (kb, mb etc.) bytes
• core:fmt: Make %g the default for floats
• core:encoding/json: basic union unmarshalling

dev-2023-12

New Language Features

Compiler Improvements

• -microarch:<string>
• Default to static map look ups on Windows (still default to dynamic on other systems)
• Lower map's minimum capacity to 8 from 64
• Numerous Bug Fixes
• Add new intrinsics for union_tag_* related stuff
• Fix &x[i] of ^#soa types

New Packages

• vendor:x11/xlib

Package Improvements

• core:crypto

dev-2023-11

New Language Features

Compiler Improvements

• LLVM 17 support for all platforms
• Numerous code generation improvements with LLVM 17
• -no-crt improvements to all platforms

New Packages

Package Improvements

• Numerous improvements to core:sys/linux

dev-2023-10

New Language Features

• or_break
• or_continue
• #relative [^]T (relative multi-pointers)
  • Replaced #relative []T (relative slices)
  • This data type might be removed in the future

Compiler Improvements

• LLVM 17.0.1 for Windows
  • Linux and Darwin support coming very soon
• -sanitize:<string> (can be applied together)
  • -sanitize:address (Windows, Linux, Darwin)
  • -sanitize:memory (Linux)
  • -sanitize:thread (Linux, Darwin)
• raw_data(^matrix[R, C]T) -> [^]T
• Remove for in and switch in in favour of for _ in and switch _ in
• Disallow aliasing of any and typeid
• ODIN_PLATFORM_SUBTARGET global constant
• General Fixes

New Packages

Package Improvements

• General Fixes

dev-2023-08

New Language Features

Compiler Improvements

• Separate vetting command line flags
  • -vet-unused
  • -vet-shadowing
  • -vet-using-stmt
  • -vet-using-param
  • -vet-style
  • -vet-semicolon
  • -vet is equivalent to -vet-unused -vet-shadowing -vet-using-stmt
• //+vet file tags
  • //+vet enables -vet for that file
  • //+vet using-stmt to enable -vet-using-stmt for that file
  • //+vet !using-stmt disables -vet-using-stmt if it is enabled in some way (e.g. -vet)
  • //+vet semicolon !using-stmt enables -vet-semicolon but disables -using-stmt
• Minor improvements to type inference for procedure groups
• Numerous bug fixes

New Packages

Package Improvements

• General Fixes
• General Documentation Improvements

dev-2023-07

New Language Features

• Allowing for Positional and Named Arguments in Procedure Calls details
• #reverse for
• Allow for &e, i in array and for k, &v in map and switch &v in ...
  • Will replace the old style of passing the iterable by pointer
  • The &e value will still be of the same type but will be addressable (a reference to the actual value)
    • Variable Addressing Mode (L-Value in C-speak)

Compiler Improvements

• intrinsics.type_merge
• ODIN_COMPILE_TIMESTAMP (unix timestamp in nanoseconds)
• Default to panic allocator for wasm targets
• Numerous Fixes

New Packages

• New and Improved io.Stream interface - details
• core:math/cmplx
• Font texture atlas builder port of fontstash was added to vendor:fontstash
• Vectorized rendering port of nanovg was added to vendor:nanovg

Package Improvements

• Add math.sincos
• Update to Botan 3.0
• Use C calling convention within most Objective-C related procedures in vendor:darwin packages
• Add loads of @(require_results) to many procedures within core
• Make the vast majority of math procedures "contextless"
• Add Mutex to mem.Tracking_Allocator
• bindFramebuffer was added to WebGL package
• Added self_cleanup flag to properly auto-clean threads
• Correct printing in core:fmt for ODIN_ERROR_POS_STYLE
• General Fixes

dev-2023-05

New Language Features

Compiler Improvements

• -max-error-count:<integer>
• Minor fix to intrinsics.alloca
• struct #no_copy to prevent trivial copying in certain cases
• Experimental: @(deferred_*_by_ptr=<proc>) attributes
• Fix a race condition in -use-separate-modules due to type determination in the backend
• Make !x be an untyped boolean
• When using -debug, the compiler now defaults to -o:none unless explicitly specified

New Packages

• vendor:lua
  • vendor:lua/5.1
  • vendor:lua/5.2
  • vendor:lua/5.3
  • vendor:lua/5.4

Package Improvements

• Numerous bug fixes
• Numerous improvements to documentation
• Improve JSON tokenizer
• Fix append with zero sized types
• Partially buffer all fmt.fprint* related calls using a bufio.Writer
• Add bit_array.unsafe_get/bit_array.unsafe_set
• Minor fix to core:text/edit

dev-2023-04

New Language Features

• Allow case nil within a type switch statement

Compiler Improvements

• Add -o:none optimization mode (useful for -debug builds)
• General improvements to -debug builds
• Add -no-thread-local flag
• Fix minor memory leak in the compiler
• Improve SysV ABI for multiple return values and structs
• Add @(extra_linker_flags=<string>) attribute for foreign import
• Improvements to the documentation generation for handling comments

New Packages

• vendor:raylib version 4.5
• core:text/table
  • Table generation utility which can output to plaintext, markdown, and HTML

Package Improvements

• General improvements to core:net
• Improvements to strconv.parse_f64_prefix
• Simplification and improvement of strings.split_multi_iterator
• Make core:image packages work on js platform by not requiring core:os
• Numerous package documentation

dev-2023-03

New Language Features

• BREAKING CHANGE: Brand New Default context.temp_allocator Implementation
  • New version is a growing arena based approach
    • Old version used an unsafe ring buffer
  • IMPORTANT free_all(context.temp_allocator) must be called to clear the contents of the internal arena (unlike the previous ring buffer)
    • It is recommended that this is done per frame/cycle/etc
• expand_values()
  • Built-in procedure which expands a struct or fixed-length array into multiple values

Foo :: struct {x: f32, y: i32}
f := Foo{1, 2}
a, b := expand_values(f)
assert(a == 1 && b == 2)

• Allow comparisons between empty struct{} and union{}
• Allow for assigning to fields through using in a compound literal

Foo :: struct {
	using x: struct { // named `using` fields
		y: int,
	},
	z: f32
	using _: struct { // anonymous `using` fields
		w: bool,
	},
}

f := Foo{
	y = 123, // equivalent to `x = {y = 123},`
	z = 456,
	w = true,
}

• Verbose error messages by default with optional ANSI colouring too:
  • Previous behaviour is available with -terse-errors
  • Automatic detection of ANSI colours is currently only supported for Windows
  • set ODIN_TERMINAL=ansi to force ANSI colouring
  • Line printing with indication of the error location below
    

Compiler Improvements

• @(fini) to complement its opposite @(init)
• Fix to byval parameters on Darwin SysV ABI which in turn fixes #by_ptr
• Rename to runtime.Type_Info_Parameters for procedures inputs and outputs
• Fix issue that conflicts with constant parapoly procedure literals and @(deferred_*)
• Numerous improvements to error messages

New Packages

Package Improvements

• Introduction of time.tsc_frequency()
• Improvements to core:mem/virtual's Arena
  • On free_all free all memory blocks except for the first one
  • virtual.arena_destroy will free all memory blocks including the first one (assuming Growing or Static)
• Add #optional_allocator_error to make_map
• Numerous improvements to the vendor:directx packages