Nim/changelog.md

v2.2.0 - yyyy-mm-dd

Changes affecting backward compatibility

• -d:nimStrictDelete becomes the default. An index error is produced when the index passed to system.delete was out of bounds. Use -d:nimAuditDelete to mimic the old behavior for backwards compatibility.
• The default user-agent in std/httpclient has been changed to Nim-httpclient/<version> instead of Nim httpclient/<version> which was incorrect according to the HTTP spec.
• With -d:nimPreviewNonVarDestructor, non-var destructors become the default.

Standard library additions and changes

• Added newStringUninit to system, which creates a new string of length len like newString but with uninitialized content.
• Added setLenUninit to system, which doesn't initalize slots when enlarging a sequence.
• Added hasDefaultValue to std/typetraits to check if a type has a valid default value.
• Added Viewport API for the JavaScript targets in the dom module.
• Added toSinglyLinkedRing and toDoublyLinkedRing to std/lists to convert from openArrays.
• ORC: To be enabled via nimOrcStats there is a new API called GC_orcStats that can be used to query how many objects the cyclic collector did free. If the number is zero that is a strong indicator that you can use --mm:arc instead of --mm:orc.
• A $ template is provided for Path in std/paths.

Language changes

• The experimental option --experimental:openSym has been added to allow captured symbols in generic routine and template bodies respectively to be replaced by symbols injected locally by templates/macros at instantiation time. bind may be used to keep the captured symbols over the injected ones regardless of enabling the option, but other methods like renaming the captured symbols should be used instead so that the code is not affected by context changes.

  Since this change may affect runtime behavior, the experimental switch openSym needs to be enabled; and a warning is given in the case where an injected symbol would replace a captured symbol not bound by bind and the experimental switch isn't enabled.

  const value = "captured"
  template foo(x: int, body: untyped): untyped =
    let value {.inject.} = "injected"
    body
  
  proc old[T](): string =
    foo(123):
      return value # warning: a new `value` has been injected, use `bind` or turn on `experimental:openSym`
  echo old[int]() # "captured"
  
  template oldTempl(): string =
    block:
      foo(123):
        value # warning: a new `value` has been injected, use `bind` or turn on `experimental:openSym`
  echo oldTempl() # "captured"
  
  {.experimental: "openSym".}
  
  proc bar[T](): string =
    foo(123):
      return value
  assert bar[int]() == "injected" # previously it would be "captured"
  
  proc baz[T](): string =
    bind value
    foo(123):
      return value
  assert baz[int]() == "captured"
  
  template barTempl(): string =
    block:
      foo(123):
        value
  assert barTempl() == "injected" # previously it would be "captured"
  
  template bazTempl(): string =
    bind value
    block:
      foo(123):
        value
  assert bazTempl() == "captured"
  

  This option also generates a new node kind nnkOpenSym which contains exactly 1 nnkSym node. In the future this might be merged with a slightly modified nnkOpenSymChoice node but macros that want to support the experimental feature should still handle nnkOpenSym, as the node kind would simply not be generated as opposed to being removed.

  Another experimental switch genericsOpenSym exists that enables this behavior at instantiation time, meaning templates etc can enable it specifically when they are being called. However this does not generate nnkOpenSym nodes (unless the other switch is enabled) and so doesn't reflect the regular behavior of the switch.

  const value = "captured"
  template foo(x: int, body: untyped): untyped =
    let value {.inject.} = "injected"
    {.push experimental: "genericsOpenSym".}
    body
    {.pop.}
  
  proc bar[T](): string =
    foo(123):
      return value
  echo bar[int]() # "injected"
  
  template barTempl(): string =
    block:
      var res: string
      foo(123):
        res = value
      res
  assert barTempl() == "injected"
  

Compiler changes

Tool changes

• koch now allows bootstrapping with -d:nimHasLibFFI, replacing the older option of building the compiler directly w/ the libffi nimble package in tow.