v0.5.0

[0.5.0] - 2024-08-12

• The fifth public release of Perlang. This release is a major milestone for the project, as it marks the first release where interpreted mode and the REPL has been removed and the focus has shifted completely to compiled mode. While the REPL was a very nice feature, it is not yet feasible to implement it in compiled mode. We hope to bring it back in the future, but with an LLVM-powered backend (emitting native code on-the-fly).
• All changes below were made by @perlun

Breaking changes

• The REPL has been removed.
• Interpreted mode has been removed, and compiled mode is now the default; the PERLANG_EXPERIMENTAL_COMPILATION environment variable is no longer required. Some features are still not available in compiled mode; these will print an error or throw an exception if you attempt to use them.
• The -e option has been removed. This was a feature that was only available in interpreted mode.

Added

Compiled mode

• BigInt::pow: Detect negative exponents and throw an exception [#450]
• Implement native ASCIIString and UTF8String classes [#451]
• Wrap ASCIIString in std::shared_ptr<T> [#453]
• Add -c flag for "compile and assemble only" [#455]
• Remove using namespace in generated C++ code [#458]
• Add partial inline C++ support [#462]
• Detect method being redefined [#464]
• Make compiled mode be the default and drop interpreted mode [#465]
• Support ASCII-to-UTF8 string reassignment in compiled mode [#466]
• Minor test improvements [#467]
• Support string concatenation in compiled mode [#470]
• Support string+integer concatenation in compiled mode [#472]
• Support more types in string+int and int+string concatenation [#473]
• Fix ASCIIString+ASCIIString concatenation to return ASCIIString [#474]
• Support string+bigint and bigint+string concatenation [#475]
• Support string+float/double and float/double+string concatenation [#477]
• Enable string bounds checking test [#478]
• Support ASCIIString+string and UTF8String+string concatenation [#480]
• Fix bug in C++ preprocessor parsing [#481]
• Add -o flag for overriding the compiled output path [#482]
• Add --idempotent flag [#486]
• Remove char_at() kludge [#493]
• Add implicitly typed int arrays [#494]
• Add explicitly typed int[] arrays [#496]

Changed

Data types

General

• Remove REPL code [#446]
• Remove -e <script> option [#447]
• Remove custom IConsole implementations [#456]
• Use VisitorBase everywhere applicable [#459]
• Minor stdlib cleanups [#476]
• Convert ClrType property setter to method [#489]
• Make Initializer property be nullable [#490]

Maintenance

• Remove unused methods [#491]
• Convert IsStringType method to property [#492]

Fixed

Tests

• Add AsciiString_indexed_outside_string test [#449]
• Implement more EvalHelper methods for compiled mode [#463]
• Add negative test for indexing UTF8String [#479]
• Add negative test for indexing string variables [#488]

v0.4.0

[0.4.0] - 2024-03-30. The Easter Egg release. 🥚

• The fourth public release of Perlang. The most significant change in this release is the introduction of (experimental) AOT-compiled mode, where your Perlang programs are transformed on-the-fly to native binaries. At the moment, experimental compilation is only supported on Linux. Enable it using one of the following means:

  • PERLANG_EXPERIMENTAL_COMPILATION=true (environment variable)
  • ~/.perlang_experimental_compilation (an empty file)

  Once this is done, running perlang <program.per> should compile the program to a native binary automatically and then run the binary instead of running it using the Perlang interpreter. If you are curious, you can look at program.cc to see its intermediate C++ representation. (This intermediate representation is a temporary implementation detail; the long-term plan is to compile straight to native code using LLVM.)

  To follow the development of the experimental compilation mode more in detail, please see issue [#406].

• For more details on how to install Perlang on your own machine, see
  https://perlang.org/download/.

• All changes below were made by @perlun

Added

Experimental compilation

• Add C++-based stdlib project [#407]
• Add first steps towards experimental compiler [#409]
• Preserve exact floating point representation [#412]
• Add BigInt support for compiled mode [#418]
• Initial support for ** operator in compiled mode [#420]
• Use correct error message for unsupported operand types [#421]
• Support ** for BigInt values [#422]
• Replace BigInt lib with libtommath implementation [#425]
• Run more tests in compiled mode [#427]
• Implement modulo operator for BigInt [#432]
• Support << and >> for bigint in compiled mode [#440]
• Detect stdlib bundled with Perlang binaries [#444]
• Include stdlib in Linux-based .tar.gz snapshots [[#445][445]]

Changed

Data types

• Implement AsciiString for ASCII-only strings [#377]
• Implement Utf8String for strings with non-ASCII content [#385]
• Use better format in float and double conversion to string [#414]

General

• Enable nullability checks for the Program class [#386]
• Use Perlang strings and native C functions for writing to stdout [#389]

Maintenance

• Bump TngTech.ArchUnitNET.xUnit from 0.5.0 to 0.10.5 [#366]
• Bump xunit from 2.4.1 to 2.4.2 [#369]
• Bump JetBrains.Annotations from 2020.2.0-eap to 2022.3.1 [#374]
• Remove Moq dependency [#380]
• Bump Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk from 17.4.1 to 17.9.0 [#426]
• Bump Microsoft.CodeAnalysis from 4.4.0 to 4.8.0 [#428]
• Bump coverlet.collector from 1.3.0 to 6.0.1 [#430]
• Bump FluentAssertions from 6.10.0 to 6.12.0 [#434]
• Bump xunit.runner.visualstudio from 2.4.5 to 2.5.7 [#437]
• Bump xunit from 2.4.2 to 2.7.0 [#438]
• Bump TngTech.ArchUnitNET.xUnit from 0.10.5 to 0.10.6 [#442]
• Bump coverlet.collector from 6.0.1 to 6.0.2 [#443]

Fixed

• Make int == double use value-type semantics [#413]

Tests

• Minor test improvements [#410]
• Add bigint < double test [#433]

v0.3.0

[0.3.0] - 2023-02-26

• The third public release of Perlang. The most notable changes are the added support for the float data type, and that the system has been upgraded to .NET 7.
• The REPL is also noticeably nicer to use now, particularly for those of us used to bash/Emacs-like keybindings. [#354], [#356]
• API docs on the website was broken since the v0.2.0 release for unknown reasons. [#344] has more details.
• Based on community feedback, the project README was also slightly improved. [#371]
• All changes below were made by @perlun

Added

Data types

• Add support for float data type [#353]

General

• Upgrade to .NET 7 RC1 [#347], superseded by [#351]
• Upgrade System.CommandLine to 2.0.0-beta4.22272.1 [#350]
• Upgrade to .NET 7 RTM [#351]
• Add support for string and IDictionary indexing [#363]

Changed

• Quote types names in error message emitted when attempting to reassign a variable to an incoercible type. [#343]
• Use getline.cs for line-editing in REPL [#354]
• Minor getline.cs improvements [#356]

Maintenance

• Bump Microsoft.CodeAnalysis from 2.6.0.0 to 4.4.0 [#358]
• Bump xunit.runner.visualstudio from 2.4.3 to 2.4.5 [#359]
• Bump Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk from 16.7.1 to 17.4.1 [[#362][362]]
• Bump FluentAssertions from 6.4.0 to 6.10.0 [#365]

Fixed

Tests

• Continued adding more tests for functionality being added to the system. The number of tests increased from 1586 tests in the previous release to 1921 tests in version 0.2.0. This is partly caused by [#353], which added support for the float data type. Each primitive data type supported requires a significant number of tests to be added for the "meta-tests" to complete; these ensure that no data types get added to the system without properly defined semantics for all operator/primitive type combinations.

v0.2.0

[0.2.0] - 2022-06-11

• The second public release of Perlang. Most notable changes are the added support for uint and ulong data types, as well as increased test coverage for binary operators (+, -, * and so forth). As of this release, our test suite covers all supported (numeric) type combinations.
• All changes below were made by @perlun

Added

Data types

• Allow assignment from int to double [#300]
• Add support for uint data type [#307]
• Allow coercions from long to `double [#336]
• Add support for ulong data type [#337]

Changed

• Refactor number parsing to use *Literal types [#308]
• Make operand type checks be compile-time errors [#329]

Fixed

• Fix broken support for certain negative integer literals [#302]
• Support division between float and int [#311]
• Improved type combination support with binary operators [#327]
• Fix binary operator support for int + long [#328]

Tests

• Greatly increased the test coverage in general. The number of tests increased from 537 tests in the previous release to 1586 tests in version 0.2.0.
• Improve coverage of binary operator type combinations [#313]
• Add test to ensure BinaryoperatorData covers all numeric type combinations [#316]
• Add full type coverage for + and - operators [#317]
• Add full type coverage for * and / operators [#318]
• Add full type coverage for -= and += operators [#319]
• Add full type coverage for == and != operators [#320]
• Add full type coverage for < and <= operators [#321]
• Add full type coverage for > and >= operators [#322]
• Add full type coverage for ** operator [#323]
• Add full type coverage for % operator [#324]
• Add full type coverage for << and >> operator [#325]
• Verify expected types in binary operator tests [#326]
• De-duplicate ReservedKeywordsTests; improve coverage to cover all reserved words [#331]
• Make BinaryOperatorDataTests faster [#332]
• Add test for ensuring binary operators support all primitive types [#333]

v0.1.1

[0.1.1] - 2022-03-12

• Bugfix release with only minimal changes from v0.1.0 (@perlun)

Changed

• This release does not contain any breaking changes.

Fixed

• Use a more correct approach for getting git commit [#297]

v0.1.0

[0.1.0] - 2022-02-27. 🇺🇦 We stand with Ukraine 🇺🇦

• The first public release of Perlang. 🎉 Over 200 pull requests were merged to form this version. This changelog will regretfully not go into all of them, but will list some of the major achievements.

• A basic interpreter for the Lox language was written, first in Java (by following @munificent's great tutorial), then rewritten in C# by @perlun. This provided the foundation of the Perlang code base. A stable, well-documented interpreter for a dynamic language that could be extended to provide what we wanted.

  One important difference between the Lox language and Perlang as it currently stands is that Perlang doesn't support user-defined classes. I originally had support for defining classes (but not methods) in the language, but I decided to take it away because it was confusing to be able to define a class but not define methods in it as in other OOP-based languages. For now, class is a reserved keyword.

  The reason I was hesitant to add class support is that I felt that a class in Perlang would rightfully be a CLR class within the runtime, i.e. a proper .NET type. By doing it like that, it would be possible to interop between Perlang and .NET code easily; otherwise it would be hard to e.g. subclass a .NET type from Perlang and use the result as a parameter when calling a .NET/C# method. Making it be a proper, dynamically defined .NET type (with methods dynamically defined) seemed rather complex though. For now, there is also no compelling reason forcing us to add class support. User-defined functions (supported in both Lox and Perlang) are good-enough as basic building blocks for Perlang programs at this stage.

The text below tries to briefly highlight some of the features added/changed compared to the Lox code base. For the full details, see the list of merged pull requests in this release.

In addition to the features listed below, a significant effort was made to bring the project web site to a reasonable MVP state. The web site is a good entry point to the project: please help me proof-read the text and submit pull requests (or issues) if you find anything there that seems obviously wrong. There is a nice little "Improve this Doc" link on each web page that takes you right to the corresponding .md file in the GitHub repo.

Added

Operators

• Add support for postfix increment and decrement [#17]
• Implement ** exponential operator [#133]
• Implement shift left (<<) and shift right (>>) operators [#247]

Language features

• Support int literals in addition to doubles [#40]
• Implement support for optional typing [#54]
• Support for binary, octal and hexadecimal literals [#219, #220, #217]
• Support underscores in integer literals [#221]
• Move away from relying on dynamic for unary prefix/postfix operators [#227]
  • When #40 was first implemented, the dynamic approach was used since it made the implementation much simpler. However, it turned out to be more and more problematic and we managed to eventually rewrite all boolean operators to use predictable, fixed type handling instead.
• Warn on ambiguous combination of boolean operators [#256]

Data types

• Add long datatype [#210]
• Add double type [#236]
• Add bigint type [#238]

CI

• Add CI & config for publishing packages on each master commit [#20]
• Use build matrix for release publishing [#244]
• Run tests on all supported platforms [#257]

Platform support

• Publish packages for linux-x64, osx-x64, win-x64 [#20]
• Add osx-arm64 builds to the list of supported architectures [#136]
• Add linux-arm support [#242]
• Add linux-arm64 support [#243]

General

• Build with .NET 5.0 [#126]
• Upgrade to .NET 6 [#223]

Changed

• and and or was changed to && and || [#253]

Fixed

(Note: these bugs were both introduced and fixed in this version. They are noted here for the sake of completeness. The list below is a very small subset of the full list which contains no less than 60 (!) bug fixes.)

• Detect invalid numbers in the REPL [#137]
• 'System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types' when executing Perlang program from R2R binary [#199]
• 'System.OverflowException: Value was either too large or too small for a UInt64' on integer assignment [#205]
• BigInteger ** BigInteger causes TargetInvocationException [#224]
• Operator '+' cannot be applied to operands of type 'System.Numerics.BigInteger' and 'double' [#226]
• Fix integer expansions to bigint [#234]
• Make number-to-string conversions use invariant culture. [#261]

Special thanks

Thanks to @slovdahl who helped verify that the linux-arm and linux-arm64 ports worked correctly on various Raspberry Pi devices.