[ANNOUNCE] vere-v1.17

[Peter McEvoy]

Arvo 416K
Vere 1.17

If you're upgrading to v1.17 from a version earlier than v1.16, you'll have to run <pier>/.run next twice: once to upgrade from your current version to v1.16, and another to upgrade from v1.16 to v1.17.

Description

This release includes a new and improved terminal stack, which is required for compatibility with zuse 416 (urbit-os-v2.130). It remains backwards compatible with the terminal stack as it existed prior to this, but there is one purely visual issue: the prompt may seem to disappear. This should resolve itself once you receive the zuse 416 update.

Additionally, as of this release, we no longer support Windows platforms. We do not presently have the resources to support non-*nix systems at the level of quality we want to deliver. Notably Windows was already very much a second-class citizen, as apparent from issues like #5822 and others. Windows users may want to run Urbit through WSL instead.

Release notes:

• Revamped Urbit's terminal stack. This release contains the first phase of a longer-running project towards a next-generation terminal experience. Previous announcements can be found here1 and here2. (And #4463 and #5663.) Highlights in this release include:
  • Support for 2D cursor movement, and by extension 2D screen drawing.
  • Minimal mouse-click support.
  • Faster pasting of large texts.
  • Informal printfs (~&) now get rendered in grey, to visually distinguish them from formal dill output.
• Updated versioning scheme for pre-release binaries.
• The code for the Vere runtime has been moved out of the urbit/urbit repository, and now lives in urbit/vere.

What's Changed

• term: new & improved by @Fang- in #85
• Improve versioning scheme for soon and edge trains by @mcevoypeter in #96
• Update lastest deployed version file on edge and soon trains by @mcevoypeter in #99
• Update last deployed version file on edge and soon trains by @mcevoypeter in #101
• Add support for optimized and debug builds by @mcevoypeter in #103
• Add functions to read static global variables in trace.c by @mcevoypeter in #105
• Remove use of release event in CI jobs by @mcevoypeter in #108
• term: do not enable mouse reporting by @Fang- in #110
• Enable native linux-aarch64 build by @mcevoypeter in #117
• Tidy up markdown documentation by @mcevoypeter in #100
• Achieve feature parity with v1.15 and earlier Docker images by @mcevoypeter in #123
• Correct name of Docker README for Docker image upload in CI by @mcevoypeter in #128
• Release v1.17 by @mcevoypeter in #132

Full Changelog: vere-v1.16...vere-v1.17

1. https://groups.google.com/a/urbit.org/g/dev/c/ubp3UNxkQBc/m/zsB_5rxOBAAJ

2. https://groups.google.com/a/urbit.org/g/dev/c/wydG30BgAzE/m/sRi9jeDECgAJ