Release Announcement for v6.4

[Vincent St-Amour]

The release announcement sketch that I have so far is below. Please
mail me new items and/or edits.

Please phrase announcements using complete sentences and avoid the
word "now".
----------------------------------------------------------------------

general:
- HTTPS (for pkg catalog, and others)

mflatt:
- incremental GC (ba8103bbde441e38df8dce16e6cbfd36f72c1ce0)
- add `internal-definition-context-{binding-identifier,track}` (0e16ce4be)
- deterministic bytecode generation (2743ea06bbc and others)
- `procedure-specialize` (db0a6de1d2d5d3059ec971275b287860c5bda6e2)
- openssl 'secure protocol (92f1bfa4d23e0a691778b814a5956c849bb3af83)
- libssl on Mac (273bc4ea4914cbe73bbb343015cc4fdeb3a1c6a4)
- windows code signing (666c5f1557703ed24272387f9272321ded2ecf7f)

robby:
- contract performance improvements (various)
- racket/contract/combinator exports cleanup (99d7ad56d954)

jay:
- `read-cdot` and related parameters (551e4d5a0d395)
- doc categories (2e34599ce37068072a98d8b14a3065bfc31848b5)
- cheat sheet

asumu:
- Make id-table API more hash-like (14d25abd 92fc1f41)

stamourv:
- additions to `racket/random`

Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado:
- Add config for linux/ppc64. (e957a7d6557f9718ba8493c20675b75a1145084a)

Alex Knauth:
- Allow separate read and write contracts for box/c (67e3899272792c2e5)


Other repos:

redex:
- robby / Paul Stansifer: binding specifications (6410411)

scribble:
- mflatt: scribble/examples (50f835c)
- florence: allow manipulation of scribble.tex imports (2881ef2)

plot:
- bennn: jitter (fc4f7e2)

pict:
- florence: pict/convertible changes (b95113d)
- stamourv: codeblock-pict (29806e2)

typed racket:
- contract performance improvements
- typechecking performance improvements

profile / contract profile:
- stamourv: add raco profile / raco contract-profile
- stamourv: overhaul contract-profile output

htdp:
- mflatt: performance improvements for world from incremental GC?

drracket:
- robby: anything major?

gui:
- avoid using high-power GPU on Mac?
- scrolling speed improvements?

string-constants:
- robby / Alexander Shopov: Added bulgarian translation (fb04c62)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado]

This change is very simple. Feel free to omit it.

[Vincent St-Amour]

On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 16:32:41 -0600,
Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado wrote:
>
> On 25/01/16 19:24, Vincent St-Amour wrote:
> > Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado:
> > - Add config for linux/ppc64. (e957a7d6557f9718ba8493c20675b75a1145084a)
>
> This change is very simple. Feel free to omit it.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this change, but it looks like it's adding
support for a previously-unsupported platform. Is that the case? If so,
I think it's worth including. If not, then I agree with you.

Vincent

[Benjamin Greenman]

Worth mentioning `combinations` and `in-combinations`?

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[Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado]

The support was there (C interpreter without JIT) but sconfig.h was
enabling wrongly the powerpc JIT which only supports the traditional 32
bits powerpc architecture.

The work on the OpenBSD/sparc64 support was harder by far because I
tried every option until Racket passed the tests. Even in that case, I
think that the mention is unnecessary.

IMHO, only worth to mention the support for new architectures when it
includes JIT support. In short, in my experience any architecture, which
runs a supported OS, is supported by the C interpreter (with the
exception of hppa/itanium due to the weird stack growth direction).


--
Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado http://juanfra.info

[Vincent St-Amour]

Ah, in that case nevermind.

Thanks for the clarification!

Vincent



On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 17:30:38 -0600,

[Robby Findler]

For mine:

- Redex supports binding specifications; describe which variables
bind in which expressions and your metafunctions and reduction
relations automatically become scope-sensitive. Thanks to Paul
Stansifer for this improvement.

- DrRacket's scrolling is faster.

Robby

[Matthew Flatt]

At Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:24:15 -0600, Vincent St-Amour wrote:
> mflatt:
> - incremental GC (ba8103bbde441e38df8dce16e6cbfd36f72c1ce0)

* Incremental garbage-collection mode can eliminate long pauses in a
program. For example, incremental mode is useful for avoiding pauses
in games and animations.

Programs must specifically request incremental mode with
`(collect-garbage 'incremental)`, but libraries such as
`2htdp/universe` include the request as part of the library's
implementation.

> - add `internal-definition-context-{binding-identifier,track}` (0e16ce4be)
> - deterministic bytecode generation (2743ea06bbc and others)
> - `procedure-specialize` (db0a6de1d2d5d3059ec971275b287860c5bda6e2)

I don't think these need an entry.

> - openssl 'secure protocol (92f1bfa4d23e0a691778b814a5956c849bb3af83)
> - libssl on Mac (273bc4ea4914cbe73bbb343015cc4fdeb3a1c6a4)

* The default package catalog is an HTTPS address instead of HTTP, and
package operations properly validate server certificates when using
HTTPS.

> - windows code signing (666c5f1557703ed24272387f9272321ded2ecf7f)

Nothing to mention here. (Version 6.3 was signed for Windows, and that
change just adapts the build infrastructure to better automate signing.)

> scribble:
> - mflatt: scribble/examples (50f835c)

This seems too small for the release announcement.

> htdp:
> - mflatt: performance improvements for world from incremental GC?

Covered above.

> gui:
> - avoid using high-power GPU on Mac?
> - scrolling speed improvements?

The former is a bug fix, and Robby has covered the latter.

[Jay McCarthy]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 1:24 PM, Vincent St-Amour
<stam...@eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> The release announcement sketch that I have so far is below. Please
> mail me new items and/or edits.
>
> Please phrase announcements using complete sentences and avoid the
> word "now".
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

> jay:
> - `read-cdot` and related parameters (551e4d5a0d395)

(I'm fine leaving this out until it is more exciting.)

Various parameters were added (`read-cdot`,
`read-square-bracket-with-tag`, and `read-curly-brace-with-tag`) were
added to support C-style syntax in parallel with traditional
S-expressions for Remix.

> - doc categories (2e34599ce37068072a98d8b14a3065bfc31848b5)

Documentation may define their own categories for the manual top-level
page by using strings, rather than only symbols that name pre-defined
categories.

> - cheat sheet

The Racket cheat sheet is included in the main distribution.

--
Jay McCarthy
Associate Professor
PLT @ CS @ UMass Lowell
http://jeapostrophe.github.io

"Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing,
for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.
And out of small things proceedeth that which is great."
- D&C 64:33

[Asumu Takikawa]

On 2016-01-25 12:24:15 -0600, Vincent St-Amour wrote:
> asumu:
> - Make id-table API more hash-like (14d25abd 92fc1f41)

This one seems minor so I don't think it's needed.

If you do include, here's a blurb:

* Identifier tables support more operations that are analogous
to those for hashtables.

Cheers,
Asumu

[Vincent St-Amour]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:50:05 -0600,
Jay McCarthy wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 1:24 PM, Vincent St-Amour
> <stam...@eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> > The release announcement sketch that I have so far is below. Please
> > mail me new items and/or edits.
> >
> > Please phrase announcements using complete sentences and avoid the
> > word "now".
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > jay:
> > - `read-cdot` and related parameters (551e4d5a0d395)
>
> (I'm fine leaving this out until it is more exciting.)
>
> Various parameters were added (`read-cdot`,
> `read-square-bracket-with-tag`, and `read-curly-brace-with-tag`) were
> added to support C-style syntax in parallel with traditional
> S-expressions for Remix.

Ok, let's wait for a future release then.

Vincent

[Vincent St-Amour]

Probably not. It looks like we won't be mentioning individual new
bindings.

Vincent

[Alex Knauth]

> On Jan 25, 2016, at 1:24 PM, Vincent St-Amour <stam...@eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
>
> The release announcement sketch that I have so far is below. Please
> mail me new items and/or edits.
>
> Please phrase announcements using complete sentences and avoid the
> word "now".
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

> Alex Knauth:
> - Allow separate read and write contracts for box/c (67e3899272792c2e5)

Does this work?

Box contracts allow separate contracts for controlling reading from and writing to the box, which lets contracts make writing to a box more restrictive than reading from the same box.

[Vincent St-Amour]

Yep, that's perfect!

It does look, though, that we may not be including small changes like
this one in the release notes after all. My mistake.

Anyone has thoughts on the topic?

Vincent

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

For Typed Racket:

Typed Racket now generates contracts with lower overhead in many
cases, speeding up typed/untyped interaction.

The contract generated for the `Any` type is now more permissive,
allowing more typed/untyped programs to work without contract errors.

Sam

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 1:24 PM, Vincent St-Amour

<stam...@eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> The release announcement sketch that I have so far is below. Please
> mail me new items and/or edits.
>
> Please phrase announcements using complete sentences and avoid the
> word "now".
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>

> general:
> - HTTPS (for pkg catalog, and others)
>
> mflatt:
> - incremental GC (ba8103bbde441e38df8dce16e6cbfd36f72c1ce0)
> - add `internal-definition-context-{binding-identifier,track}` (0e16ce4be)
> - deterministic bytecode generation (2743ea06bbc and others)
> - `procedure-specialize` (db0a6de1d2d5d3059ec971275b287860c5bda6e2)
> - openssl 'secure protocol (92f1bfa4d23e0a691778b814a5956c849bb3af83)
> - libssl on Mac (273bc4ea4914cbe73bbb343015cc4fdeb3a1c6a4)
> - windows code signing (666c5f1557703ed24272387f9272321ded2ecf7f)
>
> robby:
> - contract performance improvements (various)
> - racket/contract/combinator exports cleanup (99d7ad56d954)
>
> jay:
> - `read-cdot` and related parameters (551e4d5a0d395)
> - doc categories (2e34599ce37068072a98d8b14a3065bfc31848b5)
> - cheat sheet
>
> asumu:
> - Make id-table API more hash-like (14d25abd 92fc1f41)
>
> stamourv:
> - additions to `racket/random`
>
> Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado:
> - Add config for linux/ppc64. (e957a7d6557f9718ba8493c20675b75a1145084a)
>

> Alex Knauth:
> - Allow separate read and write contracts for box/c (67e3899272792c2e5)
>
>

[Robby Findler]

I think we might want to add a grain of salt to that part of the
announcement. People shouldn't expect radically improved performance
for, say, programs using the math library. It gets better in some
cases, but I feel like we need something that's a bit more uniformly
better before saying too much.

So I would either say nothing, or I would add some more qualifications
or specificity or something.

Robby

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/CAK%3DHD%2BaewTj9APKnhbgiAidxN%3DPftC%3DyM-fi1NbHjA06suzp6A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Matthew Flatt]

Since the improvements so far would need explanation, and since further
improvements are still in progress (especially relative to the v6.4
branch), a separate message to the mailing list --- or a blog post? ---
seems better than a bullet in the release announcement.

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/CAL3TdOMbWHYAKO0%3DqWLtDrNmU%2B-Mh
> Q8tYvhWQzXLtVwaFEABog%40mail.gmail.com.

[Matthias Felleisen]

+1

I’d wait.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/56a97a56.020f620a.1b030.5bf8SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING%40mx.google.com.

[Vincent St-Amour]

Thank you all for responding.

A draft announcement is below. Comments welcome.

Vincent


- Incremental garbage-collection mode can eliminate long pauses in a

program. For example, incremental mode is useful for avoiding pauses
in games and animations.

Programs must specifically request incremental mode with
`(collect-garbage 'incremental)`, but libraries such as
`2htdp/universe` include the request as part of the library's
implementation.

- The default package catalog is an HTTPS address instead of HTTP, and

package operations properly validate server certificates when using
HTTPS.

- Documentation may define their own categories for the manual top-

level page by using strings, rather than only symbols that name
pre-defined categories.

- DrRacket's scrolling is faster.

- The Racket cheat sheet is included in the main distribution.

- DrRacket is available in Bulgarian, thanks to Alexander Shopov.

- The contract Typed Racket generates for the `Any` type is more

permissive, allowing more typed/untyped programs to work without
contract errors.

- Redex supports binding specifications; describe which variables bind
in which expressions and your metafunctions and reduction relations
automatically become scope-sensitive. Thanks to Paul Stansifer for
this improvement.

- All `pict` functions accept `pict-convertible`s. This allows for
transparent interoperability between `pict` and libraries like
`2htdp/image`.

- The `raco profile` and `raco contract-profile` commands provide easy
access to profiling tools, without requiring program modifications.