Flint version 2.8.5 tagged

[Bill Hart]

Hi all,

I tagged flint v2.8.5. Normally I wouldn't mention tags as they
usually represent minor bug fixes only, but unfortunately since v2.8.0
we have accidentally omitted the step to update version numbers in
flint.h. This is now fixed in v2.8.5 if you rely on those for
something.

I believe this caused confusion regarding the website and GitHub which
*looked* like they were serving up flint-2.8.0 instead of the latest
version in the 2.8.x series.

The main change in 2.8.5 is to fix this issue (the website will be
updated shortly and we will be able to check this is finally fixed).

The other issue fixed is a serious bug in LLL which has been fixed by
Dan Schultz. If you use LLL or factoring it is highly recommended to
update to v2.8.5. In rare cases, LLL could declare things LLL reduced
which were not. (This happened because negative numbers apparently
don't have real square roots and division by zero is problematic when
dealing with floating point.)

Note that the flint-2.9 release cycle will begin this week and release
candidates should follow some time next week hopefully. The flint-2.9
release will be more substantial, as a lot of minor speedups and a few
small features have been added since the last release.

Bill.

[Bill Hart]

The website still does strange things (in Chrome), however, by
pressing the reload button in Chrome, one does now get the updated
Flint download page:

http://flintlib.org/downloads.html

and I can confirm it is serving up the correct tarball. The webpage
then reverts to an earlier version, but this is a general Chrome/web
issue and beyond our control.

I recommend everyone check they have the right tarball by looking in
the file flint.h and checking the version is set to 2.8.5. If so, it's
serving the right thing. If not, clear some browser caches, reload the
page and try again.

GitHub also seems to be serving the right tarballs now too.

Bill.