SOMns 0.7.0 Release: Extension Modules, Snapshots, Artifacts

[Stefan Marr]

Hi:

It has been a while since we put together a release for SOMns.
This time around, there was no particular single focus.
Instead, the release is an accumulation of all the changes done over the last 1.5 years.

Major new features include extension modules, support for snapshot writing, and various
fixes for concurrency issues. With the update to GraalVM 19, we should also eventually
get Windows support, though, the build scripts are not yet made compatible.

Another highlight is the integration of a maintained artifact setup, which means SOMns comes now with the basic elements to generate artifacts for reproducible research.

The number of contributors to SOMns is slowly growing, and I’d like to thank everyone:
https://github.com/smarr/SOMns/graphs/contributors

For all details, check https://github.com/smarr/SOMns/milestone/8?closed=1

### New Features

- Add support for extension modules #252
- Object heap serialization #278, #271, #276
- Optimized tracing and restoring replay support #261, #257
- Added VirtualBox artifact #296, #299

### Concurrency Issues

- Swap tracing buffers for blocked threads #297
- Renew Safepoint assumption only when invalid #291
- Blocking primitives cannot participate in safepoints #288, #286
- Fix object layout races #285

### General Maintenance

- Update Truffle to >19.0.1 release #298
- Update Truffle to 1.0.0-rc5 #266, #295, #267
- Make the current instance of SomLanguage accessible for language server #277
- VMM'18 Demo and Kompos improvements #270
- Add Kent CI and update ReBench, Checkstyle, and Kompos dependencies #258
- Improve readability of Travis CI Logs by using folding #281
- Update basic-setup documentation #284
- Update list of publications in README #283
- Use CompilerDirectives::castExact instead of ValueProfiles #256
- Move Actor mailbox loop to Truffle #250
- Change Warmup in harnesses to simply disregard measurements #249
- Remove All.ns #248

### Bug Fixes

- Set promise data fields to null on resolution #300, #294
- Fix Travis Error codes and Codespeed URL #287
- Minimize the Truffle-related building #282
- Remove dead code #275
- Fix potential NPE in ExpressionNode.toString #269
- Fix replay test flakiness #268
- Redesign Timer Prim #264
- Trace TimerPrim #262
- Ensure charAt: and file read/write are compatible with PE #260
- Signal exceptions without helper methods #251, #214


Best regards
Stefan



--
Stefan Marr
School of Computing, University of Kent
https://stefan-marr.de/research/