v0.5.1

Fixed

• v0.5.0 was released with an incorrect version number and would identify itself
  as version v0.4.2

v0.5.0

Added

• The distributed database backend is enabled in the RTS
  • this was previously a build time flag
  • it is now run time configuration via --rts-ddb-host and --rts-ddb-port
  • see examples/count for a demo and instructions
• RTS now has a --rts-verbose argument to make it more chatty
• General evaluation of expressions in a boolean context
  • explicit boolean expressions were already supported and working
  • however, in Python any expression can be evaluated in a boolean context
    which was not properly supported... and it now is!
  • this could be considered a bug fix, like it should go under "Fixed" but it
    is big enough of a thing to warrant being here... almost like new
    functionality, although we probably did intend to support this all along
• Description of development workflow, see docs/development_workflow.md
• A short guide on how to wrap C libraries for use in Acton, see
  docs/wrapping_c_libraries.md
• time.time() function
  • returns the current system time in nanoseconds as an integer
  • time is a new module
• random.randint() function
  • random is a new module
• acton.rts.sleep() function
  • from a user perspective acts just like Pythons time.sleep()
  • it uses usleep in C which means it actually sleeps the RTS thread
    executing the actor
    • this is typically a bad thing - we just want to sleep an actor, not the
      RTS thread
    • there are however use cases, like when implementing benchmarking or
      similar.
    • this is why it is under acton.rts and not in time
  • acton.rts is a new module

Changed

• Refactored Makefile structure to complete DAG
  • use a single top level Makefile rather than recursive Makefiles
  • only matters if you are doing development on Acton itself
  • backend, being enough of a standalone piece, still has its own Makefile
• actonc --hgen and actonc --cgen now outputs only code
  • easier to pipe directly to a file
  • compilation command not included, now available with actonc --ccmd
• actonc argument --path is now called --syspath
  • it is the system path and was already referred to as syspath internally
• The build output, when building Acton itself, is now placed in dist
  • makes it considerably easier to produce a release by tarring up its content
  • release size has been reduced to almost half by avoiding unnecessary files
  • the top level directories, like modules is now a source directory and no
    longer "the working directory of actonc"
• Source code of several modules have been moved from separate subdirs, like
  math and time, into modules/. Less top level clutter!

Fixed

• Improved dependency declaration for backend
  • Only matters if you are building Acton yourself and making changes to the
    backend database

v0.4.2

Added

• tip releases are now available at stable URLs:
  • https://github.com/actonlang/acton/releases/download/tip/acton-darwin-x86_64.tar.bz2
  • https://github.com/actonlang/acton/releases/download/tip/acton-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Fixed

• versioned releases now use correct version number, like 0.4.1 rather than
  the version style used for tip releases which include the date & time, like
  0.4.1.2021.08.05.12.15.37
• tip release tar balls now reflect the full tip version in the filename
  • like acton-linux-x86_64-0.4.1.20210805.13.46.55.tar.bz2
  • previously, it would just be acton-linux-x86_64-0.4.1.tar.bz2, making it
    difficult to differentiate against the proper 0.4.1 or other nightlies

v0.4.1

Added

• --version --verbose will print verbose version information
• internal compiler errors now include information about the C compiler (cc)
• Acton is now made available as GitHub Releases
  • pre-built binary releases! Users no longer need to compile Acton themselves
  • available from Releases page
  • versioned releases, like this v0.4.1, are available
  • latest build from main branch is available as tip

Fixed

• integer subtraction has been fixed
  • wrong order of operators would previously return wildly incorrect results

v0.4.0

Added

• Linux compatibility!
  • it is now possible to compile the Acton compiler (actonc), the backend and
    the RTS on Linux
  • actonc can now compile Acton programs on Linux
  • Linux on x86_64 is tested, no other architectures
  • libkqueue is used on Linux as a compatibility shim between kqueue calls and
    epoll
    • Acton was initially developed on OS X and the RTS therefore uses kqueue
      and not epoll / aio(uring)
• More test cases, in particular the ones for which we have GitHub issues opened
• CI runs on Linux too
  • acton is built and tested on both Linux and OS X
  • all tests are the same across both platforms
• actonc has got a --version argument

Changed

• Now uses Haskell lts-17.14 instead of lts-13.0

Removed

• The project repository has been cleaned up overall

Fixed

• actonc now detects and reports internal compiler errors
  • happens when gcc fails to compile the C code that actonc generates
• A bunch of compiler surprises have been made less surprising
  • see git log for details ;)