post for 8.4

_blogposts/2020-12-07-release-8-4.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+---
+author: hongbo
+date: "2020-12-07" 
+previewImg:
+category: compiler
+title: ReScript 8.4
+description: |
+---
+
+## Introduction
+
+ReScript is a soundly typed language with an optimizing compiler focused on the JS platform. 
+It's focused on type safety, performance and JS interop. It used to be called BuckleScript.
+
+[[email protected]](https://www.npmjs.com/package/bs-platform/v/8.4.2) is now available for testing, you can try it via
+
+```
+npm i [email protected]
+```
+
+The changes are listed [here](https://github.com/rescript-lang/rescript-compiler/blob/master/Changes.md#841). 
+
+We will go through some highlighted changes.
+
+### The integrity of `bsb -make-world`
+
+When we introduced `bsb` as a build system around four years ago, we made the assumption that dependencies are immutable, 
+so that once it's built for the first time, we don't need to rebuild it any more. The integrity of `bsb -make-world` will be broken 
+when the assumption does not hold.
+
+In this release, we fix the integrity of `bsb -make-world` which allows user to changes the dependencies. 
+The fix is well implementend that people who don't do such modifications will not pay for it.
+
+This is one of the highest desired feature request based on the 
+[user feedback](https://github.com/rescript-lang/rescript-compiler/issues/4361#issuecomment-739538789), so we will expand a bit here why it is tricky 
+to implement it without compromising performance.
+
+In ReScript compilation scheme, dependencies as packages are treated as a blackbox, 
+changes of dependencies should be *transitive*. The is due to that we have cross module
+optimizations and the binary interface itself is a hash of its dependencies. 
+So for a package dependency chain: A -> B -> C, if A changes and B does not change, C still needs get rebuilt. 
+Because the intermediate output of B may still change due to the change of A. 
+To make things worse, each package comes with an installation process which is a shell script, so re-installation will make the 
+package look like freshly built.
+
+In this release, we track the installation in the build graph as well, and we calculate the hash of the installation of dependencies and put it in the 
+dependent's command line flags for building binary artifacts. Such strategy benefits in such aspects: 
+
+- The calculation of the hash of installation is almost free since it is just one stat, we don't need track all dependencies' artifacts.
+- The introducion of such hashing does not appear in parsing, so that the changes of dependencies will never trigger re-parsing.
+- Once the package installation is a nop, the transitive rebuild graph will be cut off so that we can save some unneeded rebuild.
+- When people make changes to the depdendencies, if such changes don't change the package interface, it will not trigger the build of its dependents.
+
+### Introducing `pinned-dependencies`
+
+To make `bsb -make-world` more pratical, we also introduce a new concept called: `pinned-dependencies`. 
+In general, packages are classified as three categories:
+
+- toplevel
+  - warnings reported
+  - warn-error respected
+  - build dev dependency
+  - run custom rules
+  - package-specs like es6/commonjs overrides all its dependencies
+- pinned dependencies
+  - warnings reported
+  - warn-error respected
+  - build dev dependency
+  - run custom rules
+- normal dependencies
+  - warnings, warn-error ignored
+  - ignore dev directories
+  - ignore custom generator rules
+
+Previously, we only had `toplevel` and `normal dependencies`, by introducing `pinned-dependencies`, 
+such package will be built mostly like `toplevel` packages. 
+
+The usage is quite simple, add `pinned-dependencies` in the toplevel package's `bsconfig.json`. 
+Note such field only make sense in toplevel's configuration.
+
+
+### More robust hanlding of removal of staled output
+
+When people delete or rename rescript files, it will introduce dangling staled output, for example, renaming `src/A.res` 
+into `src/B.res` will bring `src/A.cmi` (and more intemediate outputs) stale. This is worse than it sounds like, suppose you have a 
+local `src/List.res` which shadows the stdlib's List. Now we remove it, it will introduce stale `List.cmi` file, without the proper removal
+of such stale outptu, such stale `List.cmi` file will break the integrity of the build.
+
+In this release, we introduced a more robust algorithm that will always remove stale output before the build so 
+that such integrity is not broken.
+
+Last but not the least, we continue improving the readability, debuggability of the [generated output](https://github.com/rescript-lang/rescript-compiler/pull/4858) : )
+
+Happy Hacking! -- Hongbo Zhang

_blogposts/archive/bucklescript-is-rebranding.mdx

@@ -47,4 +47,4 @@ Thank you for your support and keep shipping. A brighter future awaits us!
 
 Stay safe,
 
-The ReScript team (Bob, Cheng, Cristiano, Maxim, Patrick, Ricky).
+The ReScript team (Hongbo, Cheng, Cristiano, Maxim, Patrick, Ricky).

index_data/blog_posts.json

@@ -55,5 +55,6 @@
   "whats-new-in-7-pt1": "archive/whats-new-in-7-pt1.mdx",
   "whats-new-in-7-pt2": "archive/whats-new-in-7-pt2.mdx",
   "editor-support-custom-operators-and-more": "2020-11-17-editor-support-custom-operators-and-more",
-  "editor-support-release-1-0": "2020-11-26-editor-support-release-1-0"
+  "editor-support-release-1-0": "2020-11-26-editor-support-release-1-0",
+  "bucklescript-release-8-4" : "2020-12-07-release-8-4"
 }

pages/docs/manual/latest/faq.mdx

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ The existing Reason syntax is owned by a different team with a different vision.
 
 **Who is behind the project?**
 
-The ReScript team (Bob, Cheng, Cristiano, Maxim, Patrick, Ricky).
+The ReScript team (Hongbo, Cheng, Cristiano, Maxim, Patrick, Ricky).
 
 **We have a new forum; will we also have our own Discord?**
 

pages/docs/manual/v8.0.0/faq.mdx

@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ The existing Reason syntax is owned by a different team with a different vision.
 
 **Who is behind the project?**
 
-The ReScript team (Bob, Cheng, Cristiano, Maxim, Patrick, Ricky).
+The ReScript team (Hongbo, Cheng, Cristiano, Maxim, Patrick, Ricky).
 
 **We have a new forum; will we also have our own Discord?**