==================== Release Changes List

============== version 1.13.1

Update to sixteenth public release of Chapel, June 2016 (see also changes below for 1.13.0)

Bug Fixes

fixed a race condition causing lossy behavior in reductions as of 1.13.0
fixed bugs in extern block support for C function pointers and structs
restored support for --cpp-lines when not saving the generated C code
fixed a bug in the remove() method on arrays
fixed a bug relating to the index sets used by vector operations on arrays
fixed an idxType/eltType mix-up in 'shuffle()' in the 'Random' module
fixed an issue with closing a spawn channel before wait()ing
fixed a bug in open() when a path the path was stored remotely
fixed a bug with the printing of real floating point values
fixed a bug in the GMP BigInt.mod_ui() function
fixed some bugs in the congruent family of functions in the 'GMP' module

Feature Improvements

add support for casting from c_string to c_void_ptr

Standard Library/Modules

added bounds-checks to vector operations on arrays by default

Memory Improvements

closed memory leaks within the 'RandomStream' class

============== version 1.13.0

Sixteenth public release of Chapel, April 7, 2016

Highlights

string improvements:
- dramatically improved string performance and reduced memory leaks
- added standard library routines on strings (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/String.html)
language feature highlights:
- added support for filtering and renaming symbols with the 'use' statement (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
- added support for min/max reduce intents and reduce intents on coforalls (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/reduceIntents.html)
- significantly improved memory management and reduced leaks for record types
- added support for creating subclasses of generic classes
- replaced 'locale.numCores' with a richer 'locale.numPUs()' interface (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/ChapelLocale.html)
- added the ability to 'use' an enumerated type to avoid qualifying names (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
- added support for casting types to strings and deprecated typeToString() (see 'Explicit Type to String Conversions' in the Chapel language spec)
standard library highlights:
- added a new 'Reflection' module to support reasoning about code (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
- added a new JAMA-based Linear Algebra matrix package (see modules/packages/LinearAlgebraJama.chpl)
- added a new PCG-based random number generator to 'Random' as the default (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Random.html)
- extended the 'HDFS' module to support libhdfs3 (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/auxIO.html)
- added additional routines to the 'FileSystem' and 'Path' modules (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/FileSystem.html and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Path.html)
implementation improvement highlights:
- made Chapel's default allocator 'jemalloc', resulting in better performance (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/chplenv.html#chpl-mem)
- 'complex' types are now code generated as C99 complex rather than a record
- added compiler flags for all of the traditional CHPL_* environment vars. (see 'Compiler Configuration Options' in 'chpl --help' or the man page)
added initial support for Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing (KNL) processors (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/knl.html)
added new Chapel ports of the ISx and LCALS proxy applications to the release (see examples/benchmarks/isx and examples/benchmarks/lcals/)
documentation highlights:
- dramatically improved the organization of the online Chapel documentation (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/)
- created web-based versions of the 'chpl' and 'chpldoc' man pages (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/man.html and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/tools/chpldoc/man.html)
performance improvement highlights:
- made significant performance improvements for common use cases of 'reduce'
- implemented amortized reallocation when resizing arrays due to vector ops
- made significant performance improvements for 'ugni' communication on Crays
- broadened the applicability of the bulk communication optimization
- significantly improved the performance resulting from the LLVM back-end
additional highlights:
- renamed the 'etc/' directory 'highlight/' to better identify its contents (see highlight/README)
- made Chapel's scripts compatible with key versions of Python 2 and 3
- unified the support of third-party packages and runtime options on Crays (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/cray.html)
- numerous error message improvements, bug fixes, feature improvements, ...

Configuration Changes

made 'jemalloc' the default allocator for most configurations (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/chplenv.html#chpl-mem)
made 'cray-prgenv-cray' default to using 'qthreads'+'hwloc' and 'ugni' (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/cray.html)
added support for 're2' when using Cray and PGI compilers
changed 'knc' to default to using 'qthreads'+'hwloc'
deprecated 'knc' support (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/knc.html)
switched to using pgc++ rather than pgCC as the C++ compiler for 'pgi'
removed stale support for Xcode

Syntactic/Naming Changes

added new keywords, 'as', 'except', and 'only', for filtering 'use'd symbols (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
replaced 'locale.numCores' with a richer interface 'locale.numPUs()' (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/ChapelLocale.html)
removed the 'Writer' and 'Reader' types in favor of unifying on 'channel's

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

added support for a 'const ref' return intent (see "The Const Ref Return Intent" in "Procedures" in the Chapel spec)
improved the handling of "return by ref" functions in setter/getter contexts (see 'http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/evolution.html and 'The Ref Return Intent' under 'Procedures' in the language spec)
made default I/O routines ignore 'param' fields as they have 'type' fields
restricted 'sync'/'single' types to sufficiently simple types
removed support for performing Chapel I/O on 'c_string's
removed coercions from 'c_string's to 'string's

New Features

added a standard library of routines on the 'string' type (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/String.html)
added support for filtering on 'use' statements with 'only' and 'except' (e.g., 'use M only foo;' or '... except foo;' to restrict to / exclude 'foo') (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
added support for renaming symbols made accessible by a 'use' (e.g., 'use M only foo as M_foo;' causes 'foo' to be referred to as 'M_foo') (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
added the ability to 'use' an enumerated type (e.g., "...mycolor.green..." can now be written "use mycolor; ...green...")
added support for casting types to strings and deprecated typeToString() (e.g., 'writeln(x.type:string);' can be used to print the name of x's type)
added a capability to iterate over the fields in a class or record (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
added the ability to query whether a call can be resolved or not (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
added support for annotating an on-clause as being 'local' (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/local.html)
added support for 'c_string' values (e.g., "this is a Chapel string" while c"this is a C string")

Feature Improvements

added support for creating subclasses of a generic class
added support for min/max reduce intents (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/reduceIntents.html)
added support for reduce intents on coforall loops (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/reduceIntents.html)
added the ability to pass sync/single variables via generic arguments
improved the type signatures of min()/max() to support better type resolution (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/UtilMisc_forDocs.html)
extended comparison operators (==, !=, <=, etc.) to support mixed int/uints (see 'Expressions' in the Chapel language specification)
added support for range slicing between mixed int/uint idxTypes
added support for comparing between 'c_void_ptr' expressions and 'nil'
added support for implicitly coercing 'c_ptr' types to 'c_void_ptr'
added support for casting from fully-qualified enum strings to enum values (e.g., '"mycolor.green":mycolor' now works where it wouldn't have previously)
extended channel.readbits/writebits to accept other integral types (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/IO.html)
added scalar versions of domain.exterior(), interior(), and translate() (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/ChapelArray.html)

Standard Library/Modules

started distinguishing between "standard Chapel modules" and "packages" (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/modules.html and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/packages.html)
added a new JAMA-based linear algebra matrix package (see modules/packages/LinearAlgebraJama.chpl)
added a new PCG-based random number generator to 'Random' as the default (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Random/PCGRandom.html)
added a new 'Reflection' module supporting reflection about a program (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
extended the 'HDFS' module to support libhdfs3 (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/auxIO.html)
added support for skipping unknown fields when reading JSON records/classes (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/IO.html)
made the default I/O routines for records/classes support arbitrary orders
added 'basename', 'dirname', and 'splitPath' to the 'Path' module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Path.html)
added rmTree(), moveDir() to the 'FileSystem' module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
added an optional time units argument to 'sleep()' in the Time module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Time.html#Time.sleep)
added support for sending signals to subprocesses for the 'Spawn' module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Spawn.html)
added an optional 'buffer' boolean to the 'Spawn' module's wait() routine (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Spawn.html)
added an isclosed() method to the 'channel' type (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/IO.html)
improved the 'List' module to support JSON format
improved error handling in the IO and Spawn modules
added the ability to call exit() without arguments for a 0 default status
removed deprecated functions from 'Memory' module

Performance Improvements

obtained notable performance improvements from the switch to 'jemalloc'
made significant performance improvements to common uses of 'reduce'
implemented amortized reallocation when resizing arrays due to vector ops
made significant performance improvements for 'ugni' communication on Crays
made bulk data transfers more likely to fire by removing a conservative check
enabled bulk data transfers between portions of the same array
generally improved the performance of string-based computations
optimized iteration over anonymous range values of the form 'lo..#size'
improved the performance of code generated by the LLVM back-end

Memory Improvements

dramatically reduced the compiler-generated leaks due to strings and records
significantly improved construction/destruction/copy behavior for records
stopped heap-allocating variables referred to within 'begin' scopes
stopped heap-allocating variables referred to within non-blocking on-clauses
stopped heap-allocating index variables of coforall loops

Documentation

dramatically improved the organization of the online Chapel documentation (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/)
created web-based versions of the 'chpl' and 'chpldoc' man pages (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/man.html and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/tools/chpldoc/man.html)
linked to the language specification and quick reference from the online docs (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/spec.html and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/reference.html)
converted a number of top-level README-style files to markdown format (e.g., see $CHPL_HOME/CHANGES.md, CONTRIBUTORS.md, PERFORMANCE.md, ...)
moved the Chapel evolution page from chapel.cray.com to the online docs (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/evolution.html)
split the top-level README.rst file into README.rst and QUICKSTART.rst
started writing a Chapel Users Guide, though much work remains (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/users-guide/index.html)
improved the accuracy of Chapel's prerequisites list (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/prereqs.html)
improved wordings and descriptions in the language specification
fixed many instances of broken links / formatting in online documentation

Example Codes

added new Chapel ports of the ISx and LCALS proxy applications to the release (see examples/benchmarks/isx/ and examples/benchmarks/lcals/)
made correctness, performance, and style improvements to MiniMD in Chapel (see examples/benchmarks/miniMD/)
extended the linkedList example program to support additional methods (see examples/programs/linkedList.chpl)
fixed some typos and explanations in the primer examples (see examples/primers/*.chpl)
updated example tests to reflect the changes to the language and libraries
removed README.features from the examples subdirectory

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

added compiler flags for all of the traditional CHPL_* environment variables (see 'Compiler Configuration Options' in 'chpl's '--help' output or man page)
made the --ldflags stack when used multiple times, similar to --ccflags
made the --no-warnings flag reversible by changing it to --[no-]warnings

Execution Flags

added support for specifying enum configs using fully-qualified names (e.g., '--myColor=color.red' is now supported where only '--myColor=red' was)

Environment Changes

the setchplenv[.bash|.fish|.sh] scripts can now be sourced from any directory
removed the CHPL_THREADS environment variable

Directory Structure Changes

renamed the 'etc/' directory to 'highlight/' to better identify its contents
split 'modules/standard' into 'modules/standard' and 'modules/packages'

Cray-specific Changes

streamlined 'ugni' resource management, dramatically improving performance
hugepages are now optional with the 'ugni' communication layer (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/cray.html)
improved the Spawn module to support 'ugni' when hugepages are not in use
started statically linking 'chpl' in the Cray module to ensure portability

Portability Improvements

added initial support for Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing (KNL) processors (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/knl.html)
made Chapel's scripts compatible with key versions of Python 2 and 3
improved the portability of the code base to gcc 5.1
improved the portability of the code base to newer versions of Cygwin

Tool Changes

'chpldoc' improvements:
- made modules automatically list any submodules that they contain
- it now generates a doc page per module rather than .chpl source file
- it now only documents files listed on its command line by default
- added a --[no-]html option to opt in/out of the rst->html phase
added basic support for folding for 'vim' users
added an option to disable chplvis tracing for a given run in 'VisualDebug'
improved 'chpltags' support for older versions of 'ctags'

Error Message Improvements

improved 'const' checking for domains and arrays
added an error message for variable declarations over incomplete generics
stopped warning about reductions being serialized -- that's completely legal
added an error message for non-extern functions with no-op bodies
reduced the degree to which internal module line numbers are named in errors
implemented an error message for strings containing bad escape sequences
improved the error message for bad CHPL_RT_NUM_THREADS_PER_LOCALE values
improved error messages for illegal/incorrect 'use' statements
added an error message for references to fields within 'with' clauses
added an error message for 'real2' suggesting the user wants '2real'

Bug Fixes

fixed a bug in applying reduce intents to forall loops over ranges
fixed a bug in zippered iteration over equivalent associative domains/arrays
fixed the ability to declare a 'ref' to a domain or array
fixed a bug in which overridden/overloaded methods were not resolved properly
fixed a bug in assigning between distributed domains and non- with arrays
fixed a bug in the computation of 'maxTaskPar' for the numa locale model
fixed a bug in which generic types were not printed properly
fixed a bug in which assignment between generic records did not work properly
fixed a bug in which extern type declarations in generic procedures broke
fixed a bug with isHomogeneousTuple*() queries when passed non-tuples
fixed a bug with self-references in module use lists
fixed a bug when calling exit() without arguments
fixed the runtime sizes of boolean literals of varying bit widths
fixed a bug w.r.t. reduce intents interacting poorly with on-clauses
fixed a bug in which returning tuples of arrays did not work
fixed a bug in the initialization of nearly-maximally-sized arrays
fixed a bug in the Block and Cyclic parallel iterators for arrays of arrays
fixed a bug in which subtype checking now handles transitive instantiation
fixed bugs in default I/O routines for subclasses
fixed a few bugs in the Spawn module's communicate() routine
made some improvements to the Spawn module relative to QIO
made some I/O functions more tolerant of EINTR
fixed some bugs in which I/O routines executed on the wrong locale
fixed a bug in formatted reads of digits
fixed a bug preventing channel.itemWriter() from working
improved the handling of C escapes in string literals
fixed the handling of escape characters in compilerWarning()/compilerError()
fixed a bug related to nested modules sharing a name, each defining main()
fixed a bug in which Qthreads tasks weren't allocating sufficient storage
fixed the line numbers reported for standalone iterators
fixed a bug in which record fields were not properly widened
fixed a bug in which records could be double-freed for out/inout arg passing
fixed a bug in 'chpldoc' in the handling of multiline mid-variable comments
fixed a bug in which failure to open files for codegen caused internal errors
made the compiler resilient to usernames containing backslashes
fixed a bug in the checking of definitions made in SysCTypes
fixed the chpl-venv path to be based on the host platform rather than target
fixed line numbers related to domain query expressions in formal arguments
fixed a bug in which sleep() could result in tasks awakening prematurely

Cray-specific Bug Fixes

'ugni' now supports communication to/from any unregistered address
resolved a rare program hang in 'ugni' communication
fix 'ugni' memory mis-registration under CLE 6.*
plug a memory leak in 'ugni' for certain remote on-statements

Third-Party Software Changes

turned on optimizations when compiling 're2' for optimized builds
enabled 're2' when using Cray and PGI compilers
added jemalloc version 4.0.4 and retired tcmalloc and dlmalloc
upgraded GASNet to version 1.26.0
upgraded hwloc to version 1.11.2
- and cherry-picked a /proc/mounts buffer overflow fix from hwloc master
upgraded LLVM to version 3.7
switched several third-party directories to a more Git-friendly organization

Runtime Library Changes

updated the names of several runtime communication interface routines

Generated Code Cleanups

started code-generating 'complex' types as C99 complexes rather than a record
filenames are now represented a table + indices rather than string literals

Testing System

added support for many files, such as compopts, to be executable scripts
added .compenv files as a means of changing the compiler environment
made 'make check' clean up after itself better
made the test system no longer mail out the list of unresolved future tests
parallel testing now ignores symbolic links to avoid infinite loops
made the test system deal better with unexpected failures
improved start_test's error message if CHPL_HOME is not set

Makefile Changes

added an "always build chpldoc" capability via CHPL_ALWAYS_BUILD_CHPLDOC
only generate 'tags' commands when CHPL_DEVELOPER or TAGS is set at make-time
improved the logic for updating/re-building the 'chpl' version number

Developer-oriented changes: Process Improvements

changed the generation of the man page from txt2man into an rst-based scheme
added a 'make check' option for Sphinx documentation to check for errors

Developer-oriented changes: Packaging Changes

reorganized files to better support packaging of Chapel
began differentiating runtime launcher paths based on CHPL_COMM
no longer specialize runtime library directories on CHPL_NETWORK_ATOMICS

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements

made use of 'local' on-clauses within internal modules targeting 'numa'
changed a "c for loop" in DefaultRectangular into a direct range iterator
refactored generation of unbounded range values
changed some uses of c_calloc() to c_malloc()
improved the extern declarations of the locale model chpl_mem* routines
retired the ChapelLocale_forDocs.chpl workaround for documentation

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags

added --break-on-codegen-id to stop when a specific ID is code generated

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements/changes

introduced a new 'UseStmt' AST node for representing 'use' statements
made all non-'flat' locale models outline on-clauses and use wide pointers
removed the pragma form of 'export'
added support for operator overloads on the bitVec type
reworked how argument bundles are managed for begin- and on-functions
changed wide_get_address mechanisms to return a 64-bit uint
refactored duplicate code in buildForLoopExpr
made addArgCoercion() sensitive to errors
improve the compiler's handling of PRIM_ASSIGN
improved the compiler's handling of POD types
improved the compiler's handling of declared return types
made the compiler remove casts from 'ref T' to 'T'
unified the handling of 'by' and 'align' in the parser
improved the handling of string varargs with default intent
improved the normalization of initialization expressions
added support for tracking the causes of wide pointers
refactored the implementation of some reductions to use reduce intents
removed the FLAG_FUNCTION_PROTOTYPE flag as not being interesting or useful

Developer-oriented changes: Generated code improvements

improved the representation of unions in the generated code

Developer-oriented changes: Runtime improvements

moved the Qthreads tasking shim into the Chapel runtime/ directory
changed the communication interface to take sizes rather than elemsize+length
fixed problems with GETs to unregistered remote memory
simplified the interfaces for creating structured parallelism within Chapel
removed deprecated code supporting Tilera processors
extensively reworked debug support in 'ugni'

Developer-oriented changes: Third-party improvements

disabled OpenCL support in hwloc for the time being
disabled libnuma in hwloc builds

Developer-oriented changes: Testing system improvements

added a script to help maintain .dat files when perfkeys change (see util/devel/updateDatFiles.py)
renamed 'grepgoods' to 'greptestoutputs' and had it span .good and .bad files

============== version 1.12.0

Fifteenth public release of Chapel, October 1, 2015

Highlights

significantly expanded the coverage of our online documentation (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/ and "Documentation" below)
added new 'Barrier', 'Spawn', and 'LAPACK' modules to the standard set (see "Standard Library/Modules" section below)
added chplvis: a new tool for visualizing Chapel communication and concurrency (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/tools/chplvis/index.html)
added a new chapter describing Chapel's memory consistency model in detail (see 'Memory Consistency Model' in the language spec)
added a 'vectorizeOnly()' iterator that vectorizes without task creation (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/internal/ChapelIteratorSupport.html)
new performance optimizations, particularly intra- and inter-node locality (see "Performance Improvements" section below)
removed the 'local' block from stream-ep based on the above optimizations (see examples/benchmarks/hpcc/stream-ep.chpl)
changed the default tasking layer on 'cray-x*' to 'qthreads' for performance
added support for type methods and iterators (see 'Classes::Class Method Calls::The Method Receiver and the this Argument')
added support for public/private module-level variables, functions, modules) (see 'Modules:Access of Module Contents::Visibility of Module's Symbols')
domains in formal array arguments are now interpreted as a constraint (see 'Arrays::Array Arguments to Functions' in the language spec)
significantly revamped and improved correctness and performance testing system
improved how internal error messages are displayed to users
added Chapel Improvement Proposals (CHIPs) framework for proposing changes (see https://github.com/chapel-lang/chapel/blob/master/doc/chips/1.rst)
made more bug fixes than any release since version 1.1 (see "Bug Fixes" section below)
addressed portability issues for a number of platforms and compilers

Process Improvements

added Chapel Improvement Proposals (CHIPs) framework for proposed changes (see https://github.com/chapel-lang/chapel/blob/master/doc/chips/1.rst)

Environment/Configuration Changes

'printchplenv' now indicates which settings come from environment variables
made the quickstart scripts turn CHPL_LLVM off by default
removed dependencies on 'bc' and 'patch'

Tool Changes

added chplvis: a new tool for visualizing Chapel communication and concurrency (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/tools/chplvis/index.html)
chpldoc improvements:
- improved handling of enum, real, imag, and complex initializers
- 'chpldoc' now generates values for enum symbols
- automatically skip documentation of 'private' symbols
- squashed generation of 'inline' in output
- added support for --print-commands with chpldoc
chpl-ipe:
- added a quit() primitive for clean exits from the environment

Syntactic/Naming Changes

changed 'use' to 'require' for header files and external libraries (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/technotes/extern.html)
replaced the standalone format() routine, with string.format() (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/IO.html#IO.string.format)
renamed memory diagnostics capabilities for clarity (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Memory.html)
changed the '##.##' writef() pattern so that it requires '%{...}' around it (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/IO.html#specifiers)
added support for form-feed characters ('\f') as whitespace (see 'Lexical Structure::White Space' in the language specification)
changed the term 'blank intent' to 'default intent' (see 'Functions::Argument Intents::Abstract Intents::The Default Intent')

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

domains in formal array arguments are now interpreted as a constraint (see 'Arrays::Array Arguments to Functions' in the language spec)
Chapel no longer keeps referenced variables alive past their lexical scope
c_strings are no longer made into strings when passed to generic extern args
'select' statements now only evaluate their argument expression once

New Features

added a 'vectorizeOnly()' iterator that vectorizes without using multitasking (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/internal/ChapelIteratorSupport.html)
added support for type methods and iterators (see 'Classes::Class Method Calls::The Method Receiver and the this Argument')
added support for public/private module-level variables, functions, modules) (see 'Modules:Access of Module Contents::Visibility of Module's Symbols')
added support for methods on enumerated types (e.g., 'enum color {red};' permits 'proc color.foo() { ... } color.red.foo();')
added support for hexadecimal floating point literals (see 'Lexical Structure::Tokens::Literals' in the language specification)
added the ability to rename extern records for use within Chapel (see 'Interoperation::...::Shared Types::Referring to External C Structs')
added support for -lchplmalloc for compilers supporting weak symbols (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/technotes/allocators.html))
added the ability to use 'continue' statements in 'param' for-loops
added support for == and != operators on domain maps

Standard Library/Modules

added a new 'Barrier' module defining a simple collective barrier capability (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Barrier.html)
added a new 'Spawn' module for creating new subprocesses (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Spawn.html)
added a new 'LAPACK' module that provides an interface to LAPACK (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/LAPACK.html)
added support for common mathematical constants to 'Math.chpl' (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Math.html#Math.e)
replaced standalone format() routine with string.format() in 'IO' (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/IO.html#IO.string.format)
unified string.format() format strings with writef() (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/IO.html#formatted-i-o)
added a getFileSize() routine to the 'FileSystem' module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
merged the contents of the 'UtilMath' module into 'Math' (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Math.html)
improved the 'Memory' module:
- renamed memory diagnostics capabilities for clarity
- added a --memLeaksByDesc flag to track only certain types of leaks
- stopped tracking memory allocations not related to Chapel code by default (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Memory.html)
errorToString(ENOERR) now portably returns "No error" in 'Error' module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/Error.html)
applied the 'private' keyword to standard modules as appropriate/possible

Performance Improvements

parallelized large numeric array initialization for better first-touch
improved analysis and optimization of variables that are provably local
fixed a bug in which non-blocking 'on's were counted as local running tasks
improved task counting when one task is waiting for others to complete
optimized task counts to use processor atomics when profitable
made 'cray-x*' systems default to 'qthreads' over 'muxed'
moved polling threads to the last available CPU to avoid contention
made array allocation use calloc(), not malloc() for better first-touch
enabled more optimizations and streamlined code when using the LLVM back-end

Memory Improvements

stopped leaking sync and single variables on all platforms except Cygwin
eliminated leaks for heap allocated variables used in cobegin/coforall

Documentation

mirrored many of the READMEs from the release onto our online documentation (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/usingchapel/ and .../1.12/technotes)
added online documentation for built-in types, functions, methods (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/builtins.html)
added online documentation for standard domain maps (layouts and distributions) (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/distributions.html and layouts.html)
added a copy of the online html documentation to the release itself (see $CHPL_HOME/doc/html)
converted most READMEs to ReStructured Text (.rst) or markdown (.md) (for example, see $CHPL_HOME/doc/* and $CHPL_HOME/doc/technotes/*)
refreshed the contents of most former READMEs as part of this effort
language specification updates:
- added a new chapter on Chapel's memory consistency model
- added documentation of the I/O operator, <~>
- improved the specification's page numbering and format
- retired standard library chapters from the spec now that they're online (see http://chapel.cray.com/spec/spec-0.98.pdf)
standard module documentation improvements
- added a "Formatted I/O for C Programmers" table to the IO module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/IO.html#formatted-i-o)
- refreshed the documentation of other standard modules
refreshed the contents of the C interoperability technical note (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/technotes/extern.html)
retired README.format due to its documentation as part of a standard module (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/modules/standard/IO.html#IO.string.format)
removed Tilera-specific documentation due to lack of use and testing

Example Codes

rewrote the 'stream-ep' example to remove the now unnecessary 'local' block (see examples/benchmarks/hpcc/stream-ep.chpl)
added a copy of Chapel code from learnXInYMinutes site to examples/primers (see examples/primers/learnChapelInYMinutes.chpl)
added a primer for the new 'chplvis' tool (see examples/primers/chplvis/README)
added a primer for the new LAPACK module (see examples/primers/LAPACKlib.chpl)
added a new examples/patterns directory for storing common code patterns (see examples/patterns/README)
added patterns/recordio.chpl to demonstrate reading tab-delimited records (see examples/patterns/recordio.chpl)
updated shootout/nbody.chpl to use 'ref's rather than nested procedures (see examples/benchmarks/shootout/nbody.chpl)
replaced uses of format() with writef() in SSCA2 benchmark (see examples/benchmarks/ssca2/)
made the fileIO primer more tolerant of floating point roundoff (see examples/primers/fileIO.chpl)
made the FFTW primer self-validating w.r.t. numerical differences (see examples/primers/FFTWlib.chpl)
removed 'param' from lulesh loops that probably don't want/need it (see examples/benchmarks/lulesh/)

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

redefined --fast to no longer imply --no-ieee-float
added --[no-]ieee-float support for CHPL_TARGET_COMPILER 'clang' and 'intel'
made --ccflags arguments stack rather than override one another
added support for --print-emitted-code-size for the LLVM back-end

Execution Flags

added a --memLeaksByDesc flag to track only certain memory categories
made --memLeaks[ByDesc] be governed by the --memThreshold flag

Error Message Improvements

improved how internal error messages are displayed to users
improved error messages for runaway comments
improved source location provided by 'noinit' warnings

Bug Fixes

forall loops over a single array now correctly use the standalone iterator
fixed bugs with applying reduce intents to forall loops over domains/arrays
fixed bugs with scope resolution's choice of which symbol to resolve to
fixed a bug in which overloads of '|' broke internal modules
fixed a bug related to extern variables of types like c_ptr(c_int))
fixed an internal error when a class calls its parent class's destructor
fixed a bug in which large array copies could overflow runtime arguments
fixed a bug in which calls of the form '(x)' would cause internal errors
fixed a bug in I/O when skipping whitespace encountered illegal characters
fixed printing/reading of integers with '%{##.##}' format
made readf() calls without error arguments halt on mismatches
fixed a bug in which trailing whitespace was being consumed too aggressively
made default rectangular arrays print in JSON as arrays-of-arrays
fixed EOF-related bugs in Reader/Writer
fixed a bug in which channel.read(style) was ignoring its style argument
fixed a bug in which non-blocking 'on's were counted as local running tasks
fixed a compiler exception caused by dividing by param '0'
fixed a bug in the is*() FileSystem functions when given an invalid path/link
improved chpldoc's handling of failure to create output and tmp directories
added an error message for too-long compiler flags rather than truncating
fixed a bug in which calls to malloc/free/etc in extern blocks caused errors
fixed 'text file busy' errors in certain situations when invoking 'chpl'
fixed a bug in which overloading was being permitted based on argument intents
fixed a segfault in the glob() iterator when following 0..0 with 0 matches
fixed a bug in which bad source location info was passed to string routines
preserved source location information for cobegins
fixed a bug relating to inlined iterators and generic array fields
fixed a bug relating to passing c_strings to extern C functions

Platform-specific Changes

made 'cray-x*' systems default to 'qthreads' over 'muxed'
'muxed' tasking now supports stack guard pages for non-hugepage heaps (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.12/platforms/cray.html)
added support for 'clang-included' to work with GASNet on Cray systems
removed support for cray-prgenv-pgi from the module build on 'cray-x*'
for cray-prgenv-cray compilations, stopped throwing -hipa2 by default

Platform-specific bug fixes

fixed a stack underflow problem with 'muxed' tasking causing segfaults
fixed a race in stack management for 'muxed' tasking

Portability Improvements

eliminated warnings related to [_BSD|_SVID]_SOURCE being deprecated
improved portability of building the SysCTypes.chpl for Fedora 22
removed symmetric address assumptions from error-handling code in the runtime
fixed a number of I/O portability errors on cygwin
fixed tcmalloc when compiled with clang 3.6 and used from C++
fixed I/O for 32-bit Ubuntu 14.04
added support for building GASNet with segment=fast on OS X
fixed hwloc's cairo detection for certain OS X installations
eliminated some Xcode-specific warnings

Third-Party Software Changes

added 'fltk' to the third-party directory for use by 'chplvis'
enabled the use of GMP with the LLVM back-end
made LLVM build in non-debug mode and without asserts by default
improved cross-compilation of third-party packages for 'cray-x*' platforms
we're now storing RE2 in an unpacked form due to all of our local changes
fixed a valgrind issue in RE2

Launcher-specific Changes

improved 'slurm' launcher's handling of non-zero exit() codes
changed how the 'amudprun' launcher deals with quoted arguments

Runtime Library Changes

added support for out-of-segment put()/get() calls
changed I/O to allocate buffer space out of the Chapel heap

Testing System

rewrote 'start_test' and 'computePerfStats' in python
replaced --suppress feature with .suppressif files
added ability to write chpldoc tests using the .doc.chpl extension
updated testing system to support testing of 'chpl-ipe'
made the parallel testing system print an estimated end time
added support for a -valgrindexe flag to 'paratest.server'
made 'start_test' work when it's located outside of $CHPL_HOME/util
added the ability to have multi-line COMPOPTS file
improved support for #defines with quotes for C testing
made C testing system more accepting of C compilers that print filenames
specialized testing system to recognize some common launcher errors
improved ability to use chpl_launchcmd.py from NFS-mounted Lustre filesystems
extended timeout mechanism to work under Cygwin

Makefile Changes

rewrote 'make check' to remove reliance on start_test/tcsh/python

Performance Testing/Graphing System

added a 'screenshot' capability for performance graphs
added the ability to annotate cray-xc performance graphs
retired the old gnuplot-based graphing system
reduced graphing system's reliance on CHPL_HOME being set
improved graphing system's stability when there is no ANNOTATIONS.yaml file

Developer-oriented changes: Process Improvements

began using Jira for issue tracking

Developer-oriented changes: Documentation Improvements

added notes about testing nightly scripts to util/cron/README

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags

added a --break-on-resolve-id flag for stopping when calling a function

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements

cleaned up how filename/line# information is attached to network atomics
added support for casting directly to c_strings
started using specific I/O read/write functions for int/real/imag types
cleaned up handling of bool values in IO.chpl
made initOnLocales() a standalone parallel iterator and added 'chpl_' prefix

Developer-oriented changes: Makefile improvements

added a top-level Makefile rule for building the parser

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements/changes

rewrote the compiler passes that widen references as necessary
rewrote major portions of the scope resolution pass
reduced reliance on homegrown ADTs with their STL equivalents
improved the sharing of flags between 'chpl' and 'chpldoc'
turned off sugaring of type names in --devel mode
internal improvements to how tuples are handled
removed unused flag FLAG_NO_USE_CHAPELSTANDARD
renamed FLAG_PRIVATE to FLAG_LOCALE_PRIVATE for clarity
retired the "auto destroy fn" pragma
added tracking of zippered loops throughout compilation
ensured the lexer returns a heap-allocated const char* for each literal

Developer-oriented changes: Runtime improvements

added support for task callbacks in the runtime
eliminated reliance on __always_inline
added chpl_mem_goodAllocSize() to runtime to support minimizing wasted memory
added the ability to flag certain memory types to avoid tracking them
added a capability to generate a header file #defining CHPL_* variables
turned off remote caching for tasking layers where migration can occur

Developer-oriented changes: Third-party improvements

cleaned up local modifications to Qthreads for contribution back to master
updated third-party GMP/RE2 READMEs to refer to online module documentation

============== version 1.11.0

Fourteenth public release of Chapel, April 2, 2015

Highlights

revamped 'chpldoc' and used it to create web docs for all standard modules (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/)
added a new FileSystem standard module supporting operations on files/dirs (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
added a new FFTW standard module supporting key FFTW routines (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FFTW.html)
added task intents to forall loops, plus new intents such as 'in' and 'reduce' (see 'Semantic Changes' and 'New Features' sections below)
added support for standalone parallel iterators, used by non-zippered foralls (see examples/primers/parIters.chpl)
added support for vectorization of data parallel loops and operations (see '--vectorize' flag in 'man chpl')
optimized away communication code for module-scope variables and local arrays (see release note slides at http://chapel.cray.com/releaseNotes.html)
added an early prototype interactive/interpreted mode for writing Chapel code (see doc/technotes/README.chpl-ipe.rst for more details)
initial support for Python->Chapel interoperability via PyChapel (see http://pychapel.readthedocs.org/ for more details)
made 'ugni'/'muxed' the default comm/tasking choices for cray-x* module users (see doc/platforms/README.cray and doc/README.chplenv)
added a new 'chpltags' utility to generate emacs/vim tags for Chapel code (see 'util/chpltags --help' and 'util/README')
numerous other improvements for better performance and cleaner generated code (see 'Performance Improvements' section below)
improved portability to NetBSD and additional flavors of Linux (see 'Portability Improvements' section below)
upgraded the bundled versions of GASNet, hwloc, llvm, and dygraphs (see 'Third-Party Software Changes' section below)
numerous bug fixes (see 'Bug Fixes' section below)

Environment/Configuration Changes

made the setchplenv.* scripts prepend to PATH and MANPATH rather than append
made the "quickstart" scripts set CHPL_COMM to 'none' and not set CHPL_MEM
improved the logic for auto-detecting when CHPL_ATOMICS should be 'intrinsics'
added auto-detection of CHPL_*_PLATFORM for 'cray-xc'/'cray-xe' systems
added support for building runtime/third-party with the bundled clang version (see references to 'clang-included' in README.chplenv)
split the 'cygwin' CHPL_*_PLATFORM value into 'cygwin32' and 'cygwin64'
added new 'netbsd32' and 'netbsd64' values for CHPL_*_PLATFORM
changed CHPL_COMM/TASKS to default to ugni/muxed when using the cray-x* module (see doc/README.chplenv, doc/platforms/README.cray, and/or doc/README.tasks)
made CHPL_TASKS default to 'fifo' for 'cray-prgenv-cray' CHPL_TARGET_COMPILER

Packaging Changes

updated Makefiles to support building Chapel in parallel via 'make -j'
avoid rebuilding gmp and re2 speculatively when previous builds have failed

Tool Changes

added an early prototype interactive/interpreted mode for writing Chapel code (see doc/technotes/README.chpl-ipe.rst for more details)
revamped 'chpldoc' to create HTML files via Sphinx for documenting Chapel code (see doc/technotes/README.chpldoc.rst and 'man chpldoc' for more details)
added a new 'chpltags' utility to generate emacs/vim tags for Chapel code (see 'util/chpltags --help' and 'util/README' for more information)

Syntactic/Naming Changes

removed the placeholder keyword 'refvar' in favor of the new keyword 'ref'
removed support for the use of 'var' as a return intent (use 'ref' instead)

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

added support for task intent clauses and semantics to forall loops (see 'Data Parallelism: Forall Intents' in the language specification)
added initial support for 'reduce' intents on forall loops (see doc/technotes/README.reduceIntents)
removed the 'type select x' syntax in favor of simply using 'select x.type'
made read()s of sync/single variables result in a compiler error

New Features

added "blank", 'const', 'in', 'const in' and 'const ref' task intents (see 'Task Parallelism: Task Intents' in the language specification)
added "standalone parallel iterators", used by non-zippered forall loops (see examples/primers/parIters.chpl)
added support for aliasing of domains via the '=>' operator

New Interoperability Features

initial support for Python->Chapel interoperability via PyChapel (see http://pychapel.readthedocs.org/ for more details)
added a prototype capability to embed external dependences to source via 'use' (e.g., use "foo.h", "-lfoo"; is like adding these to the 'chpl' command-line)
added support for passing multidimensional arrays to external routines (see doc/technotes/README.extern)
added munging of all user identifiers by default to avoid naming conflicts (see --[no-]munge-user-idents in 'man chpl' and doc/README.executing)
added an error when passing Chapel strings to C routines; use c_string instead

Standard Library/Modules

added a new module, FileSystem, containing numerous file system operations (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
added support for key 64-bit FFTW routines (single- and multi-threaded) (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FFTW.html and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FFTW_MT.html)
added parity() and rotate() operations to the BitOps module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/BitOps.html)
added parallel versions of the glob(), walkdirs(), and findfiles() iterators (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
started a new module, Path, supporting realPath(), curDir, parentDir, pathSep (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/Path.html)
added a new module, Assert, defining a simple assertion capability (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/Assert.html)
added support for C types c_ptrdiff, c_uintptr, and c_intptr to SysCTypes.chpl (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/gen/doc/SysCTypes.html)
changed cwd() and chdir() from standalone functions to locale methods (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
made mkdir(parents=true) behave more like 'mkdir -p'
added a .safeCast() method to integer types to value-check downcasts (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/Types.html)
changed min(t) and max(t) to return 'param' values for integral types 't' (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/Types.html)
parameterized RandomStream by an 'eltType' and updated its methods accordingly (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/Random.html)
removed the parSafe arguments from RandomStream's methods in the Random module (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/modules/standard/Random.html)
added support for escaping pattern-style format strings using %{} (e.g., "writef("#%{##}", 10)" => "#10")
added support for readf()/writef() of octal values
changed 'BigInt' methods to use Chapel types rather than C types
folded the prototypical 'Filerator' module into the new 'FileSystem' module
retired the 'Containers' module in favor of vector operations on arrays (see examples/primers/arrayVectorOps.chpl)

Performance Improvements

added support for vectorization of data parallel loops and operations (see '--vectorize' flag in 'man chpl')
optimized away the creation of anonymous ranges in loops (e.g., 'for i in 1..10' no longer creates an anonymous range object for 1..10)
optimized away communication code for module-scope variables and local arrays
optimized iterations over ranges in data parallel constructs like 'forall'
added standalone parallel iterators for ranges and default domain maps
extended loop-invariant code motion to include certain global variables
added an 'assertNoSlicing' config that can be used to optimize array accesses (see $CHPL_HOME/PERFORMANCE)
avoided creating new singleton tasks within serial execution contexts

Memory Improvements

reduced memory leaks due to compilerWarning()s and runtime string arguments
distinguished between "owned" and "unowned" c_strings in implementation
improved the handling of strings across multiple locales

Launcher-specific Changes

in the 'pbs-aprun' launcher, removed reliance on the mpp* options
added a --nodelist option to the 'slurm-srun' launcher
in the 'slurm-srun' launcher, stopped using expect scripts

Platform-specific Changes

fixed an issue in which Qthreads would not handle sleep() correctly for darwin
added a micro-sleep when yielding threads on Cygwin to improve throughput
changed CHPL_COMM/TASKS to default to ugni/muxed when using the cray-x* module (see doc/README.chplenv, doc/platforms/README.cray, and/or doc/README.tasks)
enabled 'ugni' tasking to be usable with 'qthreads' as well as 'muxed'
reduced default heap size used for CHPL_COMM='ugni' to 2/3 free node memory (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
changed 'muxed' tasking to use # of threads equal to the # of CPUs by default (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
disabled optimizations by default for cray-prgenv-cray compilations
split the 'cygwin' platform value into 'cygwin32' and 'cygwin64'
split the 'netbsd' platform value into 'netbsd32' and 'netbsd64'
made CHPL_TASKS default to 'fifo' for 'cray-prgenv-cray' CHPL_TARGET_COMPILER

Portability Improvements

fixed several portability issues on NetBSD platforms
fixed the use of the --llvm flag on Mac OS X ('darwin') platforms
fixed some portability issues with the use of hwloc and -lnuma for 'qthreads'
fixed some static/dynamic linking issues with certain platforms/compilers
fixed a gmp build issue for 32-bit platforms

Third-Party Software Changes

updated the bundled version of GASNet to 1.24.0
updated the bundled version of hwloc to 1.10.1
updated the bundled version of llvm to 3.6.0
upgraded the bundled version of dygraphs to version 1.1.0
added support for dynamically installing Python packages required by 'chpldoc' (see 'chpldoc-venv' in third-party/README)
rearchitected scripting framework for third-party dependences
made the re2 build do a better job of propagating errors back to the Makefiles
changed Qthreads to avoid using guard pages when mprotect() won't work
fixed a bug in limiting the maximum size of Qthreads memory pools

Documentation

added web-based docs for all standard modules and removed from spec/READMEs (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/latest/)
made some minor improvements to the Quick Reference document
added documentation for class and record destructors to the spec
removed an outdated distinction between function calls using () vs. [] in spec
clarified that integer literals may be 'int' or 'uint' in the spec
added a note for 'zsh' users to the top-level README
added a note to CONTRIBUTORS noting mis-attributed code authors within GitHub
improved the documentation of the slurm* launchers (see doc/README.launcher, doc/platforms/README.cray)
added a note about ugni memory registration and concurrency with slurm (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
added a note about a longstanding undocumented feature to squash ref counting (see $CHPL_HOME/PERFORMANCE)

Example Codes

added a new primer example demonstrating use of the FFTW module (see examples/primers/FFTWlib.chpl)
added standalone parallel iterators to the leader-follower primer and renamed (see examples/primers/parIters.chpl)
updated and renamed the chpldoc primer example to reflect chpldoc's changes (see examples/primers/chpldoc.doc.chpl)
updated the random numbers primer to reflect changes to the interface (see examples/primers/randomNumbers.chpl)
fixed a bug in our lulesh implementation when using the 3D representation
updated miniMD's Stencil distribution to track changes in BlockDist
changed miniMD to work around a bug in passing remote records by blank intent
updated the HPCC FFT example to use new BitOps
updated SSCA2 to reflect new intent semantics for forall-loops
updated the regexdna shootout to accept extra arguments as used by framework
made stream and ra save their problem sizes when performance testing
replaced the use of format() in example codes with writef()

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

added --[no-]use-noinit to permit 'noinit' to be ignored
added support for setting --fast via environment variable CHPL_FAST
added --[no-]ignore-classes to disable local class optimizations
added --[no-]vectorize to enable/disable generation of vectorization hints
added --[no-]cast-checks to enable/disable value checking in safeCast methods
added --[no-]munge-user-idents to control munging of generated identifiers
removed all documentation-related options; use 'chpldoc' instead
added a flag --[no-]task-tracking to enable/disable runtime task tracking

New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

Improved 'const' checking for array/tuple fields and array/domain aliases

Error Message Improvements

added an error when compiling for a configuration whose runtime is not built
improved error messages for several range overflow conditions

Bug Fixes

fixed a bug with dynamically dispatched iterators
fixed a bug with parallel iteration over non-naturally-aligned ranges
fixed a bug in which record variables did not call user-defined constructors
fixed a bug in which arrays of associative domains could cause a segfault
fixed a bug in which user identifiers could easily conflict with C identifiers
fixed a bug with formatted writes of integers using "###."
fixed an infinite loop in binary reads of strings when EOF is reached
fixed a bug preventing sparse domains from having 'uint' indices
fixed a bug when casting param 'int(64)' and 'uint(?)' to 'c_string'
fixed a bug in which secondary parentheses-less methods did not work well
fixed a buffer overrun issue in certain I/O routines
fixed a bug in which defining multiple destructors caused a segfault
fixed some bugs in the standard Buffers module
fixed a bug in which filenames generated by --cpp-lines would get corrupted
fixed a bug in --cache-remote for 32-bit platforms
fixed a bug with loop invariant code motion in the context of nested functions
fixed a crash when using multiple formal type queries for primitives types
fixed a bug in which iterators yielding locale types caused an internal error
fixed a bug in which --no-remove-copy-calls would break certain extern records
fixed a bug in the parser causing issues with &&= and ||= for --baseline
fixed a bug in which developer pragmas were only attached to the first symbol

Platform-specific bug fixes

fixed a bug in which I/O errors would print "unknown" for paths for 'cygwin'
fixed a warning in our calls to glob() when compiling with 'prgenv-cray'
fixed an issue in which generated identifiers could be too long for 'pgi'
fixed a bug in which 'gmp' would not build cleanly for 32-bit Ubuntu systems
fixed a bug in atomic operations on 'real' types for CHPL_COMM='ugni'

Runtime Library Changes

enabled 'ugni' tasking to be usable with 'qthreads' as well as 'muxed'
changed Qthreads to yield after uncontested sync var locks to avoid starvation

Compiler Performance

accelerated compilation times by disabling the task table by default (see '--[no-]task-tracking' on the 'chpl' man page and doc/README.executing)

Testing System

added support for specifying 'skipif' files as executable scripts
added a mode in which only futures with .skipif files are tested
check for .skipif conditions before wasting any effort on a test
switched to a consistent and simpler naming scheme for test configurations
added timing measurements to the log for various aspects of testing
revamped emails sent by testing scripts for maintainability and spam avoidance
made the test system less sensitive to line/versions #s in .bad comparisons
added a --test-root flag, improving start_test when run from outside CHPL_HOME
fixed a bug in which '-nl' was passed to C tests for multilocale testing
added support for jUnit XML-style report generation to start_test and paratest
made paratest.server's compopts/execopts accumulate rather than overwrite
added CHPL_TEST_UNIQUIFY_EXE to support simultaneous test runs on a directory
added the ability to set the default testing timeout via CHPL_TEST_TIMEOUT
added support for CHPL_TEST_NUM_TRIALS to be set by a user's environment
squashed duplicate error messages due to sub_test failures
fixed a bug with stdin redirects for tests with multiple .execopts
made start_test smarter about stdin and launchers for multilocale testing
improved the testing system's handling of timeouts when launchers are used
added validation for CHPL_NIGHTLY_LOGDIR in nightly testing
fixed a bug for tests with multiple execopts settings that timed out
permitted suppression files to contain blank lines
fix bug in which suppression-based issues only appeared in the test summary
fixed a bad interaction between env. vars. set in sub_test vs. execenv files
made sub_test ignore OS errors during unlinking to quiet false negatives

Performance Testing/Graphing System

allow scrolling of the list of graphs independently from graphs themselves
embed more information in the URL of performance graphs for sharing purposes
improved the portability of URLs from the performance graphing system
added support for 'today' as a date in the perf graph system's URL encodings
accelerated graphs by moving sorting of graphs' legends into genGraphs script
track top processes between performance runs to look for causes of noise
improved support for comparing multiple performance testing configurations
started logging the sha values for performance runs, for historical reference
changed performance graphs to use json rather than csv
automatically strip punctuation characters from the end of graph keys

Developer-oriented changes: Utility Changes

added a new compiler gdb command 'locid' which prints an AST's source location
made build_configs.py support parallel execution

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags

added --report-order-independent-loops to note loops with vectorization hints
added --remove-unreachable-blocks to attempt early removal of dead code
fixed a code pointer in the --help message for --log

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements

added a pragma for asserting that a class field is local to the object
moved routines in support of iterators to a new module ChapelIteratorSupport
split _build_range() into several routines with better names
refactored overloads of range operator definitions
changed Filerator routines to use new isLink(), isDir(), and isFile() routines
removed requirement to add 'no ChapelStandard' pragma to internal modules

Developer-oriented changes: Makefile improvements

added a "WARNINGS" macro that can be used to turn on C-level warnings
moved check for standard C headers into the post-commit smoke test
simplified and regularized third-party Makefiles

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements/changes

changed the parser to a "pure push" style of parser
changed the compiler to require bison 2.5 (or later)
dramatically reworked representation and manipulation of loop AST nodes
made more AST members private and increased the use of query methods
added a new, prototype AST pretty-printer for Chapel-oriented output
made improvements to list_view()
made flags on a symbol print in a deterministic order
extended DeadCodeElimination to reclaim degenerate C for loops
made 'narrowWideReferences' its own compiler pass and refactor it
moved the 'docs' pass earlier in compilation
reorder localCopyPropagation to avoid a ref-before-def bug
improved verification of expressions to check correctness of AList links
fixed a bug in which failed chpl__tryToken resolutions could roll back too far
removed flags: FLAG_LABEL_BREAK, FLAG_LABEL_CONTINUE, FLAG_USER_NAMED
distinguished FLAG_WIDE from FLAG_WIDE_REF
deprecated the use of the MOD_MAIN tag
simplified code related to calling user-defined constructors vs. _defaultOf
converted the collapsing of nested BlockStmts to use a visitor
added a predicate to determine if an expression is a "statement expression"
converted some uses of C arrays to std::vector in compiler
added binary operators to the BitVec implementation
replaced the basic block macros with private static functions
fixed a bug in basic block analysis
moved the handling of boolean short-circuiting from 'parse' to 'normalize'
renamed 'by' operators in the compiler's IR to avoid naming conflicts
refactored fix_def_expr() in the normalize pass
refactored constant folding vs. dead code elimination for CondStmts
fixed several code issues identified by coverity scan
many other code refactorings and improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Runtime improvements

simplified interactions between locale models and the runtime
improved the non-blocking communication interface
added support for the main process to run Chapel tasks
guarded against some src==dst calls to memcpy()
for optimized builds of the runtime, set NDEBUG to turn off assertions
fixed several code issues identified by coverity scan

Developer-oriented changes: Generated Code improvements

improved the spacing when printing IDs via --gen-ids

============== version 1.10.0

Thirteenth public release of Chapel, October 2, 2014

Highlights

changed Chapel's license and contributor agreement to Apache 2.0 (see 'Licensing Changes' section below)
made Qthreads the default tasking layer for Chapel on most platforms (see doc/README.chplenv and doc/README.tasks for details)
added initial support for Intel Xeon Phi Knights Corner (KNC) processors (see doc/platforms/README.knc)
added new standard modules for bit operations, prefetch, file/directory utils (see 'Standard Modules' section below)
extended auxiliary file system support for HDFS to include Lustre and cURL (see doc/README.auxIO for details)
added support for set-based operations on associative domains and arrays (see doc/technotes/README.sets and examples/primers/associative.chpl)
added draft support for vector methods on 1D arrays with a personal domain (see examples/primers/arrayVectorOps.chpl)
added the ability to query arrays for the subdomain(s) that the locale owns (see doc/technotes/README.subquery and examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
added the ability to pass contiguous Chapel arrays to extern procedures (see doc/technotes/README.extern)
performance boosts due to Qthreads tasking, improved LICM, less communication (see 'Performance Improvements' below)
several generated code cleanups including C for loops and fewer ref temps (see 'Generated Code Cleanups' below)
significantly improved const-ness checking for fields, indices, domains/arrays
fixed the semantics for passing sync/single variables to generic arguments
improved support for, and orthogonality of, constructor calls
added a compiler flag to support specializing for the target architecture (see descriptions of CHPL_TARGET_ARCH and --[no-]specialize below)
added symbolic CHPL_RT_NUM_THREADS_PER_LOCALE values to support common cases (see doc/README.tasks for details)
added an --about flag to Chapel executables to print compilation information
new primer examples for associative domains/arrays, vector ops, random numbers (see 'Example Codes' below)
two new shootout benchmarks and many improvements to the existing ones (see 'Example Codes' below)
split setchplenv.* source scripts into "quick start" and "production" modes (see $CHPL_HOME/README)
by default, attempt to build and enable RE2 and GMP when possible (see doc/README.chplenv)
updated versions of hwloc, tcmalloc, and gasnet third-party packages (see 'Third-Party Software Changes' below)
numerous bug fixes (see 'Bug Fixes' below)
many test system improvements including C-based testing and external timers (see 'Testing System' and 'Performance Testing/Graphing System' below)
many developer process improvements such as GitHub, Travis, Coverity, Jenkins (see 'Developer-oriented Changes: Process Changes' below)
many other developer-oriented improvements and refactorings (see other 'Developer-oriented Changes: ...' sections below)

Licensing Changes

changed Chapel's license from BSD to Apache 2.0 (see $CHPL_HOME/LICENSE.chapel for details)
changed Chapel's contributor agreement from a Cray agreement to Apache 2.0 (see http://chapel.cray.com/developers.html for details)

Packaging Changes

split the util/setchplenv.* scripts into quick-start and "production" versions (see $CHPL_HOME/README and util/README for more information)
for non-quickstart users, we now attempt to enable RE2 and GMP by default (see doc/README.chplenv for details)
removed the util/update-sources script which had fallen out-of-date

Environment Changes

changed the default value of CHPL_TASKS to 'qthreads' for most platforms (see doc/README.chplenv and doc/README.tasks for details)
added CHPL_TARGET_ARCH to describe the target processor architecture (see doc/README.chplenv for details)
added CHPL_AUX* environment variables for accessing HDFS, Lustre, and/or cURL (see doc/technotes/README.auxIO)
added symbolic physical/logical values for CHPL_RT_NUM_THREADS_PER_LOCALE (see doc/README.tasks for details)
generalized CHPL_RT_MAX_HEAP_SIZE to control GASNet's segment size (see doc/README.executing for more information)
generalized CHPL_RT_CALL_STACK_SIZE to control Qthread stack sizes (see doc/README.executing for more information)
renamed the CHPL_MEM setting previously called 'default' to 'cstdlib'

Portability Improvements

added initial support for Intel Xeon Phi Knights Corner (KNC) processors (see doc/platforms/README.knc)
fixed a bug in which newer versions of Cygwin weren't properly detected

Syntactic/Naming Changes

changed the syntax for task intents from 'ref(ident)' to 'with (ref ident)' (see the 'Task Parallelism' chapter of the language specification for details)
deprecated 'var functions' in favor of returning by 'ref' intent (see the 'Procedures' chapter of the language specification for details)
renamed the 'default' setting for CHPL_MEM to 'cstdlib' (see doc/README.chplenv for details)

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

made passing syncs/singles to generic arguments pass them by 'ref' (previously, such calls would unwrap the sync/single, passing the value in)
redefined op= on associative domains in terms of set operations (see doc/technotes/README.sets for more information)
made loops over ranges that rely on overflow undefined (e.g., 'for i in 1..max(int) do ...' is not well-defined)
make a more explicit distinction between the 'string' and 'c_string' types (see doc/technotes/README.extern for more information on 'c_string')
added support for the logical negation of integral types (e.g., 'var x = 3; if (!x) then ...' is now legal Chapel code)
removed support for interpreting {D} as D for domain D (given 'const D: domain(...) = ...;', '{D}' is not a domain of domains)

New Features

added support for Lustre and cURL file systems (see doc/technotes/README.auxIO and README.curl for details)
added support for standard set operations on associative domains and arrays (see doc/technotes/README.sets and examples/primers/associative.chpl)
added support for extending an associative array's personal domain via stores (see examples/primers/associative.chpl)
added draft support for vector methods on 1D arrays with a personal domain (see examples/primers/arrayVectorOps.chpl)
added the ability to query arrays for the subdomain(s) that the locale owns (see doc/technotes/README.subquery and examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
made the compiler call user-defined default constructors when defined
added the ability to call constructors through type aliases (e.g., 'class C { ... } type t = C; var myT = new t();' now works)
added support for numerous type-oriented queries for expressions (see doc/technotes/README.typeQueries)
added octal literals (e.g., 0o777)
added support for 'noinit' on record and class variables (see the 'Variables' chapter of the language specification)
added experimental support for user-defined default values for record types (e.g., 'proc _defaultOf(type t) where t:R { var r: t; r = ...; return r; })
added locale.maxTaskPar to query the # of parallel tasks a locale can support (see the 'Locales' chapter of the language specification)
added initial support for 'ref' variables using a placeholder 'refvar' syntax (e.g., 'var x = 3; refvar y = x; x = 5; assert(y == 5);' will not fail)

Changes to the Implementation

improved the current support for HDFS file systems (see doc/technotes/README.auxIO and README.hdfs for more information)
made 'dataParTasksPerLocale' default to 'locale.maxTaskPar' (see the 'Data Parallelism' chapter of the language specification)

New Interoperability Features

added the ability to pass contiguous Chapel arrays to extern procedures (see README.extern)
extern C procedures should now take 'c_string' arguments rather than 'string'
changed the return type of is_c_nil from c_int to bool

Standard Modules

added a new standard module supporting some initial bitwise operations (see modules/standard/BitOps.chpl)
added a new standard module supporting a prefetch() operation (see modules/standard/Prefetch.chpl)
added some initial file/directory utility routines (more planned for 1.11) (e.g., remove(), rename(), cwd(), chdir(), mkdir(), chown())
added draft support for glob() and walking directory trees (see modules/standard/Filerator.chpl -- feedback desired)
added readstring()/readline() methods that read bytes into strings/arrays (see modules/standard/IO.chpl)
added an experimental sorted() iterator for sorting arrays or other iterables (see modules/standard/Sort.chpl)
added the ability to have the Sort.chpl module routines sort in reverse
implemented new module NewString defining 'string_rec' (prototype to replace 'string' in version 1.11)
added a printMemLeaks() routine for printing out a memory leaks table (see modules/standard/Memory.chpl)
improved Random.chpl's SeedGenerator.currentTime to avoid duplicate seeds
rewrote the AdvancedIters module to use 'atomic' rather than 'sync' vars
removed the Profiling-related modules and source code

Documentation

added doc/platforms/README.knc to describe using Chapel for KNC
added doc/technotes/README.auxIO and .curl to describe new file system support
added doc/technotes/README.sets to describe new associative domain set ops
added doc/technotes/README.fileUtil to describe current file utility routines
added doc/technotes/README.subquery to describe array subdomain queries
added a description of CHPL_RT_MAX_HEAP_SIZE/GASNET_MAX_SEGSIZE to README.cray
improved the specification of procedure arguments and returns
added the proposed support for forall intents to the language specification
fixed a spec code example that failed to use task intents as needed
many updates, clarifications, and improvements to the language specification
many updates and improvements to the READMEs in general

Example Codes

added a new primer for associative domains/arrays and set operations on them (see examples/primers/associative.chpl)
added a new primer for vector operations on 1D arrays (see examples/primers/arrayVectorOps.chpl)
added a new primer for random number generation (see examples/primers/randomNumbers.chpl)
added two new shootout benchmarks: meteor-fast, regexdna (see examples/benchmarks/shootout/meteor-fast.chpl and regexdna.chpl)
replaced the fannkuch-redux benchmark with a parallel version (see examples/benchmarks/shootout/fannkuch-redux.chpl)
updated the mandelbrot benchmark to use a dynamic iterator (see examples/benchmarks/shootout/mandelbrot.chpl)
updated chameneos benchmark to use conditionals instead of select statements (see examples/benchmarks/shootout/chameneosredux.chpl)
removed some CHPL_RT knob-fiddling from the thread-ring benchmark
fixed the portability of the pidigits benchmark to 32-bit systems (see examples/benchmarks/shootout/pidigits.chpl)
updated the fileIO primer to utilize/demonstrate whole-array I/O (see examples/primers/fileIO.chpl)
improved the locking strategy used in verification for the HPCC RA benchmark
removed the unnecessary locking and error tolerance from ra-atomics.chpl
changed HPCC RA benchmarks to print problem sizes before declaring arrays
minor edits to the domains primer

Source Highlighting Changes (see etc/README)

updated vim, emacs, highlight, and source-highlight modes with new keywords
other general improvements to vim and emacs modes
added a pointer to the Chapel support for pygments (see etc/pygments/README.rst)

Launcher-specific Notes

improved the 'slurm-srun' launcher
updated 'aprun' launcher to support KNC
added environment forwarding for the 'amudprun' launcher

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

added a --[no-]specialize flag that supports CHPL_TARGET_ARCH specialization (see doc/README.chplenv for details beyond those on the man page)
added a --[no-]stack-checks flag to the compiler (see README.tasks for details beyond those on the man page)
made --fast imply --specialize and --no-stack-checks by default
added a new --cache-remote flag to enable caching remote data
--print-passes now prints additional timing information about passes

Flags on Generated Executables

added an --about flag to print information about how a program was compiled

Error Message Improvements

added an error message for function control paths that fail to return values
added a warning if a hugepages module is/is not loaded as CHPL_COMM requires
improved error messages for I/O failures
improved the error message for assignments between unsupported type pairs
improved resolution errors to distinguish between having 0 vs. 2+ candidates
improved error messages for applying 'new' to incorrect expression types
issue an error when using the --llvm flag when LLVM is not enabled
fixed a warning message in which CHPL_GASNET_SEGMENT was mis-named

Performance Improvements

improved the performance of the Qthreads tasking layer
improved the loop invariant code motion optimization for --no-local compiles
improved the performance of the serial 1D array iterator
optimized task counters to make use of network atomics when available
reduced communication counts for several common code idioms
added an experimental optimization for caching remote data with 'fifo' tasking (see --cache-remote flag on 'chpl' man page)
improved the performance of readstring()

Third-Party Software Changes

made many improvements to our use of Qthreads in the 'qthreads' tasking layer
updated snapshot of hwloc to version 1.9.1
updated snapshot of tcmalloc to version 2.2 and patched to work with Chapel
applied GASNet patches to fix pshm gemini/aries memory registration issues
improved the portability of the re2 code base and regexp feature
parallelized the build of the llvm and gmp packages to reduce build time
reduced the number of llvm components we build to reduce build time

New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

improved const-ness checking for 'const' fields, loop indices, domains/arrays
added checks for assignments to illegal l-values via op= operators
added semantic checks to prevent against overflow in range iteration

Bug Fixes

fixed a bug in which int literals > max(int(32)) could not coerce to uint(32)
fixed support for uppercase binary and hexadecimal literals (e.g. 0B1101101 and 0Xbabe1055)
fixed a bug in which ~1% of compiles would segfault on Macs
fixed a bug relating to nested records and default constructors
fixed a bug in which varargs functions with 'ref' intent did not work
fixed a bug in which the compiler did not preserve param boolean sizes
fixed a bug in 'noinit' initializations shared by multiple variables
fixed a bug in which writef() was missing an overload
fixed some bugs in readstring()
fixed a race condition in associative domains' member() function
fixed an internal error relating to record variables in param conditionals
fixed some bugs in the GMP module
fixed a bug in which multi-locale memory tracking was broken
fixed a bug in loop-invariant code motion
fixed several bugs in the LLVM backend

Runtime Library Changes

refactored the runtime's auxiliary file system support to support many at once
made the tasking layer specify the default value for dataParTasksPerLocale
In 'qthreads' tasking, made the progress engine a pthread, not a task
added new non-blocking communication functions to the runtime interface
added yields to the communication layer's barriers to avoid wasting resources
removed barrier-related communications from verbose comm output by default

Generated Code Cleanups

changed the generated code to use C for-loops for ranges and certain arrays
eliminated unnecessary reference temps in many common cases, like assignments
added dead module elimination to reduce the amount of generated code
removed extraneous chpl__readXX() calls from the generated code
changed the mix of which compiler-generated functions are inlined vs. not

Compiler Performance

improved compilation speed by rewriting printchplenv and chplenv/* in Python
consolidated the compiler's system calls to reduce compiler overhead

Testing System

added the ability to add C-based tests to the test system
added the ability for an *execopts file to redirect stdin as its last args
added automatic squashing of internal module line numbers for .bad diffs
the test system now logs a list of top CPU consumers if a test times out
added a notion of a temporary test directory that is cleaned up after a run
changed memory leaks test accounting to include strings
added a --syspreexec flag to the start_test script
added the ability to have locale-model-based .good files in testing
added the ability to match against variants of an explicitly named .good file

Performance Testing/Graphing System

add the ability to use different external timers in performance testing
embedded the active graph list into the performance testing system's URLs
removed duplicate checkboxes from the list of performance graphs
fixed the support for annotating multiple graph series' at once
made performance testing only run one trial for a higher-than-default timeout
fixed a bug in which multiple performance test trials were replicating data
made performance testing remove .exec.out.tmp on successful runs
added the ability to graph .dat files listed by SVN revision rather than date
made the default compiler performance directory unique by machine name
avoided sync-ing performance graphs to the web if errors are encountered
improved the behavior of the log-scale button's warning mode

Developer-oriented changes: Process Changes

migrated Chapel's repository from Subversion on SourceForge to git on github
began using Travis for pre-commit sanity checks
began using Coverity scan regularly to catch code quality issues
converted testing from cron-based to Jenkins-based
added a script to aid with building multiple Chapel configurations (see util/build_configs.py --help for more information)
added copyrights to sources within git (rather than tagging at release time)

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags

added a new --lldb developer flag for debugging with LLDB
added a --print-module-resolution developer flag
changed developer --version numbers to display the sha1 + branch
made minor improvements to the --minimal-modules compilation mode
removed the developer --ignore-internal-modules flag

Developer-oriented changes: Executable flags

added a -E flag for launchers to forward environment variables to _reals

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements

added an ability for developers to access 'param' and 'type' fields in Chapel
merged internal ChapelRange and ChapelRangeBase modules/types together
converted remaining assignment ops to use the new '=(ref x, y)' signature
rewrote assignments to use PRIM_ASSIGN rather than PRIM_MOVE
made ioerror return without exiting on ENOERR
added a remote prefetch primitive
extended network atomic interface to accept memory_order (currently ignored)
fixed the return types of non-fetch network atomic methods to be 'void'
refactored the reference counting code for domain maps, domains, and arrays
converted internal use of external procedures to use 'c_string', not 'string'
refactored Memory module to avoid injecting extern symbols into global scope
refactored string support into new files (see runtime/*/chpl-string.h/.c and modules/internal/String.chpl)
moved privatized ID tracking from the runtime to the modules
cleaned up deprecated file operations

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements

fixed a number of issues identified by Coverity and the Clang Static Analyzer
created a "visitor" supporting a pre-order traversal of the IR
rewrote the three viewing formats to use the new visitor capability
added a PhaseTracker capability for taking timings within the compiler
eliminated creation of order and coercion wrappers within compiler
add memory fences to places that need them in the generated code and runtime
added partial instantiation of generic functions to the resolution pass
tightened up the use of function_exists() to avoid false matches
significantly improved how default values are established by the compiler
added an internal function for getting the first of an enum's values
added a "ignore noinit" pragma to override noinit support
squashed default initialization of certain compiler-introduced temp variables
removed many compiler-introduced PRIM_MOVE operations
improve how module uses are tracked and managed
replaced the resolvedFns map with a flag on FnSymbols
fixed the placement of an iterator tag argument
removed some unnecessary scopeless block statements in the front-end
replaced every procedure's nested BlockStmt with a single one
moved module initialization function creation from parser to normalize
various other code cleanups and refactorings

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler refactorings

cleaned up the AST classes w.r.t. protected, private, const, etc.
split statement AST nodes out from 'Expr' and into a new base class, 'Stmt'
refactored view.cpp into three files matching its three viewing formats (see compiler/AST/AstDump.cpp, ASTDumpToHTML.cpp, and view.cpp)
refactored and cleaned up code related to specifying and running passes
cleaned up the compiler's timer class
cleaned up arg.cpp
refactored logging related code into log.h/cpp
moved insertWideReferences into its own file
replaced Symbol class bool fields with flags
removed dead code relating to garbage collection and the early interpreter
removed dead FLAGs and memory descriptor types

Developer-oriented changes: Runtime improvements

refactored task-local runtime data into a single structure
made the runtime code more resilient to mixing C++/C compilers

============= version 1.9.0

Twelfth public release of Chapel, April 17, 2014

Highlights (see entries in subsequent categories for details)

numerous performance improvements (see 'Performance Improvements' below)
significant reductions in compiler-introduced memory leaks
added five new Computer Language Benchmark Games to the examples/ directory
improved operator precedence for '|', '^', '&', '<<', '>>', '..', and 'in'
added the ability for a user to create overloads of the assignment operator
implemented atomic variables using intrinsics for Intel and Cray compilers
flipped the default nested parallelism policy via dataParIgnoreRunningTasks
significantly improved the stability/generality of the LLVM back-end
added a slurm-srun launcher for use with native SLURM and improved pbs-aprun
added a 'make check' rule to the top-level Makefile to validate a build
improved the symmetry of program startup and polling across the locales
significant improvements to the testing system, esp. performance testing
updates to the GASNet and GMP packages and new snapshots of hwloc and re2
improved the code base's portability w.r.t. clang, gcc, Mac OS X, Debian 7.4
numerous bug fixes (see 'Bug Fixes' below)

Packaging Changes

added a 'make check' rule to the top-level Makefile to validate a build
removed the half-hearted support for Chapel syntax highlighting in emacs 21

Environment Changes

added a new CHPL_HWLOC environment variable to control the use of 'hwloc' (see doc/README.chplenv)
made CHPL_COMPILER default to 'clang' for CHPL_PLATFORM 'darwin'
made CHPL_TASKS default to 'qthreads' when CHPL_LOCALE_MODEL == 'numa'
made CHPL_HWLOC default to 'hwloc' when CHPL_TASKS = 'qthreads'
established a 1:1 correspondence between CHPL_TASKS and CHPL_THREADS options
deprecated the user-controlled CHPL_THREADS environment variable
removed support for CHPL_TASKS=none due to lack of significant utility
made GASNet use the 'large' segment by default for the 'ibv' conduit
made CHPL_LAUNCHER default to 'gasnetrun_ibv' when using GASNet's mxm conduit (see doc/README.launcher)

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

improved operator precedence for '|', '^', '&', '<<', '>>', '..', and 'in' (see precedence tables in the 'Expressions' spec chapter or quick ref card)
added the ability for a user to create overloads of the assignment operator (see 'Statements' chapter in the language specification)
added a 'noinit' capability to squash default initialization for basic types (see 'Variables' chapter in the language specification)
for a domain D, previously {D} == D; now it interprets it as 'domain(D.type)'
added support for an expression-less 'serial' statement (i.e., 'serial do' == 'serial true do')
added support for dynamic casts of the 'nil' value, producing 'nil' (see 'Conversions' chapter of the language specification)
clarified that deleting a 'nil' value is OK and will have no effect (see 'Classes' chapter of the language specification)
added the ability to mark the 'this' as having 'ref' intent for methods (see 'Classes' chapter of the language specification)

New Features

implemented support for the 'break' statement within param loops

Changes to the Implementation

dataParIgnoreRunningTasks is now 'false' by default for locale model 'flat' (see doc/README.executing for details)
changed the default size of the call stack size to 8 MiB for all task options (see doc/README.tasks for details)

New Interoperability Features

extended c_ptrTo() to support 1D rectangular arrays
added support for casts between c_ptr types

Standard Modules

added support for abs() on imaginary types
added isSubtype() and isProperSubtype() queries to the standard Types module (see 'Standard Modules' chapter of the spec for details)

Documentation

added descriptions of 'atomic' variables and 'noinit' expressions to the spec (see the 'Task Parallelism and Synchronization' and 'Variables' sections)
clarified specification of casting from numeric types to 'bool'
reworked LICENSE files to clarify third-party licenses and isolate BSD text (see LICENSE and LICENSE.chapel)
refreshed and reorganized README.tasks
documented that 'clang' is available as a CHPL_*_COMPILER option (see doc/README.chplenv)
improved description of Cray-specific runtime environment variables (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
clarified formatted I/O documentation regarding width/precision (see doc/technotes/README.io)
added a performance notes file (PERFORMANCE)
removed the user agreement (AGREEMENT)
generally refreshed README-based documentation
general updates and improvements to the language specification

Example Codes

added new Chapel ports of several Computer Language Benchmark Games (CLBG) (see spectralnorm.chpl, mandelbrot.chpl, fannkuchredux.chpl, meteor.chpl, and pidigits.chpl in benchmarks/shootout/)
added an improved/simplified version of the CLBG chameneos-redux example (see benchmarks/shootout/chameneosredux.chpl)
improved the release versions of RA to use atomic rather than sync vars
made the examples/programs/tree.chpl example reclaim its memory
made minor improvements to the MiniMD example and primer examples
fixed a few incorrect statements in comments within primers/syncsingle.chpl

Cray-specific Notes

changed Cray XC Systems(TM) to use GASNet over the aries conduit by default
added a slurm-srun launcher for use with Cray systems supporting native SLURM

Launcher-specific Notes

added a slurm-srun launcher for use with native SLURM systems
improved the pbs-aprun launcher for use with Moab/Torque
made the gasnetrun_ibv launcher forward all CHPL_ environment variables
made the 'aprun' launcher more careful about when it can correctly use '-j'

Portability of code base

improved code base's portability to newer versions of gcc
improved code base's portability to Darwin/Mac OS X and Debian 7.4
improved code base's portability for compilation with 'clang'
enabled 'tcmalloc' to be built on Cray XC systems

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

removed the --serial and --serial-forall flags; use serial statements instead
started ignoring --static for Mac OS X since it isn't well-supported
added a --print-passes-file flag to print passes to a specified filename

Error Message Improvements

changed the wording of internal errors for succinctness

Performance Improvements

implemented atomic variables using intrinsics for Intel and Cray compilers
optimized whole-array binary read/write operations for default domains/arrays
extended global constant replication to additional types
improved the compiler's ability to remote value forward values
optimized away sublocale-related code for the 'flat' locale model
improved 'numa' locale model performance for --local compilations)
optimized blocking on sync variables for 'fifo' tasking based on # of tasks
within serial sections, optimized forall loops over ranges, domains, arrays
improved the task accounting for loops over Block-distributed arrays
improved the loop-invariant code motion optimization's use of alias analysis
removed unnecessary copies for formal arguments
optimized program startup times in several ways

Locale Model Improvements

improved the 'numa' locale model to reduce unnecessary changes in sublocale
improved the 'numa' locale model's range, domain, and array iterators

Memory Improvements

reduced compiler-introduced memory leaks, particularly in I/O code
reduced memory usage due to compiler-introduced copies on primitive types
improved the reclamation of arrays of sync/single variables
moved the end-of-program memory reporting to a point after the runtime exits

Third-Party Software Changes

updated GASNet to version 1.22.0 with a patch to fix 'aries' conduit bugs
added a snapshot of hwloc version 1.7.2 for compute node introspection
added a snapshot of re2 (20140111) to the third-party directory
added a snapshot of dygraphs to the third-party directory for perf graphs
updated our snapshot of GMP to version 6.0.0
various minor improvements to the Qthreads tasking layer
disabled pshm for all non-udp GASNet conduits

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

improved const-ness checking for const fields and const records/unions
added a semantic check for tuple size mismatch when destructuring a tuple
fixed a bug in which [u]int & imag literals were represented incorrectly
fixed a bug where iterators with complex control flow could yield bad values
fixed a bug in which timer.clear() did not reset the timer if it was running
fixed a bug in which abs() on reals incorrectly called the complex version
fixed a bug in converting between Chapel and C strings
fixed a bug in which casts from ints/uints to bools were not always correct
fixed some problems with the GMP random number routines
fixed a bug on Cygwin for usernames with spaces in them
extended global constant replication to additional types
fixed a "read after freed" bug on domains used in nonblocking on calls
fixed bug in loop invariant code motion related to aliasing in records/tuples
fixed a subtle/minor race condition regarding accounting of tasks
fixed Qthreads tasking layer bug resulting incorrect task placement
fixed a bug in which Qthreads was asked for task-local storage prematurely
fixed a potential race in task reporting (-t/--taskreport)
fixed an optimization shortcut for array reindexing
fixed a bug in which while loops warned about testing against local consts
improved 'printchplenv' to avoid perl problems in unexpected cases

Runtime Library Changes

improved the symmetry of program startup and polling across the locales
improved descriptions of the runtime communication interface in chpl-comm.h
simplified the implementation of the registry of global variables
added ability for fifo tasks to implement thread-level storage using __thread

Generated Code Cleanups

simplified the implementation of operations on homogeneous tuples
removed the passing of wide strings by ref by default
squashed the code generation of an unused program initialization function
squashed redundant calls to initialize the ChapelStandard module
folded out tautological comparisons between uints and 0s (e.g., myuint >= 0)

Compiler Performance

short-circuited the beautify pass if --savec is not specified
short-circuited some logic in the parallel pass for --local compiles

Compiler Improvements

significantly improved the stability/generality of the LLVM back-end
re-implemented copy propagation to handle aliases better
made de-nested functions use 'const' arguments in more cases

Testing System

added the ability to run multiple trials of each test to the testing system
added support for sweeping current performance tests across past releases
added the ability to track compiler performance during testing
added a regexp-based correctness check capability for performance tests
changed performance testing to support --fast by default
added a script to splice .dat files created by performance testing
permit SLURM to control the node list for parallel testing
replaced 'paratest.server's -duplex flag with -nodepara for oversubscription
added a capability to add annotations to performance graphs
made performance testing compile with --static by default
in generating performance graphs, the previous directory is now removed
added a capability for the performance graphs to be rsync'd to SourceForge
added a logarithmic/linear toggle to the generated performance graphs
added a capability for the 'nightly' script to svn commit performance data
added additional print messages to 'nightly' to better describe progress
added a -retaintree option to 'nightly' to use the existing writable tree
added support for testing the '--fast' flag in the 'nightly' script
worked on making the testing system less Cray-centric in its design
made test scripts send mail to the sourceforge mailing lists by default
added options for naming test suites, specifying recipients, etc.
unified the naming and structure of the cron job testing scripts
removed reliance on tcsh-specific features for improved csh portability

Makefile Changes

made all builds update Makefile dependences, not just developer builds
made Makefiles propagate CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS to third-party builds

Internal/Developer-oriented

added dataPar* arguments to these() iterators for ranges/default rectangular
made Block's leader iterator forward to DefaultRectangular
made sure that arguments to exported functions are always local/narrow
changed most assignment operator signatures to take the LHS by 'ref'
added support for a "minimal modules" compilation mode for core language work
added a developer flag --report-optimized-loop-iterators to track loop opts
made internal errors appear as such in developer mode
refactored the reference count code for domain maps, domains, and arrays
switched to a symbolic initializer for locale IDs to improve flexibility
refactored QIO and Regexp reference counting
deprecated the internal InitPrivateGlobals module
added config params to support program startup communication diagnostics (see 'printInitVerboseComm' and 'printInitCommCounts')
added a verification pass to ensure ref types for return types are available
renamed NUM_KIND_FLOAT to NUM_KIND_REAL
renamed 'Class'->'Aggregate' in the compiler sources when record|class|union
switched to a bulk copy of flags when copying Symbol classes
changed the representation of intents to support bitmasks
moved the initialization of memory tracking from the modules to the runtime
removed user-level memory leaks from example codes in the language spec
created FLAG_COMPILER_GENERATED to separate functions/labels from FLAG_TEMP
added PRIM_IS_ATOMIC_TYPE to query whether something is an atomic type
added new primitives for querying whether a type is a tuple, sync, or single
improved the internal use cases of 'printchplenv'
removed redundant overloads of ==/!= for syserr and err_t
improved the implementation when 'noRefCount' is true
removed no-longer-necessary _ensure_reference_type() feature
changed extern routines that take string arguments to take 'c_string' instead
changed extern routines that take 'inout' arguments to 'ref' when appropriate
numerous refactorings of the compiler code for clarity and/or efficiency

============= version 1.8.0

Eleventh public release of Chapel, October 17, 2013

Highlights (see entries in subsequent categories for details)

added initial support for user-defined locale models and a NUMA locale model
added initial support for accessing HDFS file systems via files/channels
improved tasking semantics w.r.t. references to variables from outer scopes
added new example codes for MiniMD and the Computer Language Benchmark Game
performance optimizations related to array base pointers, loop-invariant code
removed a number of compiler-generated memory leaks
added new types for interoperating with C: c_string, c_ptr(type), c_void_ptr
improved support for small-int computations, ranges, domains, and arrays
support for dygraph-based performance monitoring in the testing system
updates to the GASNet, Qthreads, MassiveThreads, LLVM, and CLANG packages
added a new 'cray-cs' platform to represent Cray Cluster Supercomputers
made 'gemini' the default GASNet conduit for 'cray-xe' and 'cray-xk'
added support for a SLURM + GASNet-over-Infiniband launcher

New Features

added initial support for specifying locale models ('hierarchical locales') (see doc/technotes/README.localeModels)
added support for a prototype NUMA locale model (see doc/technotes/README.localeModels)
added initial support for accessing HDFS file systems via files/channels (see doc/technotes/README.hdfs)
added new 'const in' and 'const ref' argument intents (see the 'Argument Intents' section in the language specification)
added built-in config params for all CHPL_* environment settings

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

improved tasking semantics w.r.t. references to variables from outer scopes (e.g., in 'var x=0; begin { ...x... }', 'x' is a const copy within the task) (see 'Task Intents' section in the language specification)
added 'ref' clauses to obtain the previous reference tasking semantics (e.g., 'var x: int; begin ref(x) { ...x... }' causes '...x...' to refer to x) (see 'Task Intents' section in the language specification)
made blank intents for atomic variables get interpreted as 'ref' (see the 'Argument Intents' section in the language specification)
added support for ranges, domains/arrays with small-int index types (e.g., 'range(int(8))' is now a supported type)
added operator support for pairs of small int/uint types (e.g., 'int(8) + int(8)' now generates an int(8) rather than int(32))
added operator support for homogeneous tuple/scalar pairs (e.g., (1,2,3) + 1 => (2,3,4))
extended the member() method on domains to support varargs as well as tuples (e.g., 'var D = {1..n, 1..n};' supports 'D.member(i,j)' and 'D.member((i,j))')
the compiler now only creates '==' operators for matching record types
made 'bool' types prefer dispatching to 'int' args over smaller-int options (e.g., foo(true) will prefer to dispatch to foo(x:int) over foo(x:int(8)))

New Interoperability Features

added support for 'c_ptr(type)' and 'c_void_ptr' to refer to local C pointers (see doc/technotes/README.extern)
added support for a 'c_string' type to refer to local C char* pointers (see doc/technotes/README.extern)

Deprecated Features

removed experimental GPU work to prepare for a revised approach to GPU support
removed the callStackSize() query from the locale type
removed certain config consts to control runtime arguments (see "Flags on Generated Executables" section below)

Standard Modules

added a new 'UtilReplicatedVar.chpl' standard module for replicated variables
new 'HDFSiterator' and 'RecordParser' modules to help with parsing HDFS files

Documentation

added a new README to describe the new locale model concept and NUMA model (see doc/technotes/README.localeModels)
added a new README.hdfs file to describe HDFS file system access in Chapel (see doc/technotes/README.hdfs)
made significant improvements to the README.cray file (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
refreshed the 'chpl' man page, particularly the SYNOPSIS/ENVIRONMENT sections
refreshed the Chapel Quick Reference document
major updates to the 'Task Parallelism' section of the spec for task intents
made minor updates to several chapters in the language specification
updated README.chplenv to reflect new CHPL_* environment variables
minor updates to various README files

Example Codes

added an initial port of the Mantevo MiniMD miniapp to Chapel (see examples/benchmarks/miniMD)
added Chapel ports of four codes from the Computer Language Benchmark Game (see examples/benchmarks/shootout)
fixed a bug in the atomics.chpl primer example
cleaned up the beer.chpl example

Cray-specific Notes

added a new 'cray-cs' platform to represent Cray Cluster Supercomputers (CS) (see doc/platforms/README.cray for more information)
made 'gasnet' the default CHPL_COMM setting for all Cray platforms
made 'gemini' the default GASNet conduit for 'cray-xe' and 'cray-xk' platforms (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
added support for the GASNet 'aries' conduit for the 'cray-xc' platform (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
made 'aprun' the default launcher for 'cray-x*' systems when available
removed support for the 'xmt', 'x1', and 'x2' platforms and related features
generated warning messages on cray-x* systems when no PrgEnv is loaded
removed -target=linux flag from cray-prgenv-* compiler options

Launcher-specific Notes

added support for a SLURM + GASNet-over-Infiniband launcher (see 'slurm-gasnetrun_ibv' in doc/README.launcher)
made the aprun-based launchers use the system's default number of CPUs
brought the pbs launchers up-to-date with the current NCCS wrapper of qsub

Portability of code base

worked around a PGI portability issue with C structs in the generated code

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

added --[no-]warn-const-loops to control warnings about loops over constants
added --[no-]loop-invariant-code-motion to enable/disable that optimization
added --[no-]llvm-wide-opt to enable/disable LLVM wide pointer optimizations
added warnings to '--[no-]serial' indicating its likely deprecation

Flags on Generated Executables

replaced flags that govern runtime behavior with environment variables: callStackSize -> CHPL_RT_CALL_STACK_SIZE commConcurrency -> CHPL_RT_COMM_CONCURRENCY numHardwareThreads -> CHPL_RT_NUM_HARDWARE_THREADS numThreadsPerLocale -> CHPL_RT_NUM_THREADS_PER_LOCALE

Error Message Improvements

improved const checking for actuals passed to out/inout/const ref/ref intents
improved error messages for programs with bad type resolution cycles
added a warning for while loops over constants
errors for assignments to non-lvalues no longer halt compilation immediately

Performance Improvements

improved performance of local arrays by storing a shifted base pointer
added a loop-invariant code motion optimization
passed more things by value ('this', array/domain/domain map wrappers)
made some improvements to the bulk copy optimization

Memory Leak Improvements

reduced memory leaked by strings by sharing them more aggressively
improved support for destroying more automatic variables as they leave scope
fixed a memory leak relating to inlining of iterators
plugged memory leaks related to file types
freed temporary buffers used for formatted I/O on complex values

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed bugs in extern blocks containing #define's
fixed a bug when reading string literals that began with whitespace
fixed a bug in which whitespace was written to binary files for array output
fixed bugs related to writef() for complex values
fixed size mismatches in IO code for 32-bit linux systems
fixed a bug in the compareExchange implementation for atomic reals
fixed bugs in Regexp convenience functions and the naming of string.split()
fixed some bugs in BigInt functions in the GMP module
fixed a bug in which AdvancedIterators would serialize if #chunks < #tasks
fixed a bug related to 'ref' intents and the fast segment for GASNet
fixed a bug related to using --make on the chpl command line
bug fix for lost updates to fields of 'this' in certain scenarios
fixed dead code elimination for blocks that are their own sole in-arc

Third-Party Software Changes

updated to GASNet version 1.20.2 which improves the Cray native conduits
updated to Qthreads version 1.10 and turned on support for stack overflow (see reference to QT_GUARD_PAGES in doc/README.tasks for more information)
updated to MassiveThreads version 0.95 with support for task-private data
updated the LLVM back-end to use version 3.3 and packaged it with the release
packaged CLANG 3.3 with the release rather than requiring a separate download

Runtime Library Changes

made several interface changes to support locale models/hierarchical locales

Generated Code Cleanups

declared non-exported symbols 'static' in generated code
added support for targeting 'op=' operators in the back-end
removed chains of unnecessary autocopy/autodestroy calls

Compiler Performance

disabled compiler internal verification by default to improve compile time

LLVM Back-end Changes

added wide pointer support for the LLVM back-end via CHPL_WIDE_POINTERS (see doc/technotes/README.llvm and doc/README.chplenv)
added support for LLVM-based communication optimizations via --llvm-wide-opt (see doc/technotes/README.llvm)

Testing System

changed performance graphing to use dygraphs
added support for filing .bad files against futures to track behavior changes
added support for setting environment variables on a per-test/-directory basis
added the ability to use an external 'time -p' command for performance tests
added directory-level PERFCOMPOPTS/PERFEXECOPTS files
added a timeout feature for performance testing (separate from correctness)
fixed a bug in which spec tests weren't being generated correctly
added the capability for the test directory to clean itself up more thoroughly

Makefile Changes

changed the naming scheme for intermediate object file directories
added a 'cleanall' target between 'clean' and 'clobber' (see README.building)
made the 'clean' and 'cleanall' targets preserve a working installation
accelerated the Makefile framework, particularly for no-op re-builds
made the Makefiles smarter about rebuilding the compiler when necessary

Internal/Developer-oriented

added a new 'createTaskFunctions' pass that creates functions defining tasks
added a new 'resolveIntents' pass which resolves 'blank' and 'const' intents
added a per-pass consistency/verification framework
added a --verify compiler flag for running optional verification steps
added an --ignore-errors-for-pass compiler flag for developers
added a compiler analysis to compute dominators
fixed a bug in isDefAndOrUse() for op= primitives
rearchitected the QIO framework to support multiple file systems
refactored the memory interface to better separate checking/tracking concerns
switched to using 'ref' intents rather than 'inout' for I/O routines
added "atomic type" flag for identifying atomic types to the compiler
added "donor" function concept, making the callee responsible for deletion
added "runtime type init fn" pragma to clarify overloaded "has runtime type"
fixed a bug in which 'begin's in internal modules broke compilation
restructured iterators so that not all yields would share the same variable
improved cases where filename/line numbers aren't set correctly
continued transition toward STL collections within the compiler
added new capabilities to the bit vector class
removed several instances of strcpy()s in the compiler
added a functional interface for invoking remote functions by ID
restructured #includes to avoid reliance on compiler-specific search policies
added new features for debugging the compiler

Changes In Support of Hierarchical Locales

made ranges and default rectangular domains/arrays use sublocales, if present
made on-clauses get invoked through locale model module code in Chapel
moved optimization of local on-clauses from the compiler to locale model code
made task invocation flow through locale model module code written in Chapel
mapped the tasking interface's support for hierarchical locales to Qthreads
made hierarchical locale model compilations use wide pointers and on-clauses

============= version 1.7.0

Tenth public release of Chapel, April 18, 2013

Highlights (see entries in subsequent categories for details)

added support for regular expression operations on strings and channels
added support for readf()/writef() routines for formatted I/O
added support for injecting C declarations into Chapel via "extern blocks"
added support for associative domain/array literals
added a capability for main() to take arguments and return a status value
added support for iteration over homogeneous tuples
performance improvements related to stack-allocated and constant variables
improved bulk transfer optimization (use -s useBulkTransferStride to enable)
significant improvements to the Chapel version of LULESH
enabled GMP using the system-installed version on Cray platforms by default
switched to using processor atomics for reference counting on Cray systems
numerous bug fixes and improvements to semantic checks and error messages

Environment Changes

renamed the platform 'cray-cascade' to 'cray-xc'
renamed the platforms 'xmt'/'xmt-sim' to 'cray-xmt'/'cray-xmt-sim'
enabled GMP support by default if it is already built in the third-party dir

Syntactic/Naming Changes

added support for associative domain/array literals (e.g., {"red", "blue"} is an associative domain of strings) (e.g., ["red" => 0, "blue => 1] is an assoc. array from strings to ints)

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

added support for injecting C declarations into Chapel via "extern blocks" (see "Support for Extern Blocks" section of doc/technotes/README.extern)
added support for iteration over homogeneous tuples (see "Tuples" section of the Chapel spec)
added a capability for main() to take arguments and return a status value (see doc/technotes/README.main)
added a 'requestCapacity()' capability to pre-size associative domains (see "Domains:Predefined Functions" section of the Chapel spec)
added a warning() routine to generate warnings, similar to halt(), assert() (see "Standard Modules" section of the Chapel spec)

Newly Implemented Features

added support for the .localSlice() method to take a domain argument (e.g., A.localSlice({loRow..hiRow, loCol..hiCol}))

Deprecated Features

removed the tuple() function (i.e., instead of tuple(x) or tuple(x,y,z), use (x,) or (x,y,z) instead)
deprecated warning for old-style domain literals by default (i.e., [1..m, 1..n] is an array of ranges; re-enable w/ --warn-domain-literal)

Standard Modules

added support for regular expression operations on strings and channels (see doc/technotes/README.regexp for details)
added support for readf()/writef() routines for formatted I/O (see doc/technotes/README.formattedIO for details)
refactored communication diagnostics into its own module (CommDiagnostics) (see doc/technotes/README.comm-diagnostics for documentation)
added isDomainType(type t)/isArrayType(type t)/isRecordType(type t) queries

Documentation

added README.formattedIO to describe support for writef()/readf() routines (see doc/technotes/README.formattedIO)
added README.regexp to describe support for regular expression operations (see doc/technotes/README.regexp)
added README.main to describe support for arguments/return values for main() (see doc/technotes/README.main)
updated README.extern to describe C type aliases and extern blocks
changed READMEs that used csh-style syntax to use bash-style consistently
fixed a semantic typo in README.atomics
minor updates and fixes to various chapters in the language specification
minor updates to several READMEs

Example Codes

improvements to the Chapel implementation of LULESH (see examples/benchmarks/lulesh/ for more details)
- configuration improvements (see README for details):
  - added ability to compute the cube input set rather than reading from disk
  - support for 3D vs. 1D representations via 'use3DRepresentation'
  - support sparse vs. dense material representations via --sparseMaterials
  - added a --maxcycles config that can be used to stop the computation early
  - converted 'dtfixed' into a config const
  - added a per-iteration timing when doTiming and showProgress are enabled
- code improvements:
  - refactored setup code into a helper module: luleshInit.chpl
  - changed the representation of nodesets to use a sparse subdomain
  - switched to using 'ref' intents rather than 'in' or 'inout'
  - converted vars to consts where appropriate
  - general code cleanup
- performance improvements:
  - improved performance by avoiding an unnecessary reindexing operation
  - made some unnecessarily serial loops parallel
  - replaced error-oriented reductions with forall loops + halt
  - param-unrolled the loop in localizeNeighborNodes() for performance reasons
  - removed a redundant zero-initialization of an array
- documentation improvements:
  - updated README to document new configuration options
  - added the LULESH callgraph to the README
improved the Chapel implementation of RA:
- added the ability to use an LCG random number generator via 'useLCG'
- added a config const 'verify' that permits verification to be skipped
fixed a typo in HPL that inflated the calculated GFLOPs by 10x
improvements to the Chapel implementation of SSCA2:
- fixed a bug in the torus representation
- fixed a bug with VALIDATE_BC=true

Platform-specific Notes

enabled GMP using the system-installed version on cray-x* platforms by default

Portability of code base

fixed an issue related to vsnprintf on OS X Lion
fixed an assumption that platforms defining INT8_MIN will also define INT*_MIN

Launcher-specific Notes

improved use of cnselect in launchers that use 'aprun'

Compiler Flags

added --no- variants of the following compiler flags: --count-tokens, --llvm, --print-code-size, --print-commands, --print-passes, --print-search-dirs,
added --[no-]warn-tuple-iteration to warn against old-style zipper iteration (see man page for details)
added --[no-]warn-special as a meta-flag for all old-style syntax uses (see man page for details)
improved support for environment variable setting of '--no-'style flags (see man page for details)

Error Message Improvements

improved type mismatch error messages when assigning scalars to arrays
added an error for extern functions with formal arguments of array type
made Ctrl-C and the like result in a user, rather than internal, error
added an error for associative domains with unsupported index types

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed a bug in which sizeof() had leaked into the user namespace in v1.6
fixed a regression in v1.6 in which type aliases of arrays were broken
fixed a bug in which 0-element arrays of arrays would free domains prematurely
fixed a bug related to writing out instances of the RandomStream class
I/O bug fixes:
- QIO_HINT_PARALLEL now works for new/zero length files
- fixed bugs related to bit-oriented reads and writes
- fixed a bug w.r.t. EOF and preemptive mmap
- fixed portability bug related to Intel compilers
- changed channels so that once EOF is hit, it will never read further
- fixed issues related to ssize_t/int(64) mismatches on 32-bit platforms
- fixed an issue related to reading empty strings
fixed some bugs in the implementation of atomic variables
fixed a bug in which AdvancedIters didn't default 'numTasks' as documented
improved shape checking for array assignment
restricted reshape() to be applied for rectangular domains only
restricted reshape() to only work when the source and destination sizes match
improved support for Cyclic distributions of idxType uint(64)
fixed INFINITY and NAN to be of type 'real' rather than 'real(32)'
fixed a bug with '/*/' within a nested comment
fixed a bug in which uses of ** would dispatch to a user's pow() overload
fixed a few bugs in the Buffers.chpl module
fixed a bug in which memory leak tracking would mislabel some allocations
fixed a bug with recursive iterator inlining
fixed a bug in broadcasting large values at program startup

Packaging Changes

added Chapel mode support for emacs version 23.x (see etc/emacs/README)

Performance Improvements

switched to using processor atomics for reference counting on Cray systems
improved bulk transfer optimization (use -s useBulkTransferStride to enable)
put fewer variables on the heap in the presence of nested functions
enabled remote value forwarding for more constants/arguments than before
made atomic variables use compiler intrinsics for cray-prgenv-intel
made associative domains of 'imag' indices more efficient

Runtime Library Changes

split chpl_task_begin() to distinguish between new tasks and migrating ones
improved the ability to build the Chapel runtime with a C++ compiler

Third-Party Software Changes

updated to version 1.20 of GASNet
updated to version 1.9 of Qthreads
made the LLVM checkout script grab version 3.2 to ensure compatibility
removed the nanox tasking layer due to lack of support/champion

Testing System

extended the 'skipif' capability to support the ability to skip a subdirectory
improved the robustness of start_test in cross-compiled environments
added support for .no-local.good files for --no-local-specific test output
fixed a bug in which the test system looked at incorrect .future files
removed artificial limiting of stacksize in start_test
refactored test system environment setup into util/test/testEnv
made the test system use $cwd rather than 'pwd'
made 'nightly' compopts/execopts get added to end of the command line
made 'nightly' support a --no-futures option

Internal/Developer-oriented

added some code that sets the groundwork for supporting hierarchical locales
fixed portability of bswap.h (for once and for all?)
restructured internal modules corresponding to specific runtime layers
removed uses of alloca()
removed PRIM_CHPL_ALLOC_PERMIT_ZERO
deprecated 'make depend' and made use of gcc -MMD/-MP instead
made 'rm -rf' commands a little safer in Makefile clean/clobber rules
refactored Makefiles for Cray systems/compilers to avoid repetition
added a map_view() function for printing out SymbolMaps
removed some dead and possibly incorrect methods from Map and Vec classes
refactored _cast functions for booleans
made the _isPrimitiveType test more concise
improved the mechanism by which line numbers are assigned to AST nodes
factored sync/single out of ChapelBase.chpl and into ChapelSyncvar.chpl
fixed the --gen-extern-prototypes flag
improved the correspondence of FLAG_* and string forms of AST flags
improved the correspondence of PRIM_* and string forms of primitives
refactored chplrt.h
added initial support for a .localAccess accessor to Block/Default arrays
renamed compiler-generated types for classes in generated code
refactored QIO code in the runtime
converted macros in the compiler to inline functions for sanity/performance
cleaned up the functions that build array/domain literals
refactored and commented lowerIterators.cpp
keep dtObject alive even if unused after function resolution
added EOF to the list of reserved symbol names
protected some C identifiers introduced by PGI when compiling with -Kieee

============= version 1.6.0

Ninth public release of Chapel, October 18, 2012

Highlights (see entries in subsequent categories for details)

syntax improvements:
- added support for array literals using square brackets
- improved domain literals to use curly brackets to suggest set notation
- changed zippered iteration to use an explicit 'zip' keyword
improved atomic variables: new methods, support for floating point atomics
added support for 'ref' intents to support pass-by-reference arguments
added support for user overloads of 'op=' and '<=>' assignments
added a prototype of 'chpldoc', a code-based documentation feature
added support for using LLVM as a back-end compiler target rather than C
added support for a strided bulk communication optimization
numerous performance improvements and bug fixes
significant improvements to the SSCA2, RA, and LULESH example codes
added a new tasking runtime that uses U Tokyo's MassiveThreads library
network-based atomic variables for users of the Chapel module on Cray systems
improved support for the Tilera chip architecture

Environment Changes

made compiler infer CHPL_HOME if unset, or complain if mis-set
made util/setchplenv.* scripts more cleanly re-runnable
added new platforms: 'cray-cascade' and 'cray-xk' (see doc/platforms/README.cray)
renamed 'xe-cle' and 'xt-cle' to 'cray-xe' and 'cray-xt', respectively
renamed Cray PrgEnv compiler settings to be more platform-independent (e.g., 'cray-xe-cray'/'cray-xe-gnu' -> 'cray-prgenv-cray'/'cray-prgenv-gnu')
made CHPL_MEM default to 'tcmalloc' when CHPL_COMM is 'ugni'
made CHPL_ATOMICS default to 'intrinsics' for CHPL_TARGET_COMPILER=PrgEnv-gnu

Syntactic/Naming Changes

changed domain literals to use curly brackets rather than square brackets (e.g., '[1..n, 1..n]' would now be written '{1..n, 1..n}')
introduced array literals using square brackets (e.g., '[3, 5, 7, 11]' describes an array of type '[1..4] int')
added a 'zip' keyword to express zippered iterations rather than using tuples (e.g., 'for (a,b) in (A,B)' is now written 'for (a,b) in zip(A,B)')
added a bidirectional I/O operator (<~~>) for reading from/writing to channels (e.g., 'myChannel <~~> myStr;' will read/write 'myStr' from/to 'myChannel')
added support for creating one-tuples using the syntax (x,) (e.g., '(1.0,)' describes a tuple of type '1*real')
re-established the underscore as the means of ignoring a tuple component (e.g., '(x,,z)' would now be written '(x,_,z)')

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

added support for 'ref' intents, supporting pass-by-reference arguments (e.g., 'proc foo(ref x: int) ...' passes an int arg to 'foo' by reference)
improved support for atomic variables
- added support for floating point atomic types (e.g., 'var x:atomic real;')
- added waitFor(val) method (e.g., 'x.waitFor(1.0)' would wait for x to hold the value 1.0)
- added non-fetching variations of operations to avoid excess communication (e.g., 'x.add(1)' is like 'x.fetchAdd(1)' but doesn't return a value)
- added compareExchange() method as a shorthand for compareExchangeStrong()
added support for user-defined overloads of '<=>' and 'op=' assignments (e.g., 'proc <=>(ref x: t, ref y: t) ...' or 'proc +=(ref lhs:t, rhs:t) ...')
added a '.size' method to arrays, domains, strings, and ranges
made enum types behave more similarly to param ints (or collections thereof)
removed certain expression forms as being valid types or standalone stmts

Newly Implemented Features

added a prototype implementation of a code-based documentation feature (see doc/technotes/README.chpldoc)
added an LLVM-based back-end (see doc/technotes/README.llvm)
added support for degenerate reindexing of non-rectangular arrays

Deprecated Features

removed the '_extern' keyword; use 'extern' instead
removed the ability to use blanks to drop tuple components -- use '_' instead

Standard Modules

made Dimensional Block Cyclic distributions support non-default index types
added HeapSort() to the standard Sort module
added the ability to clear() timers without stopping them

Documentation

added README.llvm to describe new LLVM back-end option (see doc/technotes/README.llvm)
added README.chpldoc to describe new chpldoc documentation option (see doc/technotes/README.chpldoc)
updated README.atomics to describe new capabilities for atomic variables
added doc/platforms/README.tilera to describe using Chapel with Tilera chips
noted that Python and bc are now required features to build Chapel (see doc/README.prereqs and doc/platforms/README.cygwin)
updated README.extern to utilize 'ref' intents rather than 'inout'
updated language specification to describe new features and syntax changes
minor updates and fixes to several chapters of the language specification
updated the Quick Reference to illustrate new syntax, features
improved command-line help for -d option
minor updates to several READMEs

Example Codes

extensive revisions to SSCA#2 including:
- extensive performance and memory improvements
- improved ability to 'make' with different options from the command line
- changed the neighbor list representation to use 1D arrays of 2-tuples
- added ability to read/write graphs from/to files in setting up
- added support for distributed/parallel graph construction
- fixed a bug in the TEPs computation when starting from a subset of vertices
- added the ability to skip various kernels via configs
- optimized and fixed a bug in the generation of filtered edge lists
- converted uses of sync variables to atomic variables
improvements to RA:
- extended ra.chpl to use either on-clauses or direct array accesses
- made verification updates lossless using synchronization variables (see examples/benchmarks/hpcc/ra.chpl)
- added a lossless version of RA that uses atomic variables (see examples/benchmarks/hpcc/ra-atomics.chpl)
improvements to LULESH
- replaced 'sync' variables with 'atomic's
- converted a global array into tuples to minimize communication
- general code cleanup improvements
examples/primer/ updates:
- added a new primer to demonstrate the --docs/chpldoc capability (see examples/primers/chpldoc.chpl)
- updated atomic_vars.chpl primer to reflect recent changes
- updated arrays.chpl primer to reflect array literal syntax
updated all examples to reflect syntax changes

Platform-specific Notes

improved support for the Tilera chip architecture (see doc/platforms/README.tilera)
added support for Cray Gemini- and Aries-based atomics to the ugni comm layer (see doc/platforms/README.cray)

Launcher-specific Notes

improved error handling of failed forked processes
for aprun-based launchers:
- made '-cc none' the default mode used
- added -j option to aprun (for supported versions)
for the pbs-aprun launcher:
- fixed a timing bug
- added a flag --generate-qsub-script

Compiler Flags

added --docs and related flags for generating documentation for Chapel code (see doc/technotes/README.chpldoc)
added a --gen-extern-prototypes flag to cross-verify extern prototypes
added an --llvm flag for targeting LLVM as the back-end compiler (see doc/technotes/README.llvm)

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed a bug with type-inferred module-level domains/arrays
fixed a bug relating to strings on distributed memory 32-bit platforms
improved support for uint idxTypes in domains and arrays
improved the ability to use user-defined constructors in derived classes
fixed a bug in which the block-cyclic distribution didn't support 1D domains
fixed several bugs in I/O:
- one related to using stdin on Mac OS X
- one related to bitwise writing
- one related to writing to/reading from a Writer/Reader from a remote locale
- one related to issues on Cygwin
fixed a bug in which classes were improperly considered unused and removed
fixed a bug in tcmalloc when computing reallocation growth and shrinkage

Packaging Changes

simplified the etc/emacs/ directory organization to avoid duplication (emacs users may need to update their .emacs settings -- see etc/emacs/README)
added a 'chpldoc' alias to the 'chpl' compiler to just generate documentation
added setchplenv.fish to the release (intended for 1.5.0, but mis-packaged)
made the subdirectories used to store object files more unique

Performance Improvements

added a strided bulk communication optimization, disabled by default (to enable, compile with -s useBulkTransferStride)
replaced internal sync var counters with atomics when appropriate
made initialization of remote array access caches lazy to reduce setup time
removed a level of pointer indirection in the implementation of array data
reduced the runtime cost of creating array aliases
optimized reindexing for the case when the original and new domains match
optimized the performance of equality/inequality on identical domains
made most associative domain/array ops to occur on the owning locale
enabled remote-value forwarding of array descriptors in the presence of syncs

Runtime Library Changes

added support for MassiveThreads-based tasking (courtesy U Tokyo) (see doc/README.tasks)
added the ability to implement atomic variables using network-based AMOs
made counters used for communication diagnostics 64 bits to avoid overflow
turned off the cooperative comm/task non-blocking get interface for GASNet

Third-Party Software Changes

updated Qthreads to version 1.8
updated GASNet to version 1.18.2
added MassiveThreads 0.3beta to the third-party directory
added a directory to download creoleparser into for use with chpldoc (see doc/technotes/README.chpldoc)

Testing System

reordered the order in which execution options are passed to tests (see #comments at top of start_test for details)
added a 'lastexecopts' capability to require an execution option to come last
improved the 'timedexec' script to kill the child's process group

Internal/Developer-oriented

significantly refactored the code generation pass
began the process of replacing homegrown ADTs with STL classes
removed pragma "inline" (use 'inline' keyword instead)
renamed some primitives: 'get ref' -> 'deref' and 'set ref' -> 'addr of'
fixed type-punned pointers in comm-gasnet.c
fixed a case of deleting global type symbols prematurely
fixed a use-before-def warning for default-initialized vars of extern type
added consistency checking to basic block analysis
made use of BLOCK_TYPE tag more consistent
reduced reliance on primitives and locale internals in standard modules

============= version 1.5.0

Eighth public release of Chapel, April 19, 2012

Highlights (see entries in subsequent categories for details)

completely revamped and improved Chapel's I/O features
added support for atomic bool/int/uint variables to Chapel
added a version of the LLNL/DARPA LULESH benchmark
improved GMP support for integer types
added an initial implementation of a 2D Dimensional distribution
added Cray XE (TM)-specific tasking/thread/communication layers for the Cray XE module (binary only)
updated GASNet from 1.16.2 to 1.18.0 which includes initial ugni support
made integers default to 64-bits in most contexts rather than the previous 32-bits
numerous performance improvements, bug fixes, and documentation improvements

Environment Changes

added support for fish shell users (http://fishshell.com) (see $CHPL_HOME/README and $CHPL_HOME/util/setchplenv.fish)

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

completely revamped and improved Chapel's I/O features (see examples/primers/fileIO.chpl, doc/technotes/README.io, I/O spec chapter)
added support for atomic bool/int/uint variables to Chapel (see doc/technotes/README.atomics, examples/primers/atomics.chpl)
added support for /* ... /-style comments to be nested (e.g., / in comment! /* in nested comment! */ still in comment! */)
made integers default to 64-bits in most contexts rather than the previous 32-bits
- integer literals are now of type int(64)/uint(64) by default
- the default 'int'/'uint' types now correspond to int(64)/uint(64)
- the default idxType for ranges, domains, and arrays is now int(64)
- a number of locale-oriented capabilities now use/return 64-bit ints:
  - numLocales, LocaleSpace, locale.id
  - locale.numCores, locale.callStackSize
  - numThreadsPerLocale, maxThreadsPerLocale
  - locale.*Threads(), locale.*tasks()
the 'by' and '#' operators now accept int(w)/uint(w) args for w-bit idxTypes
param arguments now play a role in disambiguation between function overloads (see the 'Function Resolution' section in the Chapel language specification)

Newly Implemented Features

added an initial implementation of a 2D Dimensional distribution (see examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
added support for reading arrays, domains, ranges, and tuples (e.g., var A:[1..10] real; read(A); )
added support for an iterator's arguments to have intents
added a new getCommDiagnosticsHere() routine for querying local communications (see doc/technotes/README.comm-diagnostics)

Deprecated Features

removed support for tensor iteration from the Chapel compiler (e.g., 'forall (i,j) in [foo(), bar()]' no longer supported; use nested loop)
removed volatile types in favor of atomic types
removed the ability to use 'def' to define functions; use 'proc' or 'iter' now

Standard Modules

improved GMP support for integer types (see doc/technotes/README.gmp)
changed sgn() in Math.chpl to return an int(8)/uint(8)

Documentation

major updates to the I/O chapter of the spec to reflect new capabilities
added a new technical note describing support for atomic types (doc/technotes/README.atomics)
revamped technical notes for I/O and GMP to reflect revamped features (doc/technotes/README.io, doc/technotes/README.gmp)
minor updates to several other chapters of the language specification
minor fixes and updates to several READMEs

Example Codes

added a version of the LLNL/DARPA LULESH benchmark (see examples/benchmarks/lulesh/README)
numerous updates to the Chapel version of SSCA#2
- store visited children in forward pass to avoid recomputing in backwards
- use hand-coded task-private variables to store private variables
- replaced arrays of sync vars with arrays of atomics in most instances
- fixed a number of on-clauses that referred to a poor choice of locale (see examples/benchmarks/ssca2/README)
updated hpcc/hpl.chpl to use Dimensional distributions and replicated storage
moved ssca2 and hpcc examples into a new benchmarks/ subdirectory
fixed some bugs in hpcc/hpl.chpl
in ra.chpl, copied manual optimizations from timed loop into verification loop
updated the arrays.chpl primer to deprecate tensors and improve explanations

Platform-specific Notes

added Cray XE-specific tasking/thread/communication layers to the Cray XE module (available using 'module load chapel', see doc/platforms/README.xe-cle-system-specific-layers)
fixed GASNet executions on Mac OS X Lion
generated C identifier lengths are now capped to avoid PGI warnings

Compiler Flags

added --max-c-ident-len to cap the length of C identifiers in generated code

Error Message Improvements

in most contexts, the compiler now prints out a fully-specified type (e.g., where before it printed 'int', it now prints 'int(64)')
line number reporting has been improved in certain cases

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

added a compile-time error for incorrect domain slicing cases
fixed an issue in which users couldn't use 'this' as an identifier
fixed the ability to delete an object located on a remote locale
fixed a non-deterministic seg fault for parent classes with types/params only
fixed a race condition in the implementation of halt()
fixed an issue in which a .exe filename could not be specified using -o
the --explain-calls flag now properly displays 'param' intents as such
protected a user's ability to name variables j0, j1, jn, y0, yn

Performance Improvements

changed array/domain reference counting to use atomics rather than syncs
made Chapel allocation/free routines inline to reduce overheads
optimized local on-clauses to reduce overheads by avoiding chpl_comm_fork()
optimized bulk transfers for Block-distributed arrays that share a domain
optimized the creation of simple Block- and Cyclic- array aliases

Runtime Library Changes

no longer count communication threads against numThreadsPerLocale for pthreads
removed assumption that globals in generated code will have identical addrs
added support for keeping builds for multiple GASNet segments in one tree
moved most Chapel module initialization from main() to first task
simplified the tcmalloc memory layer to support use with GASNet
added dlmalloc support for communication layers other than GASNet-fast
broke GASNet AM_signal handler request/reply to use short messages
fixed a bug in which non-blocking gets could seg-fault
simplified the initialization and shutdown of the communication layer
fixed a potential race in broadcasts at program startup

Third-Party Software Changes

updated GASNet from 1.16.2 to 1.18.0 which includes initial ugni support
made third-party packages build automatically when needed by the runtime
updated Qthreads from version 1.7.0 to 1.7.1
added support for a UTF-8 decoder from Bjoern Hoehrmann for use in the new I/O
added support for Nanos++ tasking to yield when firing off an active message
added support for the 'serial' statement to Nanos++ tasking layer
turned off tcmalloc's tendency to print messages for large allocations

Testing System

added the ability for a skipif file to check for substrings in an env. var.
fixed several bugs in the testing system:
- when using named .good files in compopts files
- when using multiple compopts files and no execopts files
- in the generation of performance data filenames
condensed how compilation/execution options are identified in testing logs
added a --logtmp flag to start_test to support single-node parallelism

Internal/Developer-oriented

fixed an issue in which internal modules resulted in too many circularities
changed module initialization code so that modules initialize those they use
added a pragma to control implicit inclusion of ChapelStandard.chpl
added support for automatically mapping external C types to Chapel types
added the ability to dump the compiler IR using a text-file format
added filenames back into the BaseAST class to preserve info during inlining
added chpl__unsignedType(), chpl__maxIntTypeSameSign() utility functions
added a typeToString() overload to catch common error cases
removed debugWrite* capability
fixed a bug in the compiler's basic block analysis framework
made existing tests much less sensitive to ordering of output
added a --[no-]preserve-inlined-line-numbers flag to control inlining behavior
added a "no instantiation limit" pragma/flag to the compiler
added an isParameter() method to the ArgSymbol class
removed strcmps against types to normalize scalar type queries (e.g., int(?w))
made several refactorings to functionResolution.cpp
refactored common flag queries into helper query functions
refactored creation of wrapper functions
fixed get_int()/get_uint() to avoid reliance on underspecified C int sizes
made external classes less like Chapel classes within the Chapel compiler
cleaned up the memory tracking enums associated with the communication layer
removed chpl_error_noexit primitive
added code to trace through the disambiguation logic of function resolution
refactored Makefiles, replacing CHAPEL_ROOT with CHPL_MAKE_HOME
made third-party/*/Makefile rules more consistent

============= version 1.4.0

Seventh public release of Chapel, October 20, 2011

Highlights (see below for details)

added 'extern', 'export', and 'inline' keywords
new optimizations for whole-array assignments and remote array accesses
improved support for Qthreads and Nanos++ tasking, including multi-locale
added dynamic range iterators via an 'AdvancedIters' module
continued improving range semantics and implementation
added support for # operator on dense rectangular domains and arrays
made associative domain index modifications parallel-safe
added --static/--dynamic linking flags
improved communication diagnostics capabilities
new example codes: SSCA2; primers on sync vars, leader-follower iterators
updated documentation
many bug fixes

Syntactic/Naming Changes

renamed '_extern' keyword to 'extern'
renamed 'maxThreadsPerLocale' to 'numThreadsPerLocale' (see doc/README.tasks and doc/README.executing for new definitions)
made it illegal for a string literal to contain an unescaped newline
renamed dsiIndexLocale to dsiIndexToLocale in domain map standard interface (see doc/technotes/README.dsi)
reserved 'ref' as a keyword for future use
renamed 'iterator' enumeration to 'iterKind' for leader-follower iterators
renamed 'follower' argument to follower iterators 'followThis'

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

added 'export' keyword to support calling Chapel functions from C
added 'inline' keyword to force a function to be inlined
added support to # operator for dense rectangular domains and arrays
removed support for tensor iteration from the language definition
removed the realm concept from the language
ambiguous ranges are now == if their representations match
disabled promotion of the '..' operator

Newly Implemented Features

improved qthreads and nanox task layers to support multilocale execution (see doc/README.tasks)
adding and removing indices from associative domains is now parallel-safe
updated the communication diagnostics interface (see doc/technotes/README.comm-diagnostics)

Standard Modules

added an 'AdvancedIters' module with various dynamic scheduling algorithms
added floor/ceiling/mod functions for integers to 'Math' module
added new sorting routines to standard 'Sort' module
added a 'UtilMath' module with other integer ceiling/floor functions
added a param version of abs() for integers to 'Math' module

Documentation

spec updates:
- added a new chapter on 'Interoperability'
- refreshed 'Data Parallelism', 'Task Parallelism', and 'Conversions' chapters
- updated 'Ranges' chapter significantly
- minor updates to 'Domains', 'Arrays', and 'Classes' chapters
- split 'Memory Consistency Model' into its own chapter (still poorly defined)
- documented new Advanced Iterators and Sort routines in 'Standard Modules'
added documentation about the compiler's module search path to man page/technotes (see 'man chpl' and doc/technotes/README.module_search)
added note about parallel safety to doc/technotes/README.extern
generally refreshed README* and other text-based documentation files

Example Codes

added a(n in-progress) implementation of SSCA2 to the release examples (see examples/ssca2)
added a primer for sync and single variables (see examples/primers/syncsingle.chpl)
added a primer on leader-follower iterators (user-defined forall scheduling) (see examples/primers/leaderfollower.chpl)
added an example of creating a private locale view to distributions primer (see examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
improved the ranges primer (see examples/primers/ranges.chpl)
added a description of subdomains to the domains primer (see examples/primers/domains.chpl)
minor wordsmithing for the procedures primer (see examples/primers/procedures.chpl)

Platform-specific Notes

improved Makefile settings for IBM/AIX platforms and compilers

Feature Improvements

several improvements to the implementation of ranges (see 'Ranges' chapter of spec for details)
made casts-to-string produce the same string as write() does

Compiler Flags

added --static/--dynamic flags to specify how the binary should be linked

Interoperability Changes

made 'extern' a keyword; '_extern' is deprecated

Error Message Improvements

added a compiler warning for param functions with declared return types
improved a few other difficult compiler error messages

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed the result widths of complex math operations
improved parsing of escaped characters in string literals
deleting a record now generates an error
added a variety of bug fixes for range operations
fixed a bug with passing strings to external functions for --no-local cases
fixed a bug for var functions that returned nothing
fixed a bug related to terminating a CHPL_COMM=gasnet program early
fixed a bug in which ref temps were not inserted for virtual method calls
fixed a bug related to removing a label from the AST but not its goto
fixed bug with applying serial statement to optimized coforall+on loops
fixed bugs regarding single variables not being treated like sync
fixed a bug related to incorrect complaints about ambiguous module paths
fixed a bug related to followers accepting empty ranges
fixed a few reference-after-deallocation bugs in the compiler
fixed a bug related to flattening var functions multiple times

Packaging Changes

removed the second-level 'chapel/' directory that releases used to have
updated emacs/vim modes to bring syntax up-to-date
util/setchplenv.* scripts now permit $CHPL_HOME to be other than 'chapel'
added the util/ directory to PATH in the setchplenv.* scripts
improved make 'clean' and 'clobber' rules for third-party directories

Third-Party Software Changes

removed requirement to specify LD_LIBRARY_PATHs for qthreads and nanox tasks
updated to GASNet version 1.16.2 (see third-party/gasnet/README)
updated Qthreads to version 1.7 (see third-party/qthreads/README)
added tcmalloc version 1.7 (see third-party/tcmalloc/README)
updated dlmalloc to version 2.8.5

Runtime Library Changes

split the 'none' task layer into 'none' and 'minimal' (see doc/README.tasks)
added a tcmalloc-based memory layer to the runtime
improved program initialization order and sequence
made nanox/qthreads task layers use a #threads==#cores by default
increased the default callstack size for qthreads tasks
removed pthread calls from the gasnet communication layer
began process of unifying runtime file and directory names
standardized our threading layer interface
made tasking layers more robust to early calls during program setup
moved Chapel code in the runtime/ directory into internal modules

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

added a block transfer optimization for whole-array assignment
reduced the number of communications for remote Block or Cyclic array access
added an optimization to remove dead code blocks

Testing System

valgrind testing with CHPL_COMM!=none now valgrinds the child processes

Internal

the threading layer of the runtime now has its own header file
added a --library flag for creation of a standalone Chapel library
made normalize_returns() able to be called multiple times
fixed a bug related to internal module dependences of depth > 2
added capabilities to help debug deleted AST nodes (see --break-on-delete-id and --log-deleted-ids-to)
removed --runtime flag from compiler
added a compilerAssert() capability

============= version 1.3.0

Sixth public release of Chapel, April 21, 2011

Highlights (see below for details)

split 'def' keyword into 'proc' (for procedures) and 'iter' (for iterators) (see '$CHPL_HOME/util/convert-defs --help' for help updating existing codes)
added 'Replicated' distribution and improved 'Block-Cyclic' distribution (see "Standard Distributions" in spec and examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
added single-locale task layers for Nanos++ (BSC) and Qthreads (Sandia) (see doc/README.tasks)
major reworking of range semantics and implementation (see "Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language" below for detail)
initial support for volatile types: bool, int, uint, real, imag (see doc/technotes/README.volatile)
support for extern consts and classes (pointers-to-structs) (see doc/technotes/README.extern)
improved support for data parallelism on the Cray XMT
extensive improvements to the sample codes in the examples/ directory (see 'Example Codes' below and examples/README)
added most code examples from the spec to a new examples/ directory (see examples/spec/*)
added a technical note describing the user-defined domain map interface (see doc/technotes/README.dsi)
extensive updates to the language specification (see 'Documentation' below)
several improvements to the runtime tasking and communications layers (see "Runtime Library Changes" below)

Syntactic/Naming Changes

split 'def' keyword into 'proc' (for procedures) and 'iter' (for iterators) (see '$CHPL_HOME/util/convert-defs --help' for help updating existing codes)
renamed 'arithmetic' domains/arrays to 'rectangular' domains/arrays
added support for floating point literals of the form '1.e...' (previously, only '1e...' and '1.0e...' were supported)

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

several improvements to ranges (see 'Ranges' chapter in the language spec):
- added a concept of alignment to indicate an alignment modulo |stride|
- added an 'align' operator and query to ranges to specify/query alignment (e.g., '1..10 by 3 align 2' => '2, 5, 8' since 2 == 5 == 8, mod 3)
- defined == on ranges in terms of the integer sequences they generate
- defined ident(r1, r2) to say whether r1 and r2 are semantically identical
- defined '# k' for k < 0 as meaning "count from the end of the range"
- added 'first', 'last', 'alignedLow, 'alignedHigh' methods to ranges (e.g., '1..10 by -2' => first==10, last==2, alignedLow=2, alignedHigh=10)
- added support for a variety of new range query functions (e.g., alignLow(), hasFirst(), hasLowBound(), isAligned(), boundsCheck()...)
added support for volatile bool, int, uint, real, and imag types (see doc/technotes/README.volatile)
added an end-of-file check to the file type (e.g., 'while !infile.eof ...')
removed support for treating 'return' in iterator as a 'yield' (e.g., change 'iter foo() { return x; }' to 'iter foo() { yield x; return; }')
added support to referencing modules without first 'use'-ing them (e.g., module M1 { var x...} module M2 { ...M1.x... } is now legal)
added a callStackSize query to the locale type (e.g., 'here.callStackSize' returns the call stack size on the current locale)
removed the previously-required semicolon from the end of enum declarations (e.g., 'enum colors {red, blue, green}' is now legal; previously needed ';')
added support for a single trailing comma at the end of enum lists (e.g., 'enum colors {red, blue, green, }' is now legal)
removed support for +/- operators on rectangular domains; use translate()

Newly Implemented Features

implemented ==/!= for rectangular, associative, and sparse domains

Standard Distributions

added a first-draft 'Replicated' distribution for storing data redundantly (see examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
improved 'Block-Cyclic', sufficient to correctly implement HPCC PTRANS and HPL (see examples/hpcc/ptrans.chpl, hpl.chpl; examples/primers/distributions.chpl)
removed redundancy in specification of leader iterators between domains/arrays

Standard Modules

added INFINITY and NAN constants to the Math.chpl module (see 'Math' under "Standard Modules" in language spec)
added isinf() and isfinite() test routines to the Math.chpl module (see 'Math' under "Standard Modules" in language spec)
added a half dozen more routines to the GMP.chpl module

Documentation

added a new technical note describing the user-defined domain map interface (see doc/technotes/README.dsi)
made many improvements to the language specification
- major revisions to the Domains chapter to improve clarity/accuracy
- improved and unified structure of Records and Classes chapters
- major revisions to the Domain Maps chapter to improve clarity/accuracy
- named example codes to provide cross-reference to examples/spec/ programs
- clarified the legality of label/break/continue in parallel loops
- updated the descriptions of read[ln]/write[ln]
- fixed some problems in file fields ordering
- reformatted the specification as a 'book' in LaTeX
- various minor fixes of typos/mistakes
- improved definitions/descriptions of several terms
- added documentation of locale.name
- and many other changes...
updated quick reference document to include def->proc/iter change, align op.
rewrote/reorganized README.extern to clarify explanations and bring up-to-date
added a README describing the 'local' statement (doc/technotes/README.local)
added a README describing volatile types (doc/technotes/README.volatile)
updated README.comm-diagnostics to mention fast fork statistics
updated various README files

Example Codes

placed most code examples from the language spec. to a new spec/ subdirectory
improved the primers/ directory:
- added a new primer for using procedures (primers/procedures.chpl)
- added a basic primer for domains (primers/domains.chpl)
- renamed the locales primer to locales.chpl and improved it
- improved the distributions primer and added Block-Cyclic and Replicated uses
- updated the range primer (primers/range.chpl)
- improved the iterators primer (primers/iterators.chpl)
- improved the reductions primer (primers/reductions.chpl)
- added getCurrentTime() to the timers primer (primers/timers.chpl)
- added descriptions of type aliases and config types to variables primer (see primers/variables.chpl)
improved hpcc/ benchmarks directory
- added first version of HPCC PTRANS to hpcc/ directory (ptrans.chpl)
- added cleaner version of HPCC HPL to hpcc/ directory (hpl.chpl)
- added a variants/ subdirectory to examples/hpcc to exhibit other approaches
  - added stream-promoted.chpl to show use of promotion in global STREAM Triad
  - added ra-cleanloop.chpl to show cleaner (but currently slower) RA kernel
improved top-level examples:
- renamed existing "hello, world" examples to suggest a logical reading order (see examples/hello*.chpl)
- added data parallel and distributed data parallel hello, world examples (see examples/hello3-datapar.chpl, examples/hello4-datapar-dist.chpl)
- added comments to the various hello, world examples (examples/hello*.chpl)
updated all examples to current language semantics
- use 'proc'/'iter' rather than 'def'
- update to reflect new range semantics

Platform-specific Notes

for Cray XT/Cray XE, improved the aprun and pbs-aprun launchers (see "Launcher-specific notes" below)
for Cray XMT, added support for parallel loops over ranges
for Cray XMT, added generation of noalias pragmas to forall loop variables
added support for BSC's MareNostrum including docs and a special launcher (see doc/platforms/README.marenostrum)

Launcher-specific notes

added launcher-specific options to --help capability
improved propagation of exit status codes through launchers
changed launchers to support exec-based (rather than system-based) commands
made launchers use 'unlink' rather than system('rm') to remove temporary files
added a launcher for BSC's MareNostrum
reduced number of temporary files used to capture output of 'system' commands
aprun launcher improvements:
- added a --cc flag to specify CPU assignment w/in a node
- added a -q flag to run the launcher in quiet mode
- added debug capability via CHPL_LAUNCHER_DEBUG to keep tmp files around
pbs-aprun launcher improvements:
- added a --cc flag to specify CPU assignment w/in a node
- added debug capability via CHPL_LAUNCHER_DEBUG to keep tmp files around
- cleaned up output to get rid of some extraneous printing
- made launcher support our testing system
- added --walltime and --queue flags to launcher as alternatives to env. vars.

Compiler Changes

made the compiler print 'true'/'false' out in type signatures rather than 1/0
added config param 'noRefCount' to disable reference counting (may leak memory)

Compiler Flags

added a --print-callstack-on-error flag to show what led to a bad call
added a --no-codegen flag to skip the code-generation and linking phase

Interoperability Changes

added support for extern C "classes" (pointer-to-struct types)
added support for extern consts (see README.extern)

Error Message Improvements

added a warning orphaned 'use' statements outside of declared modules (e.g., 'use M1; module M2 { }' should typically be 'module M2 { use M1; }')
made parse-time error message use the standard 'filename:lineno:' format
generated an error message for referring to a class name in a primary method (e.g., 'class C { def C.m() {...} }' now generates an error message)

Bug Fixes / New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

prevented config types from being set using execution time command-line flags
fixed the compiler's ability to handle unions with no fields
fixed the minloc/maxloc reductions to handle empty ranges/subranges of values
fixed a bug in which the 'path' argument to file constructors was ignored
made empty unions work correctly
fixed an overflow issue in chunking up ranges for distribution/parallelization
fixed a bug involving support for empty extern record types
fixed a bug involving extern functions that return records
fixed a bug related to copying external records
fixed implementation of +/- operators on associative/sparse domains
fixed a bug relating to filename-based module names containing multiple '.'s
added error messages for expand/exterior/interior on irregular domains
added an error for constructors/destructors with a specified return type
fixed a pair of bugs relating to the 'fast on' optimization
added a check against constructing classes without specifying generic fields

Packaging Changes

added syntax highlighter code for GNU source-highlight (see etc/source-highlight/README)
improved emacs coloring support for version 22.x (see etc/emacs/README)
updates to vim syntax coloring to reflect new 'proc'/'iter' keywords (see etc/vim/README)
added a script for converting existing codes' use of 'def' to 'iter'/'proc' (see $CHPL_HOME/util/convert-defs)
removed multirealm examples & documentation for the time being

Third-Party Software Changes

updated GASNet to version 1.16.1
added copies of BSC's Nanos++ and Sandia's Qthreads (see third-party/README)
made a post-install step for GASNet that changes absolute paths to relative
removed PVM for the time being due to instability

Runtime Library Changes

added single-locale task layers for Nanos++ (BSC) and Qthreads (Sandia)
several improvements to the runtime tasking layer:
- added a new interface for having the tasking layer call chpl_main()
- changed tasking init function to take maxThreadsPerLocale/callStackSize args
- added a task yield capability to the tasking layer interface
- improved runtime code to avoid using sync vars before initializing tasking
- removed macro-ized form of tasking interface; using standard names instead
- unified naming of all task layer routines to chpl_sync_() and chpl_task_()
- removed requirement to implement the single variable interface
- moved termination of threads from fifo tasking layer to pthreads threading
- simplified implementation of sync variables in the pthread threading layer
- moved responsibility for thread counts from fifo tasking to pthread threading
several improvements to the runtime communication layer:
- restructured the communication interface to support length/type arguments
- added an interface for non-blocking get operations to the comm. interface
- unified all remote get operations to use CHPL_COMM_GET() macro
- refactored/renamed the communication interface headers

Testing System

vastly improved the performance testing and graphing capabilities (see comments at the front of start_test for documentation)
improved the testing system's support for cleaning up after itself
added ability to avoid using any indirection of stdin
added an option to provide a system-wide prediff option
added ability to use a launcher's native timeout feature rather than Python's
improved how the testing system kills a test that times out
fixed a bug in which .preexec files only worked if '.' was in your path

Internal

added a --break-on-id compiler flag for developers to locate AST node creates
improved organization of util/ directory contents
changed the way version numbers are computed/displayed for SVN-based users
added support for task-/thread-specific module code
added a capability to print the AST counts allocated between each pass
added a new gdb alias to compiler --gdb: 'loc' prints an AST node's location
greatly improved implementation of pragmas/flags to avoid error cases
removed several instances of unnecessary string comparisons in the compiler
removed error-prone use of CHPL_TASKS and CHPL_THREADS as preprocessor symbols
added bestPractices documentation for developers (not included in release)
changed internal munging of '=' and '==' to 'ASSIGN' and 'EQUALS' respectively
added a --print-id-on-error developer flag to print AST ID on errors
improved the strictness of C++ prototype checking
added external contributor agreements to the SVN tree (not in release)
added a notion of internal types used by the compiler but not the user

============= version 1.2.0

Fifth public release of Chapel, October 21, 2010

High-Level Themes

single- and multi-locale task parallelism
improved single- and multi-locale data parallelism
- single- and multi-locale parallelism for arithmetic domains/arrays
- single-locale parallelism for sparse and associative domains/arrays
- serial reference version of opaque domains/arrays
improved stability and portability

Highlights

support for parallel iteration over sparse and associative domains and arrays
added support for the Cray XE6 (TM) and Cray CX1000 (TM)
improved parallelization of loops for the Cray XMT (TM)
support for config types and improved support for config params
improved support for external C types, vars, and functions
initial support for first-class and anonymous functions
prototype implementation of a GMP multiprecision math module

Environment Changes

renamed the 'cx1-linux' platform variable to 'cx-linux'

Syntactic/Naming Changes

renamed the range's index type from 'eltType' to 'idxType'
made string length a parenthesis-less method rather than a standalone function (i.e., 'length(mystring)' should now be written 'mystring.length')

Semantic Changes/Changes to Chapel Language

added initial support for first-class and anonymous functions (see doc/technotes/README.firstClassFns)
added support for config types
enabled config params to support very general command-line expressions
added support for param 'this' arguments to methods
added support for assigning tuples of ranges to arithmetic domains
added support for .stridable and .stride queries on domains
changed the range's stride type from an int to a signed int of the index type (e.g., range(uint(64)) and range(int(64)) now store an int(64) stride value)
made the by operator for a range accept the range's idxType or its stride type
added min()/max() functions for tuples that fill the tuple with min/max vals (see 'Tuples' chapter of language spec)
added isTupleType(type t) param function that tells whether t is a tuple
made a dataParTasksPerLocale value of '0' evaluate to here.numCores
converted dataParMinGranularity from a uint to an int and made its default '1'
made numBits/numBytes for default-width bools generate a compiler error

Newly Implemented Features

added support for parallel iteration over sparse domains/arrays
added support for parallel iteration over associative domains/arrays
added support for sparse strided domains
added support for printing of default layout arrays with negative strides
fixed iteration over/printing of default layout arrays with negative strides
implemented initialization of strided arrays by tuples
added the ability to slice a domain with another domain
added support for localSlice method on arrays with default layout
added support for indexToLocale method on the default layout

Standard Domain Maps

made default sparse and associative domains/array layouts support parallelism

Standard Modules

added a prototype GMP (GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic) module (see doc/technotes/README.gmp)

Platform-specific notes

added support for the Cray XE6 (TM) via a new platform variable xe-cle (see doc/platforms/README.xe-cle)
added support for the Cray CX1000 (TM) as part of the cx-linux platform (see doc/platforms/README.cx-linux)
added support for using LSF as a launcher for cx-linux via lsf-gasnetrun_ibv
for xt-cle/xe-cle:
- made MPI the default conduit due to portals conduit issues in GASNet 1.14.x
- added support for specifying dynamic vs. static linking (see doc/platforms/README.xt-cle or .../README.xe-cle)
- made the default launcher depend on the availability of pbs/aprun (see doc/platforms/README.xt-cle or README.xe-cle)
for xmt:
- improved the parallelization of operations on default layout arrays/domains
- made XMT compilations ignore dmapped annotations on domains

Documentation

improved the language specification to improve clarity, fix bugs
updated the various READMEs, text files, and man page

Example Codes

switched hpcc benchmarks to use sugared form of dmapped for clarity

Packaging Changes

moved test system helper scripts from test/Bin to util/test
added ability for multiple communication substrate builds to coexist at once

Compiler Changes

converted the compiler version to the format: major.minor.update

Third Party Changes

updated to GASNet version 1.14.2
added GMP (the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library)

Runtime Library Changes

improved the implementation of the fast fork optimization
removed the mutex-related calls from the tasking layer interface

Launcher-specific notes

made the pbs-aprun launcher use options to qsub rather than a script file

Compiler Flags

--report-scalar-replace : print statistics about scalar replacement --scalar-replace-limit : sets the max size of variables replaced (default=8) --[no-]tuple-copy-opt : enables tuple assignment optimization --tuple-copy-limit : limits size of tuples for --tuple-copy-opt

Execution Flags

--callStackSize : specify the task call stack size (see doc/README.executing and doc/README.tasks)

Interoperability Changes

improved ability to express external C functions, types, and variables:
- added support for external type and variable declarations
- added support for expressing and passing external C array types
- added support for type arguments to an external function (see doc/technotes/README.extern)

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed a bug in multiplying two imag values
added a check to prevent comparisons between types and values using == or != (e.g., 'var x = ...; type t = ...; ...(x == t)...' is now illegal)
added a check to ensure tuple-style decls match the size of their initializer (e.g., 'var (x, y) = (1, 2, 3);' will now generate an error)
fixed a pair of nil pointer dereference bugs in the Cyclic distribution
made string.length return an 'int' as documented rather than an 'int(64)'
fixed a bug in which the compiler seg faulted if no .chpl files were given
generate a compiler error when applying '#' to a completely unbounded range (i.e., ".. # 10" is now a compiler error)
fixed a bug in which queried argument types sometimes became void incorrectly
made values of dataParTasksPerLocale and dataParMinGranularity < 0 an error
added a check to make sure maxThreadsPerLocale >= 0
fixed a race condition in the initialization of the fifo tasking layer
fixed a bug in which functions returning enums were flagged as not
fixed a bug in which failing to capture an iterator caused it not to be called
removed a race condition on calling halt() from multiple tasks in a locale

Error Message Improvements

'illegal use of a function that does not return a value' now says which fn.

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

improved the compiler's ability to narrow wide references when possible
optimized small tuple assignment to use scalar assignment rather than memcpy
turned the --localize-global-consts flag on by default
removed empty records from the compiler's intermediate representation
improved scalar replacement for nested records

Testing system

added ability for testing system to generate graphs in performance mode (see comments in start_test for details)

Internal

added documentation on compiler arch. to doc/developer/compilerOverview (SVN)
refactored the $CHPL_HOME/util directory into several subdirectories
refactored third-party directory and Makefiles
generally removed file extensions from shell scripts
made internal version number take the form: major.minor.update.svnrev
made the compileTest script more robust w.r.t. -I, -M, .h, etc. arguments
cached the number of processor cores in the locale type
added versions of compilerError and compilerWarning that take a call depth
reduced the number of runtime files that get rebuilt when the compiler changes
simplified the implementation of associative arrays to reduce copies/temps
removed the 'size' field from the default arithmetic array class
made our implementation of Norm.chpl use slicing rather than rank change
replaced the isEnumType primitive with calls to _isEnumeratedType()
replaced several primitives with extern functions
added a new repositionDefExprs pass to make local variables safe on XMT
added --local-temp-names flag to use a different temp naming scheme
changed the --gen-communicated-structures developer flag to --heterogeneous

============= version 1.1.2

Update to fourth public release of Chapel, September, 2010 (see also changes below for 1.1.1 and 1.1)

Platform-specific notes

added an xe-cle PLATFORM to support the XE6 (currently using GASNet over MPI) (see doc/platforms/README.xe-cle for details)

============= version 1.1.1

Update to fourth public release of Chapel, July 8, 2010 (see also changes below for 1.1)

Platform-specific notes

removed dependence on linking against libpct on Cray XTs
fixed a bug in which linux did not use 'make' if 'gmake' was unavailable

Bug fixes

fixed a race condition in our mutex initialization code
fixed a bug in fillRandom() in which using a clock-based seed did not do so

=========== version 1.1

Fourth public release of Chapel, April 15, 2010

High-Level Themes

single- and multi-locale task parallelism
improved single- and multi-locale data parallelism
- all data parallel operations on arithmetic arrays are now parallelized
- improved control over task quantity and granularity for data parallelism
- improved completeness and stability of Block and Cyclic distributions
bug fixes

Environment Changes

added CHPL_TASKS to select the tasking layer to use (was CHPL_THREADS) (see doc/README.chplenv and doc/README.tasks for details)
CHPL_THREADS now describes lower-level threading and is typically inferred (see doc/README.tasks)
changed the name of the default tasking layer from 'default' to 'fifo' (see doc/README.chplenv and doc/README.tasks)
added CHPL_TIMERS to select between timer implementations (see doc/README.chplenv)
changed the CHPL_*_PLATFORM string for 32-bit linux from 'linux' to 'linux32' (see doc/README.chplenv)

Syntactic/Naming Changes

several changes related to the naming and syntax of distributions:
- renamed "distributions" to "domain maps" (or 'dmap's in Chapel syntax)
- redefined the term "distributions" to refer to multi-locale domain maps
- defined the term "layouts" to refer to single-locale domain maps
- replaced placeholder 'distributionType'/'distributionValue' with 'dmap' (e.g., 'const D = distributionValue(...)' => 'const D = new dmap(...)'
- changed the 'distributed' keyword to 'dmapped'
- added a syntactic sugar to drop 'new dmap(new' for anonymous domain maps (e.g., '...dmapped new dmap(new Block(...))...' => '...dmapped Block(...)') (see 'Domain Maps' chapter of language specification for more information)
renamed maxThreads to maxThreadsPerLocale (see README.tasks)
renamed the 'ind2loc' method on domain maps to 'idxToLocale'
renamed the Cyclic constructor 'low' argument to 'startIdx' (see 'Standard Distributions' chapter of the specification)
replaced the use of underscore () to ignore things to leaving the space blank (e.g., '(, x) = getTuple()' => '( , x) = getTuple()')
made underscore (_) a legal identifier
changed name of the Random module's SeedGenerator from clockMS to currentTime (see 'Standard Modules' chapter of the specification)
added support for empty (no-op) statements within a class declaration
added ability to elide the # of arguments specification/query from varargs fns (e.g., can now do 'def f(x...)' in addition to 'def f(x...?n)'/'def f(x...n)')

Semantic Changes/Changes to Chapel Language

added config consts to control the number of tasks used for data parallelism (see README.executing and 'Data Parallelism' chapter of specification)
redefined enumerated domains to be a special case of associative domains (see 'Domains' chapter of specification)
made iteration over enumerated domains/arrays use the enum's declaration order (see 'Domains' chapter of the specification)
removed the ability to assign array aliases to normal array variables (e.g., 'var A => B;' is legal but 'var A: [1..n] real; A => B;' is not)
added initial support for passing array aliases to default class constructors (e.g., 'class C {var X: [1..n] int;} var A: [1..n] int; var c = new C(X=>A);')
removed the sugar for declaring array types with forall expressions: (e.g., 'var A:[i in 1..n] real =...' => 'var A:[1..n] real = [i in 1..n] ...')
defined reindexing to ignore the domain map of the indexing domain
specified that minloc/maxloc reductions return the lowest matching index (e.g., 'minloc (A, 1..3)' for A = '5 0 0' would return (0, 2))
type aliases may now only be used after they are defined (e.g., 'var x: t; type t = int;' is now illegal)
changed resolution to favor functions with where clauses over those without (e.g., for 'foo(3)', 'foo(x)' is not as good a match as 'foo(x) where x:int') (see 'Function Resolution' section of the specification)
added the ability to index into 1-dimensional arithmetic arrays using 1-tuples (e.g., 'var i: 1*int; ... A(i)' where A is a 1D arithmetic array)
added the ability to query the component types of formal tuple arguments (e.g., 'def f(t: (real, ?t)) { ... }')
redefined order-of-evaluation of tuple assignments to avoid array temps (see 'Tuples' chapter of specification)
added support for indexing into tuples using any integral type, not just 'int' (e.g., given a tuple variable t, 'var i = 1:uint; ...t(i)...' is now legal)
added support for 1-tuple detupled variable declarations for completeness (e.g., in 'var (x): 1*int;', x is of type 'int')
redefined assignments to evaluate the left-hand side before the right (e.g., in 'x = y;', x is evaluated first and then y)

Newly Implemented Features

whole-array assignment now results in parallel execution for arithmetic arrays (e.g., 'A = B; and 'A = B + alpha * C' now result in parallel execution) (see 'Data Parallelism' chapter for details)
added support for assigning to a variable of dmap type if it has no domains (e.g., 'var myMap: dmap(Block(2)); myMap = new dmap(new Block([1..10]));')
can now apply domain maps to domain values rather than simply domain types (e.g., 'const Dom1 = [1..10] dmapped ...')
added support for sparse domain assignment (executed serially with a warning)
added support for removing indices from a sparse domain (not thread-safe)
added support for declaring formal tuple arguments of explicit tuple types (e.g., 'def f((x, y): (int, real)) { ... }')
improved support for zippering domains/arrays with distinct domain maps

Standard Domain Maps

the Block and Cyclic distributed domain maps are now feature-complete
added reindexing and rank change operations to the Block distribution
reordered Block's constructor args so that rank and idxType can be inferred (e.g., 'new Block(rank=1, idxType=int(64), [1..n])' => 'new Block([1..n])')
similarly reordered Cyclic's constructor args and renamed 'low' to 'startIdx'
made int(32) the default idxType for standard distributions like Block
moved all standard domain maps into modules/layouts/ and .../distributions/
factored common routines for arithmetic domains into ChapelArray.chpl (e.g., nothing about exterior() is specific to a domain map's implementation)
refactored helper functions for distributions into a new file: DSIUtil.chpl

Standard Modules

refactored the code in the Random module and improved the implementation
changed the Random module's SeedGenerator to an enumerated type
added support for filling random vectors of imaginary types

Platform-specific notes

added an mtarun launcher for the Cray XMT (see README.launcher)
on the Cray XMT added support for platform-specific timing routines (see README.chplenv)
for the Cray XMT, fixed a bug with uninitialized variables and poison bits

Portability of code base

ported code base to recent versions of NetBSD (thanks to Phil Nelson)
removed hard-coded paths to perl and bash in scripts, relying on /usr/bin/env
added parentheses around some expressions to avoid compiler warnings

Documentation

updated the STATUS file
added the first description of using domain maps to the specification (see 'Domain Maps')
performed a major restructuring of the language specification:
- split the 'Domains and Arrays' chapter into two distinct chapters (see the 'Domains' and 'Arrays' chapters)
- split the 'Parallelism and Synchronization' chapter of the spec into two (see 'Task Parallelism and Synchronization' and 'Data Parallelism')
- moved the 'Reductions and Scans' chapter of the spec into 'Data Parallelism'
- moved discussion of promotion into the 'Data Parallelism' chapter
- split the 'Locales and Distributions' chapter of the spec into three (see 'Locales', 'Domain Maps', and 'User-Defined Domain Maps')
- reordered the chapters of the specification for clarity
- added a placeholder chapter to the specification for user-defined reductions (see 'User-Defined Reductions and Scans')
- added a 'Standard Distributions' chapter that describes Block and Cyclic
- added a placeholder chapter for 'Standard Layouts'
improved the specification:
- added a publication date to the title page of the specification
- updated the operator precedence table in the specification (see 'Lexical Structure' chapter)
- improved the specification's syntax diagrams for [co]for[all] loops
- minor improvements to the 'Modules' chapter of the specification
- made major improvements to the 'Tuples' chapter
- improved the accuracy of the description of function resolution
- reorganized/rewrote the 'Domains' and 'Arrays' chapters (more remains)
- improved the consistency of prototypes in the 'Standard Modules' chapter
- updated the description of the Random number module to reflect changes
- fixed several bugs in example codes within the specification
added doc/platforms/README.xmt to describe the use of Chapel on a Cray XMT
added doc/platforms/README.sgi to describe the use of Chapel on an SGI Altix
updated READMEs based on task/thread change (see doc/README.tasks and doc/README.executing)
added a README to the $CHPL_HOME/util directory to describe its contents
updated READMEs for clarity and accuracy
reformatted the CONTRIBUTORS file to reflect contributors to a given release
updated the quick reference card's contents

Example Codes

added a new example 'distributions.chpl showing use of Block and Cyclic
removed 'block2D.chpl' example, considered redundant with the above
added a new example to show simple multitasking (hello-multicore.chpl)
renamed the 'examples/tutorials' directory 'examples/primers'
rewrote the taskParallel.chpl primer example program
updated all examples to reflect language changes:
- to reflect new dmap/dmapped syntax for specifying domain maps
- the change of Block and Cyclic's default idxType to int(32)
- to remove reliance on the 'A:[i in ...]' syntactic sugar for array decls
- to remove the use of underscores to represent ignored values
- to track the changes to the Random module interface
- to reflect the new controls for specifying degree of data parallelism
- to reflect the new constructor argument orders for Block and Cyclic
- to reflect the renaming of ind2loc to idxToLocale
renamed helper files in hpcc/ subdirectory to match the modules they define
updated comments in ra-randstream.chpl, quicksort.chpl
stopped unrolling a loop in ra-randstream.chpl's computeM2Vals routine
added hpcc/stream-ep to the Makefile and README (overlooked in last release)

Packaging Changes

pushed tarball directory structure down one level (i.e., chapel-1.1/chapel)
moved non-user scripts from $CHPL_HOME/util/ to $CHPL_HOME/util/chplenv/

Compiler Changes

added warnings for most serialized data parallel operations
added warnings for array reindexings using strided ranges/domains
improved orthogonality of parsing type expressions in expression contexts
turned off optimizations by default for CHPL_COMM=gasnet; use -O to enable
reimplemented scans to remove the creation of a temporary array

Runtime Library Changes

reorganized the runtime directories to use better hierarchies (e.g., 'runtime/foo-bar' => 'runtime/src/foo/bar'
broke the threading layer of the runtime into tasking and threading layers
renamed most external tasking/threading routines in the runtime interface
added support for different timer implementations and platform-specific timers
renamed chapel_code.chpl to chpl_rt_utils.chpl
exposed sleep() calls to the tasking layer

Launcher-specific notes

added an mtarun launcher for the Cray XMT

Compiler Flags

--conditional-dynamic-dispatch-limit flag for using vtables vs. conditionals
--[no-]fast-followers to control optimization of aligned parallel iterators

Interoperability Changes

added initial support for declaring external C struct types (see doc/technotes/README.extern for details)

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

removed the ability to assign values to types
added a check that config param enums are set to a legal value for the enum
added a check that tuple assignments are between tuples of matching size
added a check that iterators are not defined to yield types or params
added a check to ensure zippered sparse domains/arrays share the same domain
added an error message for param for loops that iterate over non-param ranges
fixed a bug in which a shared initializer was evaluated multiple times (e.g., 'var x, y, z = foo()' called foo() three times rather than one)
fixed a bug in which yield statements could omit the expression to yield (i.e., 'yield;' is not a legal statement in Chapel)
fixed a bug in which applying .locale to a global variable always returned #0
fixed a few race conditions in the runtime tasking layer
fixed an integer overflow problem in the locale.physicalMemory() query
fixed a runaway recursive error message in erroneous CHPL_COMM=gasnet exits
fixed a bug in associative domains in which stale array values were not reset
fixed bugs in which argument coercion and promotion broke extern functions
fixed a bug in which a 'use' in a module-level non-function scope leaked names
fixed a bug where returning a sync var was flagged as not returning anything
fixed a bug in which generic class member types could not be queried
fixed a bug in which a class' type declaration could not define multiple types
fixed a bug in which printing an empty record would print an internal field
fixed a bug in which recursive fns in local blocks led to infinite compilation
fixed bugs in function resolution that led to choosing a poorer match
fixed implementation of type aliases to evaluate them during fn resolution
fixed a bug in the visibility of parallel iterators in promotion wrappers
fixed a bug in dead code elimination considered already eliminated code
fixed a bug in which compiler warnings were sometimes not generated
fixed a bug in which standalone forall loops incorrectly localized references
fixed a bug in flattening nested functions that removed non-dead references
fixed a bug in which the compiler would incorrectly drop line#/filename info
fixed a bug in which duplicating a loop would not update its labels
fixed the instantiation point for compiler-introduced wrapper functions
fixed a bug in which "false" where clauses were counted as instantiations

Error Message Improvements

squashed "too many instantiation" error messages for internal types/functions
somewhat improved the error message for applying 'new' to a non-class

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

turned on optimizations of on-clauses by default (--optimize-on-clauses)
re-implemented homogeneous tuples to use C arrays rather than structs
generated new loop idioms to replace fragile static alignment analysis
Cyclic distributions now result in similar performance to Block for e.p. codes
added the ability to use a virtual method table for dynamic dispatch

Compiler Performance and Cleanup

reordered compiler optimizations to improve performance
rewrote copy propagation to remove a quadratic aspect of the algorithm
changed conditional-based dynamic dispatch to use statements rather than exprs
improved performance of function resolution
improved performance of the reaching definitions analysis

Cleanup of Generated Code

made generated code less sensitive to small changes to better support diffs
broke user code within chpl_main() into its own function: chpl_user_main()

Testing system

added ability to test properly formatted codes embedded in the specification
changed sub_test script to use Python for better flexibility/maintainability
fixed the redundant cleaning of directories when tests are explicitly named
made sub_test clean up executables for .noexec tests

Internal

added a developer optimization to localize global constants (off by default)
added a new helper function gen() that serves as a printf for codegen
added a debugging function printCallStack() for use during function resolution
added a new mechanism for building the IR after parsing, before normalization
refactored parser to treat types and expressions more uniformly
refactored parsing of serial and parallel loops to share more code
simplified the implementation of operator overloading on tuples
cleaned up the implementation of reductions
reimplemented Math.chpl routines using _extern rather than primitives
reimplemented most Memory.chpl routines using _extern rather than primitives
generalized a mechanism for soft-resolving a possibly erroneous function call
added a displayRepresentation method to dmap, domain, and array classes
removed the unused 'reindexed' param from default arithmetic arrays
added the "dsi" prefix to methods that are part of the dmap standard interface
better distinguished between thread and task IDs
added getValType(), getRefType(), getWideRefType() helper functions
added support for _isSignedType() and isUnsignedType() helper param functions
moved the implementation of queries in formal types to function resolution
simplified the generation of BUILD_VERSION for non-developers

============ version 1.02

Update to third public release of Chapel, November 12, 2009 (see also changes below for version 1.01 and 1.0)

High-Level Themes

single- and multi-locale task parallelism
single- and multi-locale data parallelism
improved performance and scalability
bug fixes

Packaging Changes

added GASNet 1.14.0 to third-party/ though 1.12.0 is still the default (see third-party/gasnet/README)

Runtime Library Changes

vastly improved the performance of CHPL_COMM=pvm, esp. when oversubscribing

Documentation

removed the HPCC-related PDFs from doc/ as they seem better suited for the web

Example Codes

added an EP version of stream to showcase Chapel in an SPMD-like mode (see $CHPL_HOME/examples/hpcc/stream-ep.chpl)
added local blocks to ra.chpl and fft.chpl to assert regions of locality
changed fft.chpl to use both Block and Cyclic arrays to optimize for locality

Standard Distributions

optimized the Block distribution via privatization and remote value forwarding
added support for a .localSlice() operation for Block and Cyclic array
optimized away some extraneous copies from standard distributions

Compiler Flags

added --[no-]optimize-on-clauses and --optimize-on-clause-limit

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed a bug in which wide references weren't removed from local blocks
fixed a bug in which range slicing resulted in divide-by-zero due to overflow
fixed a bug in which Block misdistributed indices at sufficiently large sizes
fixed a bug in which multirealm PVM runs could set up locales in wrong order

Error Message Improvements

improved the error messages for failed pvm launches

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

added an optimization to execute on-clauses using a remote locale's listener (see --[no-]optimize-on-clauses and --optimize-on-clause-limit)

Internal

added initial support for recursive leader iterators
added support for generating Chapel errors in terms of C line/file
refactored and cleaned code in PVM launcher and comm layer (more remains)
added Makefile.tau for experimental use of Chapel with Tau

============ version 1.01

Update to third public release of Chapel, October 30, 2009 (see also changes for version 1.0)

High-Level Themes

multi-locale task parallelism
support for single- and multi-locale data parallelism
improved scalability and stability
prototype implementation of realms for hybrid computing in Chapel (see doc/technotes/README.multirealm)

Packaging Changes

added a utility script, chpl-multirealm, to help with multi-realm compilation
added PVM to the third-party directory to support multi-realm computation

Newly Implemented Features

added support for multi-realm features to support heterogeneous computation
extended replication of global constants to include record types

Platform-specific notes

made XT GASNet compiles use "cc" without the full path discovered by GASNet

Documentation

updated .emacs excerpts in etc/emacs/README to use more modern idioms

Example Codes

added an example demonstrating multirealm computation features
cleaned up RA to refer to TableDist in on-clauses rather than T.domain.dist

Standard Distributions

made the default distributions throttle parallelism based on #tasks running
improved the Cyclic distribution to support strides and slicing
added initial support for a "Private" distribution with one index per locale

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed a bug in which distributions deadlocked when numLocales > maxThreads
fixed a bug with parallel iteration when problem size ~= #cores
fixed some bugs with slicing and querying the length of degenerate ranges
fixed some bugs in distributions when iterating over degenerate ranges

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

reduced the number of communications required to set up distributions
reduced the time required to set up Block distributions
reduced the time required to create privatized data structures
optimized iterators for Block- and Default-distributed Arithmetic arrays
optimized the expression .locale.uid to avoid communication
optimized .dist methods on default domains to return the private distribution

Testing system

softened the signal used by our timeout script from -9 to -15

Internal

fixed some const char* issues in strstr, strchr, strrchr calls
added verification that gotos are in same functions as their labels

=========== version 1.0

Third public release of Chapel compiler, October 15, 2009

High-Level Themes

multi-locale task parallelism
improved support for single- and multi-locale data parallelism
improved stability and portability
improved memory utilization of compiler-generated code
target audience: general public

Environment Changes

added emacs/vim modes to release -- see $CHPL_HOME/etc/README

Changes to Chapel Language

removed implicit coercions from primitive types to strings to avoid confusion
a default array variable can now be made to alias another via the => operator
accesses to variable x in module M using 'M.x' must now follow a 'use M'

Newly Implemented Features

forall loops over ranges & arithmetic domains/arrays are now parallelized
improved support for and correctness of record and class destructors
array declaration+initialization syntax now results in parallel evaluation e.g., var A: [i in D] real = foo(i); will be evaluated in parallel
added == and != for imag and complex types; added >, >=, <, <= for imag types

Portability of code base

improved support for the Cray compiler on XT systems (cray-xt-cray)
reduced warnings for gcc > 4.3
improved portability with respect to Intel icc/icpc v11.x
removed outdated assumptions about Sun compiler environments
removed the makechpl script for Mac users because of portability issues

Platform-specific notes

added a PBS launcher for the Cray CX1 named pbs-gasnetrun_ibv

Launcher-specific notes

several improvements to the pbs launcher (see README.launcher/README.xt-cle)
- environment variables are now propagated to the application
- a queue can be specified via the CHPL_LAUNCHER_QUEUE environment variable
- a wallclock limit can be specified via CHPL_LAUNCHER_WALLTIME
- the NCCS pbs launcher no longer uses the debug queue by default
added support for CHPL_LAUNCHER_SUFFIX to launch a file other than ..._real

Semantic Changes

changed distributions from having class/reference semantics to value semantics
made module initialization occur at program startup rather than use statements
only modules specified on the command-line are candidates for the main module
added support for returning locally scoped arrays from variable functions
changed interpretation of method definitions on scalar types e.g., 'def int.foo()' now defines foo() for default-sized ints, not all ints

Syntactic/Naming Changes

renamed MultiBlockDist.chpl to BlockDist.chpl
removed the Block1D distribution since Block subsumed it
added placeholder notation for creating new distribution values e.g., new Block(...) => distributionValue(new Block(...))
renamed the pbs launcher for Cray XT to pbs-aprun since it wraps both packages

Compiler Changes

improved support for slicing [strided] domains/arrays with [strided] slices
improved flushing of writeln() statements to the file being written to
removed support for goto from the compiler's front-end

Runtime Library Changes

improved pthread setup, termination, and cleanup for non-erroneous exits
refactored threading runtime to support code reuse for pthread-like threads
added support for memory tracking for multi-locale executions

Documentation

improved the Types, Modules, and Ranges chapters of the language specification
added mention of 'delete' to language specification
improved the Label, Break, and Continue subsection of the language spec
minor changes to other chapters of the language specification
updated README.xt-cle and README.launcher to reflect new pbs features
updated the various READMEs to reflect minor changes and wording

Example Codes

changed fft to use a Block distribution
changed reference to MultiBlockDist module in block2D.chpl to BlockDist
changed distributions to use the placeholder value type notation
changed default value of tasksPerLocale in HPCC benchmarks to avoid reductions
changed RA's constant array m2 into a constant scalar for performance reasons
changed follower iterator in ra-randstream.chpl to accept tuple of ranges
deleted classes in example programs to reclaim memory
increased problem size for reductions.chpl to avoid bug w/ 5+ cores per locale

Standard Modules

added printMemStat() to the standard Memory module; improved printMemTable()
added start/stopVerboseMemHere to the Memory module for tracing memory use
improved reference counting of domains and arrays
removed the (undocumented) Schedules module

Standard Distributions

merged Block1D and Block since the latter subsumed the former
removed the default rank of 1 for the Block distribution
added support for a multidimensional target array of locales to Block
improved support for strided domains/arrays in the Block distribution
added support for slicing to the Block distribution
added support for member(), order(), and position() to the Block distribution
added initial support for a Cyclic distribution
added very preliminary support for a Block-Cyclic distribution
improved the support for the CSR distribution to match the default sparse case
unified leader/follower iterators to always work on tuples of ranges
removed subBlocks() from the standard distribution interface

Compiler Flags

added support for a module path flag (-M) to search for modules via filenames
added a flag to print the module search path (--print-search-dirs)
added a flag to print module files being parsed (--print-module-files)
added support for a -I flag to specify a search directory for C headers

Generated Code Flags

added support for specifying configuration variables/constants without = e.g., you can now use './a.out --n 4' in addition to ./a.out --n=4'
improved flags for tracking memory utilization (see README.executing)
improved error messages to indicate the argument number
made compiler-generated generic type names deterministic
improved robustness of --numLocales flag

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

added an error for using => on non-array types
added an error for using (...x) on non-tuple types
added a semantic check against tuples sized by 0 or a negative value
made labels on statements other than serial loops be errors
made break and continue only applicable within serial loops
improved error checking when assigning between ranges of different boundedness
fixed a bug in which breaks in serial loops gave errors in parallel contexts
fixed a bug in which tuple copies sometimes aliased the original tuple
fixed a bug in which generic fields were incorrectly aliased in constructors
fixed a bug in which we were accidentally supporting illegal parameter casts
fixed a bug in which string parameter members broke the compile
fixed a bug in which indices were inadvertently shared/non-local in promotions
fixed a bug in which pbs launchers did not work with shell prompts ending in $
fixed a bug in which the compiler attempted to clone external functions
for Cray XT, fixed default setting of GASNET_MAX_SEGSIZE to specify size in KB
fixed a race in the creation of private, replicated distribution classes
fixed a bug in which tensor iteration resulted in internal errors
removed a subtle race condition in program startup
fixed a bug in which we called default constructors by name
fixed deletion of list elements in List module
added support for generating the implicit Program module in --html view

Error Message Improvements

fixed line numbers in errors involving dynamic dispatch and [con/de]structors

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

vastly reduced amount of memory leaked due to compiler-allocated data
improved performance of loops using Block distributions
improved performance and reduced memory requirements for memory tracking

Cleanup of Generated Code

embedded information about compilation options to the generated code

Testing system

improved precedence of execution options specified via .execopts or EXECOPTS
made parallel testing place -nl x flags at the end of the command line
added support for PVM-based testing to the test script

Internal

replaced uses of "[unsigned] long long" with [u]int64_t for sane portability
some unification of reserved names, though more remains
improved Chapel's launcher runtime interface to be more general
added a mechanism for intercepting printf/fprintf calls if required
Makefile refactorings working toward supporting parallel make
refactored runtime/mem- directories to decrease duplicated code
renamed runtime files to improve standardization, though more remains
removed linked list pointers from memory tracking table
reduced amount of runtime code linked into the launcher binary
made the use of chpl_globals_registry more consistent across locales
relaxed compiler assumptions about classes with the "data class" pragma
added support for generating type and offset information for communications
some initial work toward supporting execution on heterogeneous architectures
some initial work toward supporting CPU<->GPU computations in Chapel
some initial work toward supporting profiling tools with Chapel
removed "valid var" pragma
made wrapper functions use blank intent rather than inheriting from wrappee
changed strategy for determining when value types should be copied/destroyed
made domain and array classes always have reindexed set to true by default
added a developer flag for disabling compiler-introduced memory frees
removed support for _init functions from the compiler
removed assumptions that replicated global constants are stored symmetrically
added thread cancel and join functions to the threading runtime interface
added a type, chpl_threadID_t to pass thread IDs between C and Chapel
changed point at which variables are put on the heap
made all built-in modules be filename based
refactored directory structure of $CHPL_HOME/modules into standard/internal...
added optimizations to remove unnecessary autocopy/autodestroy calls
improved robustness of internal modules that use standard ones
changed the scan implementation to generate an array rather than a list
changed array assignments to use array iteration rather than random access
made --no-cpp-lines the default for -g for developers
improved handling, robustness of built-in configuration variables
split chpl_comm_md.h into two files to permit platform- and comm- overrides

=========== version 0.9

Second public release of Chapel compiler, April 16, 2009

High-Level Themes

multi-locale task parallelism
very initial/limited support for data parallelism, distributed arrays
improved stability, portability, and performance
target audience: general public

Environment Changes

added a script to print out set and inferred CHPL env vars (see util/printchplenv.pl)
added support for the IBM xlc/xlC compilers by setting CHPL_*_COMPILER to ibm
added an environment variable for naming a queue for the PBS launcher (see doc/platforms/README.xt-cle)
added an environment variable for specifying #cores/locale to pbs/aprun (see doc/platforms/README.xt-cle)
improved the logic for inferring host and target compilers for xt-cle

Changes to Chapel Language

added a typeToString() function for converting a static type into a string

Newly Implemented Features

added queries for task/thread counts per locale for CHPL_THREADS=pthreads (see doc/README.threads)
added a printMemTable() routine to the Memory module for use in Chapel (see doc/README.executing)
added a prototype multidimensional Block distribution: MultiBlockDist.chpl (see examples/tutorials/block2D.chpl)

Portability of code base

improved our general method of building and using GASNet for portability
improved portability of GASNet configure + build steps for xt-cle
improved the heuristic for setting GASNET_MAX_SEGSIZE for xt-cle (see doc/platforms/README.xt-cle)
added initial support for IBM Power5 and Power6 systems (see doc/platforms/README.ibm)
made flex and bison generate .cpp files rather than .c files for portability
added capabilities to build Chapel on Macs using xcodebuild (see doc/platforms/README.macosx)
added a -d option to our use of aprun in the aprun and pbs launchers
removed the assumption that function pointers are identical between nodes

Syntactic/Naming Changes

disallowed identifiers that start with $
removed compilerError and compilerWarning as keywords
permitted binary and hex literals to be written using uppercase B/X
renamed classes used for defining distributions

Runtime Library Changes

added support for communication diagnostics and debugging (see doc/technotes/README.comm-diagnostics)

Documentation

added a new ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS file for financial and machine time support
refactored the doc directory, pushing platform & technical notes into subdirs
minor changes and improvements to the language specification
minor edits to many of the README files
updated the man page

Example Codes

pushed most top-level examples into tutorials/ and programs/ subdirectories
added new tutorial examples for variables, ranges, classes, generic classes
added new tutorial examples for timers and the prototype Block distribution
changed quicksort to ensure levels beyond thresh do not re-enable parallelism

Compiler Flags

added a flag to disable/enable the remote value forwarding optimization

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed a number of spurious errors caused by how we were using GASNet
fixed problems in how we terminated multithreaded GASNet programs
added the ability for _chpl_comm_fork[_nb] to handle large arguments
applied a GASNet patch that fixes an x86 alignment error
fixed a bug which had previously limited execution to 1024 locales
fixed a bug in which arrays could only store 2**31 elements
eliminated a race condition when two tasks initialize the same module
fixed a bug in which integer exponentiation was being computed using pow()
fixed a bug in which slicing via .. could only be done for int(32) indices
fixed a bug with Block1D domains that exceed the bounding box argument
added a check to ensure that return statements are not used at module scope
improved verification of formal/actual argument types
fixed a bug in which long program names broke the PBS launcher
fixed a bug with incorrectly spacing operators in generated code
fixed Chapel error messages that referred to C's errno variable
fixed a bug with accidentally shared state during parallel iterations
fixed a bug related to reductions involving forall expressions

Error Message Improvements

added a runtime error message if the launcher binary can't find the _real one

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

improved the correctness and effectiveness of remote value forwarding
optimized performance of local communications
optimized parallel iteration for Block1D to minimize remote references
parallelized declarations of Block1D distributions, domains, and arrays
optimized implementation of broadcasts used to initialize private data
optimized away a thread per locale used for progress+termination
improved reclamation of compiler-allocated memory
improved the correctness and effectiveness of re-privatization optimizations
privatized the default distribution object
removed array/domain wrapper records

Compiler Performance and Cleanup

removed hand-baked and occasionally incorrect integer types int32, int64
fixed an infinite loop when inlining recursive iterators
fixed cases in which compiler temps were used outside the variable's scope

Cleanup of Generated Code

removed redundant reference types from the generated code

Internal

switched iterator implementation to use records rather than classes
improved the naming of identifiers in the runtime and generated code
removed compiler support for (undocumented) anonymous record types

=========== version 0.8

First public release of Chapel compiler, November 14, 2008

High-Level Themes

multi-locale task parallelism
improved task parallel correctness, features, thread management
improved stability of core features
very initial/limited support for data parallelism, distributed arrays
target audience: general public

License Changes

switched from MIT to BSD license (see LICENSE)
updated user agreement text (see AGREEMENT)

Environment Changes

changed the identifier for the Cray XT platform from xt-cnl to xt-cle
added a CHPL_MEM setting to select memory allocators (see README.chplenv)

Changes to Chapel Language

changed operator precedence for : vs. **, bitwise ops, reduce, !, unary +/-
added destructors and a 'delete' keyword for destroying class instances
removed open interval syntax in which [0..n) == 0..n-1
added range operator # that counts a number of elements e.g., 0..#n == 0..n-1; 0.. by 2 #5 == 0, 2, 4, 6, 8
added support for locale.name to query a locale's node name
added support for overriding iterators within a class hierarchy
added the capability to declare generic formals for gen. classes with defaults e.g., "x: range" expects a default range; "x: range(?)" expects a generic one
added the ability to query argument types without naming the queried type e.g., "x: ?" rather than "x:?t"
added support for +/- on (arith. domain, index) and + on (index, arith. domain)
removed support for * and / on (range, integer) and - on (integer, range)
added support for .clear() on arithmetic domain vars to reset to degenerate
added .order() and .position() methods to ranges and domains e.g., (1..3).order(3) == 2; ([1..3, 1..3]).position((2,1)) = (1,0)
added support for variable-width boolean types
added support for ~ on bool types
initial support for a local block that asserts code requiring no communications e.g., on Locale(1) { const x: int; local { x = x + 1 } }
added initial support for leader/follower iterators supporting zippered foralls
added initial support for distributed domains and arrays using a Block1d class
added initial support for parallel reductions and forall expressions

Newly Implemented Features

added support for tuples of lvalues e.g., "for (a,b) in (A,B)" where A and B are arrays
array initializer expressions can now be used for array class members
added support for user-defined constructors for generic classes
added support for overriding methods using subtype return types
added support for querying the eltType of an array e.g., def foo(A: [D] ?t) { ... }
added support for .remove() on opaque domains
added support for explicitly naming a function's module at the callsite
added support for freeing compiler-introduced heap-allocated variables
added initial support for freeing value type memory (records, arrays, domains)

Portability of code base

added support for the Cray CX1 platform running Linux (see README.cx1-linux)
improved level of support for the Cray XT platform (see README.xt-cle)

Semantic Changes

disallowed calling a method on a nil reference as previously permitted
changed the instantiation point for dynamically-dispatched methods
permitted partially-bounded out-of-bounds degenerate ranges to be legal, empty e.g., var A: [1..10] real; A[11..] == A[11..10] == a legal, empty slice of A
on clauses are now evaluated for side effects when using the --local flag
made single-statement sync statements create a new scope
added support for param string comparisons, concatenation, and other ops
added support for casting an integer to a string at compile time
made the implicit 'setter' argument in var functions constant and foldable

Syntactic/Naming Changes

all non-compound single-statement conditionals/loops now require then/do
functions now require a block statement unless they only contain a return stmt
added support for a single-statement serial statement e.g., "serial test { foo(); }" => "serial test do foo();"
removed "opaque" from the list of reserved words--it is now a type like "int"
'distributed' clauses no longer require parenthesis

Compiler Changes

the compiler now requires CHPL_HOME to be set
added support for opaque types for use when interfacing with extern functions

Third Party Changes

updated GASNet version to GASNet 1.12.0
added support for using dlmalloc as a memory allocator

Runtime Library Changes

all tasks in a cobegin are now set up before any start executing for pthreads
made the task that starts a cobegin/coforall help execute the component tasks
made the task that enters a sync statement help execute the component tasks
added "launcher" capability to wrap job launch mechanism (see README.launcher)
improved the thread-safety of declaring arrays over a domain

Documentation

improved the --help descriptions of --[no-] flags
updated and improved the language specification
- improved the specification of instantiated fns: visibility & point-of-inst.
updated the various README files
updated the man page

Example Codes

added a hello-multiloc example to run a "Hello, world!" on multiple locales
improved hpcc codes from our 2008 HPC Challenge entry and added HPL (hpl.chpl)
made the stream.chpl and ra.chpl benchmarks use Block1D-distributed domains
added support for the stream and ra benchmarks to use multiple tasks per locale
improved the verification step of stream.chpl to make it stronger
improved the taskParallel example to reduce the likelihood of races

Standard Modules

added a Norm module for computing vector and matrix norms
added a Containers module for standard container classes
added a day of week enumeration and getCurrentDayOfWeek() to the Time module
fillRandom() calls in the Random module now fill Block1D arrays in parallel

Compiler Flags

improved the parsing of single-dash compiler flags to avoid common errors e.g., -abcd != -a -b -c -d; -hepl != -h -e -p -l
renamed --no-expand-iterators-inline-opt to --[no-]inline-iterators
renamed --no-single-loop-iterator-opt to --[no-]optimize-loop-iterators
removed the --chplhome flag
removed the --flow-analysis flag
made all optimization control flags into --[no-] flags
added --[no-]dead-code-elimination to turn dead-code elimination off/on
added --[no-]live-analysis to turn live variable analysis off/on

Generated Code Flags

added a -b/--blockreport flag to help debug deadlocked 1-locale programs
added a -t/--taskreport flag to print a list of tasks for 1-locale programs
made the -v flag print node names for locales on which code is executing
made the -v flag print the commands used by the launcher

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed some subtle race conditions in the pthreads version of the runtime
fixed a bug in which write statements would not print atomically as intended
fixed a bug in which multidimensional tuple-to-array assignment was failing
fixed support for readXX() on single variables
added some runtime checks to try and avoid integer wraparound in malloc sizes
improved support for range slicing at extreme integer values
made 1-tuple-style declarations illegal: var (x) = ...;
fixed a number of bugs related to generic function instantiation points
fixed a bug in which casts on return expressions were ignored
fixed a bug related to iterating over a single iterator class multiple times
fixed a bug in which param functions with multiple returns corrupted constants

Error Message Improvements

improved an error message related to illegal assignments of domains to arrays
added an error check to prevent iteration over a type
improved error messages related to bad tuple index types
improved error messages related to iterators and promoted expressions
added a warning about cobegin statements with fewer than two statements

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

made "here" into a per-locale variable, reducing communication
optimized read-only non-local accesses to value types
added initial support for privatizing global domain/array descriptors
added initial support for optimizing zippered iteration over aligned arrays
optimized coforall...on and begin...on idioms to reduce thread requirements
added reference counting to domain classes to aid in freeing them

Compiler Performance and Cleanup

rewrote the compiler's symboltable
added support for a BitVec class to save space and time
tightened up memory leaks in the compiler
specialized parameter tuple indexing for performance and fewer special cases
reimplemented the IR traversal mechanism
removed def/use information from the Symbol class to save space
removed filename references from IR nodes to save space
removed unused fields from internal classes
reimplemented the caching data structures used in function resolution
streamlined function instantiation when a function is not a viable candidate
refactored and cleaned up the wrapper/generic function caching code
applied reference propagation to functions just prior to inlining
moved the prune pass prior to optimizations to save time
optimized the verification pass by hoisting out back pointer checks
optimized reference propagation to build smaller use/def sets
optimized the scalar replacement pass to localize the iterative aspects
improved the set of live references added/omitted from iterator classes
eliminated lots of dead code

Testing System

made the test system execute .numlocales tests on 1 locale for CHPL_COMM=none
made the testing system set the CHPL_* environment variables if they aren't
made the test system generate its output using relative paths
fixed a bug in the testing system's "skipif" capability

Internal

added support for dynamically turning on/off communication and memory tracing
improved debug output for the gasnet communication layer
reorganized abstract distribution, domain, array classes
generalized creation of runtime types
renamed SingleLocale* classes for domains/arrays to Default* classes
removed need for buildEmptyDomain methods within domain classes
removed redundant type/param fields from array wrapper records
simplified the AList class
revamped implementation of pragmas and unified with various boolean flags
added a --runtime flag to compile Chapel code into the runtime and used it
removed --nostdincs developer compiler flag
improved the format of the --print-statistics flag and added summary info
made the --baseline flag into an aggregate flag
fixed a bug with the --gdb flag in which quit and run would fail after errors
improved the cleanup of temporary files when using the --gdb flag for gdb >6.6
added support for developers to print references in 0x0000abcd form
added a rootModule that contains the program module but is not codegen'd
decoupled the visible functions data structure from the symbol table
removed the need for the symboltable after scope resolution
changed module representation of CHPL_* variables from enums to strings
added support for compiler CHPL_* variables of type const char*
added an internal traceback capability to unravel inlined functions
changed the mechanism for specifying reserved symbol names needing mangling
refactored reference propagation to share code with scalar replacement
added debugging functionality to the scalar replacement pass
replaced compute_sym_uses() with buildDefUseMaps() and for_defs/uses macros
simplified and optimized the normalize pass
removed the def/use map in function resolution
added a promotion wrappers cache to avoid creating duplicate wrappers
general cleanup of coercion wrapper code
refactored instantiation code
changed handling of on, begin, cobegin, coforall to use blocks, not nested fns
reimplemented heap allocated variables
changed arithmetic array of primes into function returning primes
made all exits from the compiler use our clean exit routine

=========== version 0.7

Fourth preliminary release of Chapel Compiler, March 31, 2008

High-Level Themes

multi-locale task parallelism
improved task parallel correctness, features, thread management
improved stability of core features
target audience: HPCS mission partners, select HPC/academic/industry users

Changes to Chapel Language

added "new" keyword to invoke class/record constructors e.g., "class C { ... } var myC = C(...);" => "... var myC = new C(...);"
enumerated types now require the type to be named before a component symbol e.g., "enum myEnum {A, B, C}; var x = B;" => "... var x = myEnum.B;"
changed a file's mode from a string to an enumeration e.g., file(..., "r") => file(..., FileAccessMode.read)
added "sync" statement to join dynamic parallelism e.g., sync { /* create parallelism */ } // waits here for parallelism to end
added "here" constant to refer to the locale on which a task is executing
added support for readXX and isFull on single variables
added support for functions with type varargs e.g., def foo(type t ...?numTypes) { ... }
added support for vararg read()/readln() functions that return a tuple value e.g., "read(int, float, string);" returns an (int, float, string) value
added a sorted() iterator to associative domains/arrays and opaque arrays e.g., var table: domain(string); ... for entry in table.sorted() do ...
added support for a compilerWarning() call similar to compilerError() e.g., compilerWarning("I didn't expect this function to be called");
added string relational operators e.g., ..."hi" >= "bye"...
removed the "of" keyword
removed the "ordered" keyword and concept

Newly Implemented Features

execution using multiple locales (see: doc/README.multilocale)
use of on clauses taking locale/lvalue expressions to generate remote tasks e.g., "on Locales(i) do ...", "var x = ...; ... on x do ..."
use of .locale to query the locale on which an lvalue lives e.g., "var x = ...; ... x.locale ..."
task pool to support the creation of more tasks than executing threads (see doc/README.threads for more details)
added support for calling methods within class constructors
improved support for member initializer expressions within classes
strengthened distinction between type specifiers and constructor calls
temporarily removed support for real(128), imag(128), complex(256)
enumerated and opaque arrays now support iteration
added support for tuples of sync variables
added support for declaring enumerations within classes

Portability of code base

removed a number of warnings specific to particular compilers/platforms

Semantic Changes

in a type context, (int) is no longer a 1-tuple of type int; use 1*int instead
Chapel now parses types in the same way that it parses general expressions

Syntactic/Naming Changes

renamed opaque domain's .new() method to .create()
renamed the (undocumented) Locales domain from LocalesDomain to LocaleSpace

Documentation

new README files in the doc/ directory
- README.multilocale file explains how to execute using multiple locales
- README.threads explains how tasks are implemented using threads
language specification revisions
- greatly improved the "Parallelism and Synchronization" chapter
- greatly improved the "Locality and Distribution" chapter
- made other updates to reflect other changes mentioned in this file
- removed most of the language overview section, believing it needs updating
updated the quick reference document to include locality concepts
updated HPCC documents to reflect "new" keyword and enumerated type qualifiers
generally refreshed the README, CHANGES, STATUS files

Example Codes

added new example codes
- multilocale.chpl to serve as a multi-locale execution tutorial
- taskParallel.chpl to serve as an introduction to task-parallel concepts
- varargs.chpl to demonstrate the user of variable argument functions
updated existing examples to reflect language changes
- added "new" keyword to tests that create class instances
- for tests that use files, changed access mode from string to enum
- added enumeration type qualifiers to uses of enumerated types
- changed opaque.chpl test to rename the opaque domain .create() method
changed blockLU's input data to improve stability across compilers
made automated testing of opaque.chpl deterministic

Standard Modules

added a skipToNth() method to the RandomStream class

Compiler Flags

changed flags to have a --no-... variation (see chpl man page for details) --local => --[no-]local where the default is based on CHPL_COMM --serial => --[no-]serial where the default is based on CHPL_THREADS
added new flags (see chpl man page for details) --[no-]ieee-float controls the strictness of IEEE floating point operations --fast flag turns on optimizations & disables runtime checks and IEEE floats --explain-instantiation describes the instantiations of functions/types

Generated Code Flags

added a config const "maxThreads" to limit the number of threads per locale (see doc/README.threads for more information)
made --help flag list built-in config consts/vars (numLocales, maxThreads)
added a --quiet/-q flag to suppress runtime warnings

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

fixed support for arrays of arrays and arrays of syncs within classes
fixed several bugs in the implementation of associative/opaque domains/arrays
improved composability of forall expressions and coforall statements
improved checks preventing the use of types in value contexts and vice-versa
added checks for illegal control flow within parallel/sync/on statements
added warning if locale is applied to an expression known to be local
added a runtime warning when using distributions on more than 1 locale
removed incorrect copies that were inserted for certain default argument types
fixed ability to specify C source files with paths
fixed a bug in which standalone reads of sync vars did not consume full/empty e.g., "myflag$;" is now equivalent to "myflag$.readFE();"
fixed a bug in the implementation of .length for degenerate ranges
ensured user cannot create new locales
prevented user from being able to modify a locale's id
removed instantiation limit error messages generated by tuples
fixed a bug with the --cpp-line flag for long generated C lines

Error Message Improvements

improved error messages for generic type specifiers

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

(no significant ones in this release)

Compiler Performance and Cleanup

reduced memory footprint of certain compiler IR classes

Generated Code

changed implementation of subclasses
added support for remote references and remote classes
improved line number reporting for certain functions
renamed some identifiers to avoid initial underscores -- more remain
improved name mangling policy
changed integer type aliases to use stdint.h types
turned up C compilation warning levels for developers

Testing System

added support for listing any number of tests and directories on command-line
removed -onetest and -startdir flags due to above support
allowed start_test to be run from any directory
removed support for Makefile-driven testing
removed start_clean script
added "skipif" support for skipping a test or directory based on env vars

Internal

unified implementation of cobegin/coforall to use begins
use endCounts to implement cobegins/coforalls rather than syncStacks
improved runtime TAGS file and added TAGS file for generated code
improved unification/normalization of AST classes and primitives
removed unnecessary primitives, types, symbols
changed places in code where pragmas can occur
converted from CVS to SVN
made --ccwarnings into --[no-]ccwarnings where the default is based on --devel

=========== version 0.6

Third preliminary release of Chapel Compiler, December 21, 2007

High-Level Themes

single-locale, multiple threads
improved stability of core features
support for additional serial features
improved single-threaded performance and memory utilization of generated code
improved multi-threaded correctness, features
improved compiler performance and memory utilization
improved portability of compiler/runtime code and generated code
support for cross-compilation environments
target audience: HPCS mission partners, select HPC users and centers

Changes to Chapel Language

added support for defining type functions e.g., def myint(param x: bool) type { return if x then int(32) else int(64);}
changed routines supported on sync/single variables and made them methods e.g., var x: sync int; x.writeXF(2); if (x.isFull) { ... }
added support for expression-level for and forall loops using keyword syntax e.g., var A: [D] int = for i in D do foo(i);
added support for readln() function which skips to EOL after reading its args
added support for a main() function per module, resolvable via --main-module
added support for translate, interior, exterior, and expand methods on ranges
added support for membership test on ranges e.g., var r: range = ...; if (r.member(3)) { ... }
added support for range/scalar arithmetic using +, -, *, / e.g., (1..10) + 1 == 2..11; (1..10) * 2 == 2..20 by 2
removed support for operations between scalars and tuples e.g., (1, 2) + 3 is no longer supported; (1, 2) + (3, 4) still is
added support for bitwise operators on int/uint pairs of the same size e.g., int(32) & uint(32) => uint(32)

Newly Implemented Features

added support for arrays of arrays whose inner arrays are of uniform size
added support for arrays of domains
added support for instantiating types/functions using array types e.g., class C { type t; ... } type vect = [1..n] int; var myC: C(vect);
implemented a reshape function for arrays
initial implementation of opaque domains and arrays
added support for slicing using unbounded and degenerate ranges e.g., for A: [1..n, 1..n] real, A[2.., ..] is equivalent to A[2..n, 1..n]
added support for rank change slicing of domains and arrays e.g., var V: [1..n] int; V = A[n/2 + 1, 1..n];
relaxed requirements that slicer and slicee objects use the same integer type
added support for | and & reductions over boolean aggregates
added support for a clear() method on associative domains
preliminary support for "on" statements with restricted functionality
improved support for user-defined class constructors
added support for runtime checks against nil class references e.g., class C { ... } var myC: C; C.foo(); generates a nice error
improved support for nested modules
improved symbol resolution for external modules
implicit enum-to-string coercions and explicit string-to-enum conversions
initial support for controlling type-to-string formatting (doc/README.format)
initial support for prototyping and calling extern C functions from Chapel (see doc/README.extern for more details)
added support for generic function arguments of sync types e.g., def foo(x: sync) { ... }
improved support for garbage collection in single-threaded codes (see STATUS)
improved tuple type orthogonality; they can now be used in most type contexts
added support for strided param for loops

Portability of code base

added support for compiling with Intel, PGI, Pathscale, and Cray compilers
added initial support for compiling for Cray MTA/XMT, X1s, and XTs
improved portability of source and generated codes across compilers/platforms
refactored Makefiles to better separate compiler settings from platforms
added support for cross-compilation environments -- see doc/README.chplenv
added mechanisms for selecting threading/communication libraries -- see "
added native support for task parallelism on Cray MTA/XMT platforms

Semantic Changes

removed implicit coercions from integer types to real(32)
made queries of an array's domain via A.domain or A:[?D] constant
removed dynamic dispatch on method calls with no parenthesis
user-defined constructors now squelch the creation of a default constructor
redefined range and domain slicing to use intersection semantics
changed location of instantiated generics to be their definition point
defined semantics of default functions as being "return a const"
function resolution now favors non-promoted functions as a tie-breaker
better defined casts between complex, imaginary, real, and integral types

Syntactic/Naming Changes

added support for $ in identifier names; used by convention to identify syncs
allow floating point literals with an exponent to use an integral base e.g., can now write 1e4 rather than 1.0e4
changed locale array name from Locale to Locales (as described in spec)
added ability to tag a function as returning a const value for documentation

Documentation

updates to the language specification
updated CHANGES and STATUS files
refreshed READMEs
updated compiler man page and --help message
added AGREEMENT file listing user agreement
refreshed and refactored CONTRIBUTORS file

Example Codes

added tutorial example for using arithmetic arrays (arrays.chpl)
added tutorial example for using opaque arrays (opaque.chpl)
converted all HPCC example codes to use 64-bit indices for their domains
fixed a bug in the HPCC FFT calculation of GFlop/s
renamed sync vars to use $ naming convention

Standard Modules

added support for 32-bit math routines

Compiler Flags

added new flags: --help-env : prints environment variables for each compiler flag --help-settings : prints current setting of each compiler flag --no-nil-checks : disables runtime checks for nil class references --no-checks : disables all runtime checks (currently nil & bounds checks) --main-module : selects between multiple possible program entry points --ldflags : supplies flags for the C link step --serial : disables all parallelism in a program --local : optimizes compilation for single-locale execution --no-scalar-replacement : disables the scalar replacement optimization --short-names : generates the C code using short variable names (T<#>) --make : specifies the GNU-compatible make utility used by the back-end
removed flags: --parallel : became the default and was redundant with --serial
added ability to specify .c, .o, and .h files for interfacing to C routines
improved error-reporting for incorrect compiler flags
compiler now parses all flags before any significant ones are acted upon
better error checking for parsing config param values

Generated Code Flags

added new flags: -nl #/--numLocales=# flags for specifying the number of locales to use -v/--verbose flags for increasing the verbosity of the generated code
improved error-reporting for incorrect flags
improved parsing of config const/var values

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old semantics)

whole-array assignment of arrays of sync variables now works correctly
+= and -= are now supported on sync variables
fixed bugs in sync variable read/write functions
added checks for blocking sync var reads/writes when $CHPL_THREADS == none
fixed associative domain/array bugs caused by removing indices
added bounds checking for associative domain/array operations
improved bounds checking for array slicing
bounds checking for string.substring() arguments
improved legality checks for string-to-value conversions
added legal-value checking for casts from integers to enumerated types
improved robustness of tensor function promotion e.g., exp[A, B] where A and B are arrays
improved checks preventing against assignment to const variables
added check that actual arguments to inout or out formals are valid lvalues
added check against returning constants from var functions
added checks against assigning to consts and params
fixed use of inout and out intents with variable-length argument lists
default argument values specified using a function call now work properly e.g., def foo(x = bar()) ...
improved handling of unifying multiple returns from a single function
improved checking that a function returns a value along all control paths
return statements are now supported in type select statements
type checking of LHS and RHS on op= assignments
added ability for user to overload operators for uint(64)/int combinations
improved error checks for the use of values in a type context and vice-versa
support for overriding this() method in subclasses
improved error checks for legal expressions to iterate over
added semantic check for degenerate rank-change slicing

Error Message Improvements

added filename/line# information to many error messages
improved notation for types in error messages from ": t" to "type t"
added warning when C-style ++ or -- are used; these are duplicated unary ops
improved clarity of function prototypes in function resolution errors
improved clarity of error for creating a domain with mixed integral types

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

improved performance for codes using type "complex"
removed extraneous threads created by uses of the begin statement
improved the performance of the bitMatMultOr routine in the BitOps module
added strength reduction for ** with an exponent of 0-6 or 8
added strength reduction for certain comparisons between uints and 0

Compiler Performance and Cleanup

improved performance of scalar replacement, copy propagation passes
improved performance of compiling codes using type "complex"
reduced memory requirements of compiler

Generated Code

added support for generating code using short variable names (--short-names)

Testing System

added support for Makefile-driven testing within a subdirectory
added support for testing on multiple locales
added support for "compilation only" testing to avoid running executables
added support for the ability to specify a launch command to begin execution
added the ability to suppress tests that are expected to fail
added support for communication-layer-specific .good files

Internal

support for array type descriptor at runtime
many refactorings and improvements to the compiler and runtime sources

=========== version 0.5

Second preliminary release of Chapel Compiler, June 29, 2007

High-Level Themes

single-locale, multiple threads
support for additional serial features
improved single-threaded performance, memory utilization
improved multi-threaded correctness, features
target audience: HPLS evaluation team, HPCS mission partners, select HPC users and centers

Changes to Chapel Language

eliminated Chapel's sequence type
- in the future, a standard List library will provide similar functionality
- removed # and #= operators, since they were designed for sequences
- removed support for sequence literals; use tuple syntax instead e.g., var A: [1..3] real = (0.1, 2.3, 4.5);
- removed support for casting sequences to tuples and tuples to sequences
- iterators in an expression context now result in a 1D, 1-based array e.g., "iterator foo() {...} var A = foo();" creates a 1D array over [1..]
added "range" type to language to replace old "arithmetic sequence" concept e.g., "lo..hi" or "lo..hi by str" are ranges
- open interval syntax supported for ranges e.g., "[lo..hi)" is equivalent to lo..hi-1
- +, -, *, / operators supported for range/scalar combinations
added coforall loop construct for expressing explicit task parallelism e.g., "coforall 1..4 do ..." will create four explicit tasks
removed "iterator" keyword -- iterators are now functions that contain yields
added support for defining a default ("these") iterator for classes/records
added support for creating array aliases e.g., "var Amid => A[2..n-1, 2..n-1];" creates an alias, Amid, to the slice
support for standard math, bitwise, and comparison operators for tuples e.g., "(i,j) + (1,-1)" yields "(i+1, j-1)"
added a swap operator: <=> e.g., "a <=> b" is semantically equivalent to "const t = b; b = a; a = t;"
better support for writing output
- enabled support for writing to strings using a write() method e.g., var s: string; s.write("x is: ", x);
- added a Writer class that enables user classes to be written to
- added writeThis() method to specify how a type should be output to a Writer
added minloc and maxloc reductions that return min/max value and index e.g., var (minVal, minInd) = minloc reduce (A, A.domain);
changed arithmetic domain range access from D(<dim#>) to D.dim(<dim#>) e.g., var rows = D.dim(1);
arithmetic domains and arrays support low and high methods that return bounds e.g., var loInd = A.low;
support for range, domain, and array slicing via bounded or unbounded ranges e.g., "A[2.., ..n]" is equivalent to "A[2..A.dim(1).high, A.dim(2).low..n]"
support for promoting casts across array elements e.g., var x: [1..4] real, y: [1..4] int; y = x:int;
added support for param functions that support compile-time evaluation e.g., "def square(param x) param { return x**2; } param n2 = square(14);"
support for default values for param members of classes e.g., class C { param bitWidth = 32; ... }
support for top-level 0-argument functions without parentheses e.g., def f { writeln("In function f"); }
- allow "main" function to be declared with or without parentheses e.g., def main { writeln("Program will start here"); ... }
allow " in" to be elided in for/forall loops/expressions e.g., "for 1..n { ... }", "var A = [1..n] 0.0;"
support for multiple modules to be listed within a single "use" statement
added support for reading a value of a specified type from a file e.g., "var myint = infile.read(int);"

Newly Implemented Features

support for sparse domains/arrays
- assignment of aggregate index expressions to sparse domains
- accumulation of indices into sparse domains using +=
- re-assignment of a sparse array's "zero" value using the .IRV field
- clear() method for emptying a sparse domain's index set
arrays of sync variables are now supported
added support for partially and fully unbounded ranges ("lo..", "..hi", "..")
enumerated domains and arrays
support for a numCores() function on the locale type to query # of cores
subBlocks iterator on domains now generates a sub-block per processor core
support for nested classes, records, and iterators
serial statement
added support for using "_" to ignore elements during tuple destructuring e.g., var t: (int, real) = ...; (t1, _) = t;
added support for nested tuple destructuring in variable decls/formal args
support for config params of primitive and enumerated types
initial support for accessing a module's members via modname.membername
implemented dynamic casts between class types
added initial support for copy collection-based garbage collection
subdomain keyword is now supported, though subset relationship is not checked
initial support for specifying a distribution class; interface still in flux

Syntactic/Naming Changes

removed support for using "?" in identifier names
- changed standard method member? to member
- changed standard method true? to isTrue
removed support for "--" as a single-line comment style; use "//"
an array's domain should now be accessed via A.domain rather than A.dom
array element type identifier changed from elt_type to eltType
made file open/close methods take parenthesis
renamed "indefinite domains/arrays" to "associative domains/arrays"

Semantic Changes

changed relative precedence of casts and unary +/- (unary +/- is now tighter) e.g., -2:uint(32) is equivalent to (-2):uint(32) rather than -(2:uint(32))
for/forall loops over arrays now result in references to elements, not copies e.g., "for e in A do e = 0;" could be used to zero out an array
enumerated types now start counting at "1" rather than "0" by default
conditional expressions are no longer valid l-values
improved semantics of module use transitivity, nested modules
removed support for structural iterator interface (getHeadCursor, etc.)
nested classes can refer to their outer class using the identifier "outer"
initial support for querying parameters/types in a formal class argument
- similar support for variable-length argument lists of generics
where clauses can now compare against formal generic types
short-circuiting operators only require isTrue rather than true? & false?
in x op=y, a cast to x.type is used in assigning back to x if it is primitive
compilerError() can now take multiple arguments like a halt()
replaced setter/getter functions with richer support for var functions

Documentation

added man page for Chapel compiler (chpl)
added CHANGES file
added Quick Reference document
added language overview chapter to the specification
updated HPCC tutorial document and broke into two docs: overview and tutorial
updated STATUS file
cleaned up README files a bit

Example Codes

added README.features file to map Chapel features to examples that use them
several improvements to the HPCC benchmarks due to bug fixes, new features
added several new examples:
- iterators example to demonstrate use of iterators
- linkedList example for nested, generic, iteratable, printable classes
- parallelQuickSort example to demonstrate serial/cobegin statements
- blockLU example to demonstrate domain slicing, array aliases, swap
- sparse example to demonstrate sparse domains and arrays
- slices example to demonstrate array slicing and reindexing
- reductions example to demonstrate minloc/maxloc reductions
- fileIO example to demonstrate simple use of file I/O
rewrote the producer-consumer example to use a buffer of sync variables
added a hello-module example to demonstrate simple Chapel program structure
improved the comments for several tests
removed stream-nopromote.chpl example, which had become redundant
combined the two genericStack examples into a single file
added performance testing support for stream.chpl and ra.chpl

Standard Modules

Search: new standard module
Sort: new standard module
Types: numBits() and numBytes() are now param functions
Random: fillRandom() routines now work for arrays of arbitrary rank

Compiler Flags

improved the formatting of the --help message
added -g flag for debugging generated code; turns on --cpp-lines by default
added -O flag for optimizing generated code
added -s/--set for setting config params
added --explain-call flag that helps describe how a function call is resolved
added --baseline flag to disable all compiler optimizations
added --no-flow-analysis flag that disables all flow-based optimizations
added --no-warnings flag to disable all compiler warnings
added --no-single-loop-iterator-opt flag to disable 1-loop iterator rewrites
added --no-expand-iterators-inline-opt flag to disable iterator inlining
removed --unoptimized flag
removed --cg-chpl-lineno flag; this capability is now always on
removed --no-gc used for a stopgap reference counting scheme

Generated Code Flags

-- added a --gdb flag to make it easier to debug generated code

Bug Fixes/New Semantic Checks (for old Semantics)

test expressions in loops/conditionals restricted to bools, classes, integers
runtime checks added to ensure that zippered iterations are of equal size
fixed portability issues in flex lexer file, chapel.lex
domains are now passed by reference by default
implemented bytesPerLocale for Macintosh
classes can now have iterator methods
recursive iterators now work
"true + true" now yields "2" rather than "true"
casts from uints to complexes now supported
casts from integral types to enumerated types now supported
initial support for casts from strings to primitive types
modules can now refer to param values and types from other modules correctly
disabled parameter folding of floating point values
parameter folding of relational operators on enum types
parameter folding of short-circuiting &&, ||, and conditional expressions
type aliases can now be created for array types
fixed numerical bugs in array slicing and reindexing
config variable initializers are no longer evaluated if set on command-line
const values can no longer be passed to arguments with inout or out intent
constructor keyword no longer supported -- use def instead
fixed "bug" with log2 on integers and made it halt on zero or negatives
improved thread safety of generated code
made creation of too many threads result in halt() rather than lost work
- eventually we'll need to queue up tasks; this is a stopgap
passing unions to out/inout intents now works
better semantic checking of legal l-values
fixed an infinite loop bug in associative domains/arrays

Error Message Improvements

added message to compiler warning that "atomic" is unimplemented when used
caused compiler to complain about non-module scope configuration variables
unified runtime and compiler error message formats
runtime errors identify source file/line#
improved quality of compilerError() error message output
cleaned up syntax error messages
improved error message for tuples of non-param size
improved error reporting when attempting to assign to constants
better error checking of legal vs. illegal casts
generally improved quality of compiler error messages

Compiler Analysis and Optimizations/Performance of Generated Code

removed the insertion of all large sequence/array temporaries
extensive optimizations of iterators and loop generation
global/local copy propagation
dead variable elimination
dead code elimination
live variable analysis
reaching definitions analysis
def-use and use-def chains

Compiler Performance and Cleanup

improvements to function resolution, vararg function instantiation
made compiler build with debugging off/optimizations on for non-developers
removed unused scalar replacement code
renamed and refactored internal modules
removed old reference counting code
optimized several passes to improve compile time

Generated Code

now generating structured loops rather than gotos and labels
large reduction in lines of generated code e.g., ~40% reduction in lines of code for jacobi example (13275 -> 7753)
module functions generated in order, with comments to identify source line #
_chpl_header.h file is generated in a cleaner manner
changed munging of variable names to improve gdb support and readability
using pragmas, generated code has been shown to vectorize on X1/thread on MTA
initial support for cross-compiling to the XT

Testing System

added support for doing performance-tracking experiments

Internal

new IR traversal mechanisms
flow analysis optimization framework
vararg functions handled within function resolution
parameter folding folded into function resolution
new compiler gdb commands: lv (list view)
domain and array wrappers now implemented as records
improved creation of init functions
removed ability to cast primitives to strings by casting to "%"
new mechanism for indicating that a class is promotable
added AND_EXPAND and PRIMITIVE_TUPLE_AND_EXPAND
added reference types

=========== version 0.4

Preliminary release of Chapel Compiler, December 15, 2006

High-Level Themes

single-locale, multiple threads
support for base language features
designed for correctness over performance
target audience: HPLS language evaluation team and HPCS mission partners

Files

CHANGES.md

Latest commit

History

CHANGES.md

File metadata and controls

==================== Release Changes List

============== version 1.13.1

Bug Fixes

Feature Improvements

Standard Library/Modules

Memory Improvements

============== version 1.13.0

Highlights

Configuration Changes

Syntactic/Naming Changes

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

New Features

Feature Improvements

Standard Library/Modules

Performance Improvements

Memory Improvements

Documentation

Example Codes

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

Execution Flags

Environment Changes

Directory Structure Changes

Cray-specific Changes

Portability Improvements

Tool Changes

Error Message Improvements

Bug Fixes

Cray-specific Bug Fixes

Third-Party Software Changes

Runtime Library Changes

Generated Code Cleanups

Testing System

Makefile Changes

Developer-oriented changes: Process Improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Packaging Changes

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements/changes

Developer-oriented changes: Generated code improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Runtime improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Third-party improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Testing system improvements

============== version 1.12.0

Highlights

Process Improvements

Environment/Configuration Changes

Tool Changes

Syntactic/Naming Changes

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language

New Features

Standard Library/Modules

Performance Improvements

Memory Improvements

Documentation

Example Codes

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)

Execution Flags

Error Message Improvements

Bug Fixes

Platform-specific Changes

Platform-specific bug fixes

Portability Improvements

Third-Party Software Changes

Launcher-specific Changes

Runtime Library Changes

Testing System

Makefile Changes

Performance Testing/Graphing System

Developer-oriented changes: Process Improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Documentation Improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Makefile improvements

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements/changes