LDC 1.31.0

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.101.2. (#4141, #4279)
• Bit fields support. (#4015)
• macOS on Apple M1: linking with -g is working again without unaligned pointer warnings/errors. This fixes file:line debug information in exception backtraces (requiring atos, a macOS development tool installed with Xcode), without the need to set MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11 and using a modified LLVM. (#4291)
• Preliminary support for LLVM 15, incl. adding support for the 'new' pass manager (-passmanager) and opaque IR pointers (-opaque-pointers). (way too many PRs to list!)
• New command-line option -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks, mimicking the same option of GCC and Clang. (#4297)
• New UDA ldc.attributes.callingConvention("..."), which overrides the default calling convention. For expert use only! (#4299)
• New command-line option -fno-discard-value-names to keep value names in LLVM IR. (#4012)
• dcompute: Support for OpenCL image I/O. (#3835)

Platform support

• Initial ABI support for 64-bit RISC-V. (#4007)

Bug fixes

• dcompute: Fix v1.29 regression when trying to use intrinsics. (#4266, #4267)
• Fix 64-bit symbol offsets. (#4264, #4283)
• Add missing 32-bit LTO versions of druntime & Phobos to Linux multilib package. (#4234, #4235)
• Fix compiler crash. (#4130, #4135)

Internals

• The former druntime and dmd-testsuite git submodules are now part of the LDC repo directly, leaving Phobos as single remaining submodule. We are now using a subset of the DMD repo (which includes druntime since v2.101), rewritten via git filter-repo and exposed as dmd-rewrite-* branches/tags in the LDC repo, to merge newer frontend+druntime+tests from upstream DMD. The tests/d2/dmd-testsuite dir was moved to tests/dmd. (#4274, #4276)

LDC 1.31.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.101.2. (#4141, #4279)
• Bit fields support. (#4015)
• macOS on Apple M1: linking with -g is working again without unaligned pointer warnings/errors. This fixes file:line debug information in exception backtraces (requiring atos, a macOS development tool installed with Xcode), without the need to set MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11 and using a modified LLVM. (#4291)
• Preliminary support for LLVM 15, incl. adding support for the 'new' pass manager (-passmanager) and opaque IR pointers (-opaque-pointers). (way too many PRs to list!)
• New command-line option -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks, mimicking the same option of GCC and Clang. (#4297)
• New UDA ldc.attributes.callingConvention("..."), which overrides the default calling convention. For expert use only! (#4299)
• New command-line option -fno-discard-value-names to keep value names in LLVM IR. (#4012)
• dcompute: Support for OpenCL image I/O. (#3835)

Platform support

• Initial ABI support for 64-bit RISC-V. (#4007)

Bug fixes

• dcompute: Fix v1.29 regression when trying to use intrinsics. (#4266, #4267)
• Fix 64-bit symbol offsets. (#4264, #4283)
• Add missing 32-bit LTO versions of druntime & Phobos to Linux multilib package. (#4234, #4235)
• Fix compiler crash. (#4130, #4135)

Internals

• The former druntime and dmd-testsuite git submodules are now part of the LDC repo directly, leaving Phobos as single remaining submodule. We are now using a subset of the DMD repo (which includes druntime since v2.101), rewritten via git filter-repo and exposed as dmd-rewrite-* branches/tags in the LDC repo, to merge newer frontend+druntime+tests from upstream DMD. The tests/d2/dmd-testsuite dir was moved to tests/dmd. (#4274, #4276)

LDC 1.30.0

(Changes since 1.30.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.100.1. (#3970, #4008, #4009) (new)
• LLVM for prebuilt packages bumped to v14.0.3. (#3952, #3979)
  • All LLVM targets are enabled now (=> more targets for cross-compilation).
  • For the Mac package, the minimum supported macOS version has been raised to v10.12.
• The minimum D version for bootstrapping has been raised to v2.079 (for GDC: v9.4), in line with DMD. (#3956)
• The minimum LLVM version has been raised to v9.0. (#3960)
• New LeakSanitizer support via -fsanitize=leak (not (yet?) supported on Windows). (#4005) (new)
• New prebuilt universal macOS package, runnable on both x86_64 and arm64, and enabling x86_64/arm64 macOS/iOS cross-compilation targets out of the box (-mtriple={x86_64,arm64}-apple-{macos,ios}). The x86_64 package doesn't bundle any arm64 libs anymore; the arm64 package newly bundles iOS libs (arm64). (#3958)
  • Avoid an external x86_64-only dub, use the bundled universal dub executable instead.

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 9.0 - 14.0.

Bug fixes

• Enable output of variable names in ASan and MSan error reporting. (#4004) (new)
• Report unexpected type repaints as fatal ICEs instead of crashing. (#3990, #3991) (new)

Internals

• Main CI was moved from Azure Pipelines to GitHub Actions. Any fork on GitHub can trivially reuse the fully automated prebuilt packages generation & upload to a GitHub release. (#3978)

Known issues

• On macOS 12+, linking arm64 code compiled with -g likely results in unaligned pointer linker errors. Setting environment variable MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11 weakens those to warnings; compiling with -preserve-dwarf-line-section=false is another option. (#3864)

LDC 1.30.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.100.0. (#3970)
• LLVM for prebuilt packages bumped to v14.0.3. (#3952, #3979)
  • All LLVM targets are enabled now (=> more targets for cross-compilation).
  • For the Mac package, the minimum supported macOS version has been raised to v10.12.
• The minimum D version for bootstrapping has been raised to v2.079 (for GDC: v9.4), in line with DMD. (#3956)
• The minimum LLVM version has been raised to v9.0. (#3960)
• New prebuilt universal macOS package, runnable on both x86_64 and arm64, and enabling x86_64/arm64 macOS/iOS cross-compilation targets out of the box (-mtriple={x86_64,arm64}-apple-{macos,ios}). The x86_64 package doesn't bundle any arm64 libs anymore; the arm64 package newly bundles iOS libs (arm64). (#3958)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 9.0 - 14.0.

Internals

• Main CI was moved from Azure Pipelines to GitHub Actions. Any fork on GitHub can trivially reuse the fully automated prebuilt packages generation & upload to a GitHub release. (#3978)

LDC 1.29.0

(Changes since 1.29.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.099.1. (#3917, #3893, #3937, #3953) (new)
• Support for LLVM 13 and 14. The prebuilt packages use v13.0.1. (#3842, #3951) (new)
• On Linux, LDC doesn't default to the ld.gold linker anymore. The combination of LLVM 13+ and older gold linkers can apparently cause problems. We recommend using LLD, e.g., via -linker=lld or by setting your default /usr/bin/ld symlink; it's significantly faster too.
• -linkonce-templates is less aggressive by default now and IMHO production-ready. (#3924)
• When linking manually (not via LDC) against shared druntime, it is now required to link the bundled lib/ldc_rt.dso.o[bj] object file into each binary. It replaces the previously Windows-specific dso_windows.obj. (#3850)
• Breaking extern(D) ABI change for all targets: formal parameters of non-variadic functions aren't reversed anymore, in line with the spec. For 32-bit x86, the first parameter is accordingly now potentially passed in EAX, not the last one. So non-variadic extern(D) functions with multiple explicit parameters will break if expecting parameters in specific registers or stack slots, e.g., naked DMD-style inline assembly. (#3873, ldc-developers/phobos@3d725fc)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 6.0 - 14.0. (new)
• Basic compiler support for Newlib targets, i.e., triples like arm-none-newlibeabi. (#3946) (new)

Bug fixes

• Linux: Make LTO work with LLD. (#3786, #3850)
• Windows: Fix most undefined symbols with -dllimport=all without -linkonce-templates. (#3916, #3923, #3926, #3927, #3928, #3931, #3932)
• Capture NRVO variable by ref for stack closures. (#3883, #3902)
• -ftime-trace: JSON-escape filenames. (#3947, #3948) (new)
• RISC-V: Use 128-bit quadruple real. (#3892)

Known issues

• When building LDC, old LDC 0.17.*/ltsmaster host compilers miscompile LDC ≥ 1.21, leading to potential segfaults of the built LDC. Ltsmaster can still be used to bootstrap a first compiler and then let that compiler compile itself. (#3354)

LDC 1.29.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.099.0+. (#3917, #3893, #3937)
• Support for LLVM 13. The prebuilt packages use v13.0.1. (#3842)
• On Linux, LDC doesn't default to the ld.gold linker anymore. The combination of LLVM 13 and older gold linkers can apparently cause problems. We recommend using LLD, e.g., via -linker=lld or by setting your default /usr/bin/ld symlink; it's significantly faster too.
• -linkonce-templates is less aggressive by default now and IMHO production-ready. (#3924)
• When linking manually (not via LDC) against shared druntime, it is now required to link the bundled lib/ldc_rt.dso.o[bj] object file into each binary. It replaces the previously Windows-specific dso_windows.obj. (#3850)
• Breaking extern(D) ABI change for all targets: formal parameters of non-variadic functions aren't reversed anymore, in line with the spec. For 32-bit x86, the first parameter is accordingly now potentially passed in EAX, not the last one. So non-variadic extern(D) functions with multiple explicit parameters will break if expecting parameters in specific registers or stack slots, e.g., naked DMD-style inline assembly. (#3873, ldc-developers/phobos@3d725fc)

Bug fixes

• Linux: Make LTO work with LLD. (#3786, #3850)
• Windows: Fix most undefined symbols with -dllimport=all without -linkonce-templates. (#3916, #3923, #3926, #3927, #3928, #3931, #3932)
• Capture NRVO variable by ref for stack closures. (#3883, #3902)
• RISC-V: Use 128-bit quadruple real. (#3892)

Supported LLVM versions

• 6.0 up to 13.0.

Known issues

• When building LDC, old LDC 0.17.*/ltsmaster host compilers miscompile LDC ≥ 1.21, leading to potential segfaults of the built LDC. Ltsmaster can still be used to bootstrap a first compiler and then let that compiler compile itself. (#3354)

LDC 1.28.1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.098.1+. (#3886, #3896)
• New @hidden UDA (as counterpart of export). (#3855)
• Support 'raw mangles' via leading \1 in pragma(mangle) strings, e.g., to access magic linker symbols on Mac. (#3854)
• New @noSanitize UDA to selectively disable sanitizer instrumentation of functions. (#3889)
• WebAssembly: Larger default stack size (1 MB) and protection against stack overflow overwriting global memory. (#3882)

Bug fixes

• Linux x86/x64: Fix TLS range with static druntime and bfd/lld linkers. (#3849, ldc-developers/druntime@ec3c0aa)
• Support rdtscp in DMD-style inline assembly. (#3895)

LDC 1.28.0

(Changes since 1.28.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.098.0+. (#3821, #3839, #3844, #3852) (new)
• Windows: -dllimport=defaultLibsOnly (e.g., implied by -link-defaultlib-shared -fvisibility=hidden) doesn't require -linkonce-templates anymore. (#3816)
• dcompute: Add support for OpenCL image I/O. (#3835) (new)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 6.0 - 12.0.

Bug fixes

• Fix dynamic casts across binary boundaries (DLLs etc.). (dlang/druntime#3543)
• Windows: Fix potentially wrongly caught exceptions due to non-unique TypeInfo_Class names. (#3520)
• Don't silently ignore invalid external tool specifications. (#3841) (new)
• LLVM v11.1: Add missing PGO ldc-profdata tool. (#3845) (new)

Known issues

• When building LDC, old LDC 0.17.*/ltsmaster host compilers miscompile LDC ≥ 1.21, leading to potential segfaults of the built LDC. Ltsmaster can still be used to bootstrap a first compiler and then let that compiler compile itself. (#3354)
• Buggy older ld.bfd linker versions may wrongly strip out required symbols, e.g., ModuleInfos (so that e.g. no module ctors/dtors are run). LDC defaults to ld.gold on Linux.
• LDC does not zero the padding area of a real variable. This may lead to wrong results if the padding area is also considered. See #770. Does not apply to real members inside structs etc.

LDC 1.28.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.098.0-beta.2+. (#3821, #3839)
• Windows: -dllimport=defaultLibsOnly (e.g., implied by -link-defaultlib-shared -fvisibility=hidden) doesn't require -linkonce-templates anymore. (#3816)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 6.0 - 12.0.

Bug fixes

• Fix dynamic casts across binary boundaries (DLLs etc.). (dlang/druntime#3543)
• Windows: Fix potentially wrongly caught exceptions due to non-unique TypeInfo_Class names. (#3520)

Known issues

• When building LDC, old LDC 0.17.*/ltsmaster host compilers miscompile LDC ≥ 1.21, leading to potential segfaults of the built LDC. Ltsmaster can still be used to bootstrap a first compiler and then let that compiler compile itself. (#3354)
• Buggy older ld.bfd linker versions may wrongly strip out required symbols, e.g., ModuleInfos (so that e.g. no module ctors/dtors are run). LDC defaults to ld.gold on Linux.
• LDC does not zero the padding area of a real variable. This may lead to wrong results if the padding area is also considered. See #770. Does not apply to real members inside structs etc.

LDC 1.27.1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.097.2. (#3811)
• Revamped and improved -ftime-trace implementation for compiler profiling/tracing, now excluding LLVM-internal traces, adding frontend memory tracing, source file location infos etc. (#3797)
• An official prebuilt package for Linux AArch64 is available again after migrating from Shippable to Travis. (#3733)

Bug fixes

• ICE for 64-bit targets with 32-bit pointer size. (#3802, #3808)
• Implement core.atomic.pause() for some architectures. (#3806, #3807)