releasenotes.md

Notes:

Current Version: 6.1.1

Changes since 6.1.0

• Handle the returning of & to * types. This specifically comes up with std::vector<int *> and similar containers
• Update CMake to use LIBDIR instead of lib #502 by @guoyunhe
• Add documentation for installing ChaiScript with vcpkg #500 by @grdowns
• Fix warning for implicit 'this' lambda capture in C++20 #495 by @Josh-Thompson

Changes since 6.0.0

• Add namespacing support #290 @stephenberry
• Add utf parsing support
• cheatsheet.md updates
• add_class utility support for scoped enums #306 @StanEpp
• Parser optimizations #300 @niXman
• Various JSON fixes #377 #400 #409 #371 @totalgee @dinghram @arcoRocks
• Various cleanups, bugfixes and warning fixes and minor performance improvements
• Support for C++17 compilers!
• Support for UTF8 BOM #439 @AlekMosingiewicz @MarioLiebisch

Changes since 5.8.6

6.0.0 is a massive rework compared to 5.x. It now requires a C++14 enabled compiler

Compiler Requirements

• MSVC 2015 or greater
• g++ 4.9 or greater
• clang 3.6 or greater

Breaking Changes

• Instantiating a ChaiScript object now, by default, builds the stdlib in
  • This was done to address the most common support issues of loading stdlib dynamically at runtime
  • If you want the old behavior, use include/chaiscript/chaiscript_basic.hpp
• Headers have been reorganized to fully separate stdlib/parser/engine from each other (some faster builds)
• Bootstrap functions no longer return a reference to the module added to (compile time savings)
• It's now no longer possible modify AST_Nodes (compile time, runtime efficiency)
• Function annotations no longer exist (simplifies code, reduces compile time, compile size)

New Features Added

• Modular optimization system; this can be accessed via the ChaiScript_Basic interface
• Execution tracing capability; also accessed via ChaiScript_Basic interface
• range-based for loops for( id : container ) { } (much better performance than other loop types)
• If-init expressions (ala C++17)
• Support for passing r-value references to functions
• Support for containing unique_ptr
• Add helpers for exposing enum classes to ChaiScript
• Allow typed ChaiScript defined functions to perform conversions on call #303

Improvements

• Compile time improvements
• Compile size improvements
• Significant runtime improvements (see "Modular optimization system")
• Significant parser improvements, both with parse-time and parser initialization time (Thanks @niXman)
• Fix type conversion to bool in conditionals

Improvements Still Need To Be Made

• File location tracking has been rewritten; this currently means error location reporting is not as good as it was
• Tracing capability needs to be tested and vetted

Changes since 5.8.5

• Optimize away return statements in lambdas also
• Allow conversions to bool in conditionals
• Don't allow class statements inside of scopes
• Properly error when a dynamic object non-function member is called

Changes since 5.8.4

• Fix order of operations for prefix operators
• Make sure atomics are initialized properly
• Remove parsing of unused prefix & operator

Changes since 5.8.3

• Fix case with some numeric conversions mixed with numerics that do not need conversion

Changes since 5.8.2

• Add support for reference of pointer return types

Changes since 5.8.1

• Allow casting to non-const & std::shared_ptr

Changes since 5.8.0

• Fix parsing of floats to be locale independent #250
• Various warning fixes on various platforms

Changes since 5.7.1

• Make all parser iterator operations range checked
• Parse in-string eval statements once, not once for each execution
• Fix parsing of operators (ie 1<-1 now parses)
• Fix variable scoping for functors
• Exception reduction
• Various object lifetime fixes
• Add JSON support for load / save #207
• Numeric overload resolution fixes #209
• Fix long long #208
• Add octal escapes in strings #211
• Fixed sizing of binary literals #213
• Added support for != with bool values #217
• Various value assignment vector fixes
• Fixed broken hex escape sequences from @ChristianKaeser
• Multiply defined symbols fixes #232 @RaptorFactor
• Add add_class helper #233 @vrennert
• Cheatsheet fixes #235 @mlamby
• Fix parsing of strings inside of in-string eval statements
• Allow lower-case global keyword
• Enable thread-local on MSVC (should be significant performance boost)

Changes since 5.7.0

• Build time reduction
• Build size reduction
• Performance increases
• Fixed ~20 crash-bugs found with fuzzy testing #194
  • Let unhandled exceptions propogate to user
  • Report eval_error when break statement is not in loop
  • Fix handling of 0 length scripts closes #193
  • Don't crash on arity mismatch - Specifically affects the case where no overloads exist for a given function
  • Fix error printing for bind calls
  • Handle unexpected continue statement
  • Check arity during bind
  • Don't allow arith conversion on variadic function
  • Correct bind parameter match count
  • Add in expected Boxed_Value exception cases
  • Check access to AST, don't allow ; in func def
  • Don't attempt arithmetic unary & call
  • Don't crash on 0 param call to bind
  • Catch errors during member function dispatch
  • Properly handle type of const bool &
• Automatic deduction of lambda type signatures
• Work with non-polymorphic parent/child conversions
• Move to codecov for coverage reporting
• Add .at method for Map objects
• Various corrections for support of move-only objects

Changes since 5.6.0

• Significant code cleanups and reduction
• Smaller builds
• Faster compiles
• Less runtime memory usage
• ~2x faster runtimes
• biicode support
• method_missing feature added #164 @arBmind
• Generic objects with dynamic properties support
• Add ability to call functions contained in properties
• Add lambda captures
• Create cheatsheet.md for all-in-one reference of features
• Fix support for libc++
• Eliminate clone of return value stored locally
• Eliminate 'return' statements when last line of function
• Reduce number of runtime exceptions occuring
• Reduce copies / moves of return values.
• make use statement return value of last statement in file
• Add ability to access fixed array sizes
• Add support for scientific notation floating point literals #174 @totalgee

Changes since 5.5.1

• Throw exception on integer divide by 0

• Add optional type specification to function declarations

  def func(int i, j, double k) {
    // i must be an int.
    // j can be anything
    // k must be a double
    // normal conversion rules still apply
  }
  

• Many minor fixes for compiler warnings

• Add support for std::future and std::async

  var f := async(someFunction);
  var f2 := async(someFunction2);
  
  // someFunction and someFunction2 are running in parallel now
  f.get();
  f2.get();
  

• Fully support r-value returns, supporting move-only objects and reducing object copies

Changes since 5.5.0

• 30% performance increase
• Fix handling of object stack, resulting in greatly reduced memory usage
• Code cleanups

Changes since 5.4.0

• 2x performance increase
• Significant code cleanups
• Throw exception if user attempts to call function on null object
• Allow user defined type conversions
• Fix object lifetime for nested function calls made at the global scope
• Fix returning of boolean values from function calls

Changes since 5.3.1

• Decreased compile time and build size
• Make "reflection" module built in (losing some of the time / build size gains)
• Add new "class" syntax for ChaiScript defined methods and attributes see: unittests/class.chai for examples
• Minor performance enhancements
• major to_string performance enhancements
• Provide API for retrieving registered type name #124
• Added strong reference to container to range object #132

Changes since 5.3.0

• Add automatic conversion of arithmetic return types, following the same rules as conversion of arithmetic types when passing parameters
• Add automatic casting up the inheritence hierarchy when possible.
• Enable travis.ci testing
• Allow users to add globals from within script
• Various static analysis fixes
• Code modernization to C++11
• Unofficial support for Haiku added
• Fix #121 - Inability to compile on cygwin
• Formatting fixes and spelling corrections
• Apply "include what you use" https://code.google.com/p/include-what-you-use/
• Apply clang-modernize
• Various threading fixes
• Performance improvements

Changes since 5.2.0

• Official support for MSVC with C++11. All major platforms and compilers are now support for C++11 release

Changes since 4.2.0

• Enhanced unit tests
• Add continue statement, fix various use cases for for loops
• Fix use of suffixed numbers in vector initialization
• Code cleanups
• Eliminate global data, which makes code more portable and thread safe
• Fix issue #79
• Merge pretty_print fixes from @mgee #82
• Compiler warning fixes for latest compiler releases
• Fix threading problems
• Fix linking error on MacOS Mavericks #88
• Allow non-const globals
• Make sure user cannot name a variable with :: in it #91
• Fix various string / map / vector size and count calls for compilers which have weird overloads for them. #90 #93 #95
• Make module search path relative to the currently running executable
• Build and work with wstring windows builds
• fix for some new line cases in the middle of a vector initialization from jespada

Changes since 5.1.0

• Add support for automatic conversion of arithmetic types when possible and when no ambiguous method dispatch exists.

Changes since 5.0.0

• Fix sizing of numeric constants to match that of the C++ standard
• Add support for u,ll,l,f suffixes for numeric constants
• Siginificant improvement in error reporting

Changes since 4.0.0

• Dropped boost in favor of C++11
• Separated out stdlib to make more options for compile time improvements

Changes since 3.1.0

• svenstaro: Unused variables and CMake consistency fixes
• Added support for returning pointers from functions (#13)
• Compile with -pedantic (#9)
• Fix issues with multiple ChaiScript object types having the same attribute name (#15)
• Prevent variable redeclaration in same scope (#22)
• mgee: Boxed_Number improvements (#27)
• Support switch statements (#34)
• Fix uint16 comparions (#26)
• Add ability to add const_var globals in Module objects (#14)
• Add support for ternary operators ?:
• Add headers to CMakeLists so they show up in IDEs
• Add ability to get vector of defined objects and vector of defined functions
• Fix memory leak in cyclical references
• Clean up static analysis issues discovered
• Fix vector construction to be consistent with map construction
• Increased unit tests to 161
• Performance enhancements

Changes since 3.0.0

• Numeric operations performance increased approximately 10x
• Looping operations performance increased up to 2x
• Engine start up time decreased
• Several parsing bugs related to index operators fixed
• Added full support for all C algebraic types: double, long double, float, int, long, char, uint8_t, uint16_t, uint32_t, uint64_t, int8_t, int16_t, int32_t, int64_t
• Enhanced support for capturing of exceptions thrown from ChaiScript in C++

Changes since 2.3.3

• Code simplifications
• Fully integrate documentation with source code in doxygen style comments
• Unit tests increased from 114 to 137
• Automatic conversion between boost::function objects and ChaiScript functions
• Many bug fixes
• Minor performance improvements
• Namespace reorganization to make end user code more accessible
• clang support
• VisualStudio 2010 Support
• Support for C++ base classes and automatic upcasting
• Remove __ reserved identifiers
• Better code organization to reduce #ifdefs
• clanmills: command line options for chai eval
• clanmills: parser cleanups and code reduction
• Function introspection and reflection
• Correct function dispatch order to account for base classes and provide a defined order of dispatch
• Predictable object lifetime that emulates C++ stack lifetime
• emarcotte: pkgconfig support
• standardize on method/member naming and indentation
• 64bit Visual Studio support
• Better support for const objects
• Drastic reduction of runtime exceptions - making debug builds orders of magnitude faster
• Support for platforms with no loadable module support
• Add helper macro for registering class