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web/news/e012_version_0_9_6.rst

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+Version 0.9.6 released
+=================================
+
+.. container:: metadata
+
+  Posted by Andreas Rumpf on 19/10/2014
+
+**Note: 0.9.6 is the last release of Nimrod. The language is being renamed to
+Nim. Nim slightly breaks compatibility.**
+
+This is a maintenance release. The upcoming 0.10.0 release has
+the new features and exciting developments.
+
+
+Changes affecting backwards compatibility
+-----------------------------------------
+
+- ``spawn`` now uses an elaborate self-adapting thread pool and as such
+  has been moved into its own module. So to use it, you now have to import
+  ``threadpool``.
+- The symbol binding rules in generics changed: ``bar`` in ``foo.bar`` is
+  now considered for implicit early binding.
+- ``c2nim`` moved into its own repository and is now a Babel package.
+- ``pas2nim`` moved into its own repository and is now a Babel package.
+- ``system.$`` for floating point types now produces a human friendly string
+  representation.
+- ``uri.TUrl`` as well as the ``parseurl`` module are now deprecated in favour
+  of the new ``TUri`` type in the ``uri`` module.
+- The ``destructor`` pragma has been deprecated. Use the ``override`` pragma
+  instead. The destructor's name has to be ``destroy`` now.
+- ``lambda`` is not a keyword anymore.
+- **system.defined has been split into system.defined and system.declared**.
+  You have to use ``--symbol`` to declare new conditional symbols that can be
+  set via ``--define``.
+- ``--threadanalysis:on`` is now the default. To make your program compile
+  you can disable it but this is only a temporary solution as this option
+  will disappear soon!
+
+
+Compiler improvements
+---------------------
+
+- Multi method dispatching performance has been improved by a factor of 10x for
+  pathological cases.
+
+
+Language Additions
+------------------
+
+- This version introduces the ``deprecated`` pragma statement that is used
+  to handle the upcoming massive amount of symbol renames.
+- ``spawn`` can now wrap proc that has a return value. It then returns a data
+  flow variable of the wrapped return type.
+
+
+Library Additions
+-----------------
+
+- Added module ``cpuinfo``.
+- Added module ``threadpool``.
+- ``sequtils.distnct`` has been renamed to ``sequtils.deduplicate``.
+- Added ``algorithm.reversed``
+- Added ``uri.combine`` and ``uri.parseUri``.
+- Some sockets procedures now support a ``SafeDisconn`` flag which causes
+  them to handle disconnection errors and not raise them.