Nim/changelog.md

v1.8.x - yyyy-mm-dd

Changes affecting backward compatibility

• The Math.trunc polyfill for targeting Internet Explorer was previously emitted for every JavaScript output file except if the symbol nodejs was defined via -d:nodejs. Now, it is only emitted if the symbol nimJsMathTruncPolyfill is defined. If you are targeting Internet Explorer, you may choose to enable this option or define your own Math.trunc polyfill using the emit pragma. Nim uses Math.trunc for the division and modulo operators for integers.

• Deprecated std/sums.

• Optional parameters in combination with : body syntax (RFC #405) are now opt-in via experimental:flexibleOptionalParams.

• std/sharedstrings module is removed.

• Constants colors.colPaleVioletRed and colors.colMediumPurple changed to match the CSS color standard.

• addr is now available for all addressable locations, unsafeAddr is deprecated and becomes an alias for addr.

• io is about to move out of system; use -d:nimPreviewSlimSystem and import std/syncio.

• The gc:v2 option is removed.

Standard library additions and changes

• macros.parseExpr and macros.parseStmt now accept an optional. filename argument for more informative errors.
• Module colors expanded with missing colors from the CSS color standard.
• Fixed lists.SinglyLinkedList being broken after removing the last node (#19353).
• md5 now works at compile time and in JavaScript.
• std/smtp sends ehlo first. If the mail server does not understand, it sends helo as a fallback.
• Changed mimedb to use an OrderedTable instead of OrderedTableRef, to use it in a const.
• strutils.find now use and default to last=-1 for whole string searches, making limiting it to just the first char (last=0) valid.

• Added IsoWeekRange, a range type to represent the number of weeks in an ISO week-based year.
• Added IsoYear, a distinct int type to prevent bugs from confusing the week-based year and the regular year.
• Added initDateTime in times to create a datetime from a weekday, and ISO 8601 week number and week-based year.
• Added getIsoWeekAndYear in times to get an ISO week number along with the corresponding ISO week-based year from a datetime.
• Added getIsoWeeksInYear in times to return the number of weeks in an ISO week-based year.
• Added std/oserrors for OS error reporting. Added std/envvars for environment variables handling.
• Added sep parameter in std/uri to specify the query separator.
• Added Array.shift for JavaScript targets.
• Added queueMicrotask for JavaScript targets.

• Deprecated selfExe for Nimscript.

• Removed deprecated oids.oidToString.
• Removed define nimExperimentalAsyncjsThen for std/asyncjs.then and std/jsfetch.
• Removed deprecated jsre.test and jsre.toString.
• Removed deprecated math.c_frexp.
• Removed deprecated httpcore.`==`.
• Removed deprecated std/dom_extensions.
• Removed deprecated std/posix.CMSG_SPACE and std/posix.CMSG_LEN that takes wrong argument types.
• Removed deprecated osproc.poDemon, symbol with typo.

Language changes

• Pragma macros on type definitions can now return nnkTypeSection nodes as well as nnkTypeDef, allowing multiple type definitions to be injected in place of the original type definition.

  import macros
  
  macro multiply(amount: static int, s: untyped): untyped =
    let name = $s[0].basename
    result = newNimNode(nnkTypeSection)
    for i in 1 .. amount:
      result.add(newTree(nnkTypeDef, ident(name & $i), s[1], s[2]))
  
  type
    Foo = object
    Bar {.multiply: 3.} = object
      x, y, z: int
    Baz = object
  
  # becomes
  
  type
    Foo = object
    Bar1 = object
      x, y, z: int
    Bar2 = object
      x, y, z: int
    Bar3 = object
      x, y, z: int
    Baz = object
  

• Case statement macros are no longer experimental, meaning you no longer need to enable the experimental switch caseStmtMacros to use them.

• Full command syntax and block arguments i.e. foo a, b: c are now allowed for the right-hand side of type definitions in type sections. Previously they would error with "invalid indentation".

Compiler changes

• nim can now compile version 1.4.0 as follows: nim c --lib:lib --stylecheck:off compiler/nim, without requiring -d:nimVersion140 which is now a noop.

Tool changes

• The gc switch has been renamed to mm ("memory management") in order to reflect the reality better. (Nim moved away from all techniques based on "tracing".)

• Nim now supports Nimble version 0.14 which added support for lock-files. This is done by a simple configuration change setting that you can do yourself too. In $nim/config/nim.cfg replace pkgs by pkgs2.

• There is a new switch --nimMainPrefix:prefix to influence the NimMain that the compiler produces. This is particularly useful for generating static libraries.