duktape/RELEASES.txt

================
Duktape releases
================

Released
========

0.1.0 (2013-02-14)
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* Initial alpha release

* Core features work: compiler, executor, regexps, garbage collection

* Most built-ins incomplete or missing

0.2.0 (2013-02-27)
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* Built-ins implemented: Boolean, Date, JSON

* Date built-in has initial, minimal local time / locale support

* Initial internal documentation: regexp, datetime, json

0.3.0 (2013-03-16)
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* Built-ins implemented: global object, Object, String

0.4.0 (2013-03-31)
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* Built-ins: Array, Number, completing built-ins

0.5.0 (2013-05-17)
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* Built-in number conversion primitives

* Cleanup built-ins, improve test cases for built-ins

0.6.0 (2013-09-21)
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* First round of public API cleanup, and add basic API documentation

* First version of duktape.org website

0.7.0 (2013-10-30)
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* Traceback support improved

* Clean up and document error object properties

* Add prototype objects for buffer and pointer values, and make them object
  coercible

* Proper support for big, little, and "middle endian" environments

* Single file combined source distributable

* Portability and bug fixes

0.8.0 (2013-12-18)
------------------

* Remove DUK_PROFILE model, explicit DUK_OPT_xxx feature options added for
  tuning the build (see web docs)

* Register shuffling added to compiler which mostly eliminates constant and
  temporary register limits

* Reduce code footprint, make built-in data 'const' so that it compiles
  into the 'text' section

* Augment errors created when a built-in error constructor is called as
  a normal function (e.g. "var e = Error('test')")

* Enforce string/buffer length limits to avoid corner cases with strings
  and buffers close to size_t limit

* Ecmascript E5.1 test cases and fixes

* Mark-and-sweep stringtable leak fixed, affected mostly builds without
  reference counting

* Run a few mark-and-sweep passes in duk_destroy_heap() to give finalizers
  a chance to run in most (but not all) cases

* Coroutine yield fixes

* Portability and bug fixes

0.9.0 (2014-02-02)
------------------

* Added duk_gc() API call to force GC, implemented duk_map_string() and
  duk_decode_string()

* Added extended JSON format variants JSONX and JSONC; NULL pointer
  values string now coerce to "null" instead of e.g. "(nil)" to match
  JSONX format

* Added input line number to compiler error messages (e.g. SyntaxErrors)

* Added support for function declarations outside function or program top
  level (also known as "function statements"), with V8-like semantics

* Renamed __duk__ to Duktape for more consistency with Ecmascript conventions,
  and made the following cleanups:

    - removed somewhat useless 'build'
    - added 'env'
    - replaced 'addr' and 'refc' with 'info' which gives more internal info
    - merged 'setFinalizer' and 'getFinalizer' into a single 'fin' call
    - compatibility properties available for now (e.g. __duk__), but will
      be removed after this release

* Removed array size limit for very large array joins

* Improve Unicode handling of Greek final sigma

* Make mark-and-sweep interval relative to current heap size (measured as
  combined object and string count)

* Add DUK_OPT_NO_VOLUNTARY_GC to disable voluntary mark-and-sweep entirely;
  this is useful in timing sensitive applications like games

* Preliminary internal support for periodic bytecode executor interrupts
  which can be used to implement executor step limits, profiling, and
  debugging

* More feature options for build tuning

* More self tests to detect obscure compiler bugs, two's complement
  arithmetic, etc (enable with DUK_OPT_SELF_TESTS)

* Fixed several compile warnings, fixed warnings generated by GCC -Wextra

* Fixed some incorrect assertions (with no underlying bug)

* Fixed a coroutine termination bug which caused assertion errors and
  occasional segfaults when an uncaught error terminated a thread with
  a catch point active

* Fixed a tailcall bug: the current activation was not closed which
  caused variable lookups to fail if an inner function accessed
  variables in the surrounding activation

* Fixed a few bound constructor bugs

* Fixed handling of "get" and "set": they were handled as reserved words
  which prevented valid statements like "var set = 1;"

* Fixed a switch-case bug where code was accepted before the first
  case/default clause

* Fixed a switch-case bug where successive case clauses with no code
  in-between was not handled correctly

* Fixed a for statement control flow bug when the third clause of the for
  statement was empty and a continue was used

* Fixed error lineNumber bug triggered when there was more than 127
  source lines between successive compiled statements

* Fixed some line terminator handling issues

* Fixed relational operator ToPrimitive() coercion order, for some
  operators coercion order was reversed

* Fixed 'with' statement in strict mode (did not throw SyntaxError)

* Fixed strictness handling of an indirect eval call from a strict
  function (eval incorrectly inherited strict mode)

* Several test262 and underscore.js test case fixes (other than above)

* Windows compatibility for both WIN32 and WIN64, tested with MinGW (x86),
  MINGW-w64 (x64), VS2010 Express (x32), VS2013 Express (x32 and x64)

* Portability fixes for non-C99 platforms (like MSVC in VS2010)

* Drop 'full distributable' build, which is replaced by the public GitHub
  repo; simplify Makefiles etc accordingly (this change is not visible in
  the source distributable)

0.10.0 (2014-04-13)
-------------------

* Avoid "out of regs" for large expressions by adding more comprehensive
  register shuffling and indirect variants of several bytecode opcodes

* Change error handler model: error handlers are now set explicitly to
  Duktape.errcreate and Duktape.errthrow, and can interact with both error
  creation and error throwing

* Incompatible API change: errhandler_index argument has been removed
  from all protected API calls as unnecessary

* Add duk_push_heap_stash(), duk_push_global_stash(), and
  duk_push_thread_stash() to provide C code with stashes for storing
  values invisible to Ecmascript code

* Add duk_safe_to_string() and duk_safe_to_lstring() to make it easier
  to write result printing in C

* Add protected variants of eval/compile: duk_peval(), duk_peval_string(),
  duk_peval_file(), duk_pcompile(), duk_pcompile_string(), duk_pcompile_file()

* duk_pcall_prop() now catches invalid stack index errors and property
  lookup errors which happen before the actual call

* Add duk_put_function_list() and duk_put_number_list() to make it easier
  to define modules from C code

* Add Duktape.compact(), Duktape.line(), and Duktape.act()

* Add a "use duk notail" directive which indicates that an Ecmascript
  function should never be tail called

* Add a barebones built-in logging framework with both Ecmascript and C
  APIs and easy customization

* Add a message argument to fatal handler function callback, simplify
  internal fatal error and panic handling

* Compact function templates and instances to reduce memory footprint

* Execute finalizers for all objects, even reachable ones, when a heap
  is freed to allow native resources to be freed reliably

* "new Object()" now promotes plain buffer and pointer values to Buffer
  and Pointer objects

* Buffer values now have virtual numeric index properties and a virtual
  'length' property, so that you can do x = buf[123], buf[123] = x and
  buf.length

* Buffer data areas no longer have an automatic NUL terminator to avoid
  rounding user-requested allocation sizes upwards unnecessarily

* Buffer constructor behavior changes: number argument creates a buffer
  of a certain size; optional second argument indicates whether a buffer
  should be dynamic or fixed

* Change Array.prototype.splice() behavior so that if 2nd argument
  (deleteCount) is not given, splice to end of array instead of treating
  like deleteCount was zero: the new behavior is non-standard but is the
  real world behavior used by V8, Rhino, Spidermonkey, etc

* Add an automatic 'length' property to Duktape/C functions

* Add a feature option to provide a 'caller' property for non-strict
  functions, with behavior similar to the (non-standard) behavior in
  e.g. V8 and Rhino

* Add a feature option to disable automatic zeroing of data areas of
  buffer values

* Improve self tests to include byte order validation

* Allow the global eval() function to be called from C code (causes an
  indirect eval); this was at least an issue with a bound eval() call

* Fix O(depth^2) inner function parsing issue, inner functions are now
  only parsed once and deeply nested inner functions are no longer a
  performance issue

* On platforms requiring a specific alignment, use an alternate object
  property table memory layout to reduce memory footprint

* Wrap remaining platform calls through macro wrappers to allow easier
  targeted fixes if necessary

* Fix a regexp bug: non-capturing groups inside quantifier expressions
  were matched incorrectly

* Fix a regexp bug: capture groups were not reset to 'undefined' when
  a quantified with capture groups was re-matched by a quantifier

* Fix a tailcall bug which caused assertion failures when a tailcall was
  made from inside a switch-case

* Fix a with statement bug which caused assertion failures when a break or
  continue jumped out of the with statement

* Fix a try-catch-finally broken assertion when finally block had finished
  (ENDFIN opcode)

* Portability fixes for Crossbridge (Flash), NetBSD (endianness detection
  and a few Math.pow() fixes), OpenBSD (endianness detection),
  QNX (endianness and other fixes)

* Warning fixes for non-default feature options and a few exotic compilers

* Duktape can now be compiled with Emscripten and executed with e.g. V8,
  "Dukweb" provides an example where Duktape runs on a web page, with
  Duktape and the browser Javascript environment interacting

Planned
=======

0.11.0 (2014-05-XX)
-------------------

* Add a built-in module loader (i.e. a require() function) based on CommonJS
  modules v1.1.1; user must always provide a module search function
  (Duktape.modSearch)

* Add Object.setPrototypeOf() and Object.prototype.__proto__, both borrowed
  from ES6 draft, to improve internal prototype handling

* Add proxy objects borrowed from ES6 draft to allow property virtualization,
  subset limited to the following traps: has, get, set, deleteProperty,
  enumerate, ownKeys

* Add property name as a non-standard setter/getter argument to make it
  possible to share a single setter/getter pair for multiple properties

* Allow non-standard dollar escape inside character classes (previously
  they were already allowed elsewhere), to support non-standard regexps
  like /[\$]/

* Add debug API calls to dump the stack top and values in the current context,
  see e.g. duk_dump_context_stdout

* Add convenience API calls: duk_push_uint(), duk_get_global_string()

* Add more variants for eval/compile (such as duk_eval_lstring() and
  duk_compile_lstring()) and avoid interning the source code when compiling
  from a user provided string (useful in low memory environments)

* Align duk_to_fixed_buffer() arguments and return value with duk_to_buffer()
  (this is an API incompatible change); add duk_to_dynamic_buffer()

* Implement the DUK_COMPILE_FUNCTION flag for duk_compile()

* Remove Duktape.line() as redundant to Duktape.act()

* Serialize negative zero as '-0' in JSONX and JSONC

* Some typing changes in the public API to improve portability; may require
  changes to calling code

* Rename some feature options (DUK_OPT_xxx) for consistency, please check
  any options you use against the up-to-date options list

* Rename Duktape.errcreate and Duktape.errthrow to Duktape.errCreate and
  Duktape.errThrow for naming consistency

* Rename Duktape's custom JSONX format to avoid confusion with JSONx
  (XML encoding for JSON); new names are JX and JC ('jx' and 'jc' in APIs,
  DUK_OPT_NO_JX and DUK_OPT_NO_JC in feature options)

* Compact the automatic function .prototype property, which previously had
  1 unused property slot

* Use 'anon' instead of 'empty' for the function name in toString() coercion
  of an anonymous function, matching traceback behavior

* The expressions !0 and !1 are now constant folded by the compiler as they're
  often found in minified code; also !true and !false are constant folded

* Remove the 256 character limitation for duk_log(), log messages can now be
  arbitrarily long but short messages (<= 256) are still formatted efficiently
  using a stack buffer

* Improve non-C99 build: type detection should now work on (some) 64-bit
  platforms too, and non-debug build should now generate much fewer (or no)
  warnings; this also improves C++ build

* Add support for X32 ABI (gcc -mx32 option)

* Move platform and feature detection into duktape.h, also for internal
  types, which allows type wrappers to be applied to the public API

* Add a safety limit for compiled bytecode byte size and maximum line number
  used to ensure pc-to-line internal data structure limits are not exceeded

* Public API C typing wrapped behind typedefs to allow porting to more exotic
  platforms, e.g. platforms where "int" is a 16-bit type; API docs updated to
  describe how type wrapping affects calling code

* Fix a number conversion related incorrect assertion triggered by the
  test262 test suite

* Fix JSON.parse() handling for '__proto__' named own property, which
  should be parsed as a normal property of that name instead of changing
  the object's prototype

* Fix a duk_push_sprintf() bug: for long formatted strings Duktape would
  reuse a va_list without copying it, which lead to memory unsafe behavior

* Fix a 'delete' bug: if delete target was a string and key was 'length' or
  a valid character index, value stack was left in an inconsistent state in
  non-strict mode (caused an assertion failure)

* Fix a rare math optimization issue in the Date built-in, which caused a
  corner case test (test-bi-date-canceling.js) to fail on e.g. 64-bit Ubuntu,
  gcc 4.8.1, -m32, and no -std=c99

* Portability fix for avoiding potentially non-portable signed integer
  constants internally (e.g. use 0x7fffffffL - 1L instead of -0x80000000L);
  this fixed a concrete problem with at least VS2010 + x64

* Portability fix for avoiding direct function pointers to built-in functions
  (especially math functions) because they may be implemented as inline
  functions or macros on some platforms or polyfill headers

* Portability fixes for MSVC, avoid secure CRT warnings to work better with
  Windows Store apps

* Portability fixes for VS2010, avoid ending up with a packed value
  representation on x64 when standard integer headers are not available
  (also added a self test to catch such cases)

* Portability fixes for uclibc, use a replacement for e.g. fpclassify()
  because it is broken in some uclibc versions still in use (affected at
  least some mixed endian ARM environments)

* Portability fixes for newer Emscripten version, Dukweb.js now works with
  Firefox

* AUTHORS.txt is now included in distributable, and both LICENSE.txt and
  AUTHORS.txt are embedded into duktape.c and duktape.h to ensure they're
  automatically included when used in another project

0.12.0 (2014-06-XX)
-------------------

* Beta release for stabilization: feature freeze until 1.0.0 release, most
  work will be testing, bug fixes, and documentation

* Internal C typing wrapped throughout to allow porting to more exotic
  platforms, e.g. platforms where "int" is a 16-bit type

1.0.0 (2014-07-XX)
------------------

* Feature complete baseline release

1.1.0 (2014-XX-XX)
------------------

* Debugger?

2.0.0 (XXXX-XX-XX)
------------------

* Ecmascript 6 features will be implemented in v2.x.x at the earliest
  (some individual features may be cherry picked into v1.x.x)