Version 0.9 (2014-01-09)

  • ~1800 changes, numerous bugfixes

  • Language

    • The float type has been removed. Use f32 or f64 instead.
    • A new facility for enabling experimental features (feature gating) has been added, using the crate-level #[feature(foo)] attribute.
    • Managed boxes (@) are now behind a feature gate (#[feature(managed_boxes)]) in preparation for future removal. Use the standard library's Gc or Rc types instead.
    • @mut has been removed. Use std::cell::{Cell, RefCell} instead.
    • Jumping back to the top of a loop is now done with continue instead of loop.
    • Strings can no longer be mutated through index assignment.
    • Raw strings can be created via the basic r"foo" syntax or with matched hash delimiters, as in r###"foo"###.
    • ~fn is now written proc (args) -> retval { ... } and may only be called once.
    • The &fn type is now written |args| -> ret to match the literal form.
    • @fns have been removed.
    • do only works with procs in order to make it obvious what the cost of do is.
    • Single-element tuple-like structs can no longer be dereferenced to obtain the inner value. A more comprehensive solution for overloading the dereference operator will be provided in the future.
    • The #[link(...)] attribute has been replaced with #[crate_id = "name#vers"].
    • Empty impls must be terminated with empty braces and may not be terminated with a semicolon.
    • Keywords are no longer allowed as lifetime names; the self lifetime no longer has any special meaning.
    • The old fmt! string formatting macro has been removed.
    • printf! and printfln! (old-style formatting) removed in favor of print! and println!.
    • mut works in patterns now, as in let (mut x, y) = (1, 2);.
    • The extern mod foo (name = "bar") syntax has been removed. Use extern mod foo = "bar" instead.
    • New reserved keywords: alignof, offsetof, sizeof.
    • Macros can have attributes.
    • Macros can expand to items with attributes.
    • Macros can expand to multiple items.
    • The asm! macro is feature-gated (#[feature(asm)]).
    • Comments may be nested.
    • Values automatically coerce to trait objects they implement, without an explicit as.
    • Enum discriminants are no longer an entire word but as small as needed to contain all the variants. The repr attribute can be used to override the discriminant size, as in #[repr(int)] for integer-sized, and #[repr(C)] to match C enums.
    • Non-string literals are not allowed in attributes (they never worked).
    • The FFI now supports variadic functions.
    • Octal numeric literals, as in 0o7777.
    • The concat! syntax extension performs compile-time string concatenation.
    • The #[fixed_stack_segment] and #[rust_stack] attributes have been removed as Rust no longer uses segmented stacks.
    • Non-ascii identifiers are feature-gated (#[feature(non_ascii_idents)]).
    • Ignoring all fields of an enum variant or tuple-struct is done with .., not *; ignoring remaining fields of a struct is also done with .., not _; ignoring a slice of a vector is done with .., not .._.
    • rustc supports the "win64" calling convention via extern "win64".
    • rustc supports the "system" calling convention, which defaults to the preferred convention for the target platform, "stdcall" on 32-bit Windows, "C" elsewhere.
    • The type_overflow lint (default: warn) checks literals for overflow.
    • The unsafe_block lint (default: allow) checks for usage of unsafe.
    • The attribute_usage lint (default: warn) warns about unknown attributes.
    • The unknown_features lint (default: warn) warns about unknown feature gates.
    • The dead_code lint (default: warn) checks for dead code.
    • Rust libraries can be linked statically to one another
    • #[link_args] is behind the link_args feature gate.
    • Native libraries are now linked with #[link(name = "foo")]
    • Native libraries can be statically linked to a rust crate (#[link(name = "foo", kind = "static")]).
    • Native OS X frameworks are now officially supported (#[link(name = "foo", kind = "framework")]).
    • The #[thread_local] attribute creates thread-local (not task-local) variables. Currently behind the thread_local feature gate.
    • The return keyword may be used in closures.
    • Types that can be copied via a memcpy implement the Pod kind.
    • The cfg attribute can now be used on struct fields and enum variants.

  • Libraries

    • std: The option and result API's have been overhauled to make them simpler, more consistent, and more composable.
    • std: The entire std::io module has been replaced with one that is more comprehensive and that properly interfaces with the underlying scheduler. File, TCP, UDP, Unix sockets, pipes, and timers are all implemented.
    • std: io::util contains a number of useful implementations of Reader and Writer, including NullReader, NullWriter, ZeroReader, TeeReader.
    • std: The reference counted pointer type extra::rc moved into std.
    • std: The Gc type in the gc module will replace @ (it is currently just a wrapper around it).
    • std: The Either type has been removed.
    • std: fmt::Default can be implemented for any type to provide default formatting to the format! macro, as in format!("{}", myfoo).
    • std: The rand API continues to be tweaked.
    • std: The rust_begin_unwind function, useful for inserting breakpoints on failure in gdb, is now named rust_fail.
    • std: The each_key and each_value methods on HashMap have been replaced by the keys and values iterators.
    • std: Functions dealing with type size and alignment have moved from the sys module to the mem module.
    • std: The path module was written and API changed.
    • std: str::from_utf8 has been changed to cast instead of allocate.
    • std: starts_with and ends_with methods added to vectors via the ImmutableEqVector trait, which is in the prelude.
    • std: Vectors can be indexed with the get_opt method, which returns None if the index is out of bounds.
    • std: Task failure no longer propagates between tasks, as the model was complex, expensive, and incompatible with thread-based tasks.
    • std: The Any type can be used for dynamic typing.
    • std: ~Any can be passed to the fail! macro and retrieved via task::try.
    • std: Methods that produce iterators generally do not have an _iter suffix now.
    • std: cell::Cell and cell::RefCell can be used to introduce mutability roots (mutable fields, etc.). Use instead of e.g. @mut.
    • std: util::ignore renamed to prelude::drop.
    • std: Slices have sort and sort_by methods via the MutableVector trait.
    • std: vec::raw has seen a lot of cleanup and API changes.
    • std: The standard library no longer includes any C++ code, and very minimal C, eliminating the dependency on libstdc++.
    • std: Runtime scheduling and I/O functionality has been factored out into extensible interfaces and is now implemented by two different crates: libnative, for native threading and I/O; and libgreen, for green threading and I/O. This paves the way for using the standard library in more limited embedded environments.
    • std: The comm module has been rewritten to be much faster, have a simpler, more consistent API, and to work for both native and green threading.
    • std: All libuv dependencies have been moved into the rustuv crate.
    • native: New implementations of runtime scheduling on top of OS threads.
    • native: New native implementations of TCP, UDP, file I/O, process spawning, and other I/O.
    • green: The green thread scheduler and message passing types are almost entirely lock-free.
    • extra: The flatpipes module had bitrotted and was removed.
    • extra: All crypto functions have been removed and Rust now has a policy of not reimplementing crypto in the standard library. In the future crypto will be provided by external crates with bindings to established libraries.
    • extra: c_vec has been modernized.
    • extra: The sort module has been removed. Use the sort method on mutable slices.

  • Tooling

    • The rust and rusti commands have been removed, due to lack of maintenance.
    • rustdoc was completely rewritten.
    • rustdoc can test code examples in documentation.
    • rustpkg can test packages with the argument, 'test'.
    • rustpkg supports arbitrary dependencies, including C libraries.
    • rustc's support for generating debug info is improved again.
    • rustc has better error reporting for unbalanced delimiters.
    • rustc's JIT support was removed due to bitrot.
    • Executables and static libraries can be built with LTO (-Z lto)
    • rustc adds a --dep-info flag for communicating dependencies to build tools.