dev-2021-05 New Backend Release

Compiler Changes

• Removal of the old backend which manually produced .ll files and passed them to the LLVM binaries directly
  • Removes need for llc and opt binaries
• LLVM C API based backed as the main backend for all platforms and targets
  • Removes need for -llvm-api
• Full debug symbols support for Windows (*nix is still experimental)
• M1 ARM64/AARCH64 Support -target:darwin_arm64
• -strict-style style as default
  • #871
• New Versioning System dev-yyyy-mm:sha
• New flags
  • -build-mode modes:
    • llvm-ir
    • assembly
  • -o:<string> flag as an alternative to -opt:<integer>
    • Accepted values: mininal, size, speed
  • -vet-extra for extra vet checks (many usually false positives)
  • -microarch:<string>
  • -disallow-do
  • -default-to-nil-allocator
• ODIN_ROOT environment variable to be able to change the root directory for the Odin root path
• odin test
  • build ands runs procedures with the attribute @(test) in the initial package
• odin doc
  • generate documentation from a .odin file, or directory of .odin files
  • -doc-format Generates documentation as the .odin-doc format (useful for external tooling)
• Improvements to -vet
• Many bug fixes

Language Changes

• Ability to iterate on #soa types with a for-in loop
• soa_zip (generate #soa type from slices)
• soa_unzip (generate slices from #soa type)
• make_soa and delete_soa
• Allocator procedure signature change to support return a []byte and Allocator_Error code
• Removal of intrinsics.x86_mmx
• Remove #opaque types
• Remove bit_field types
  • Prefer bits.bitfield_extract and bits.bitfield_insert procedures located in core:math/bits
• Replace inline and no_inline with #force_inline and #force_no_inline, respectively
• Improved #optional_ok logic
• New procedure attributes:
  • @(disabled=<boolean>)
  • @(cold)
  • @(optimization_mode=<string>)
• f16, f16le, f16be types
• Removal of "pure" calling convention
• Addition of "naked" calling convention (removes prologue and epilogue)
• min(T)/max(T) support where T is a float
• Make any struct comparable as long as all of its fields are comparable
• Make any comparable type a valid map key type
• //+build ignore tag
  • Useful for examples within a package

Core Library Changes

New Packages

• core:bufio
• core:bytes
• core:c/frontend/tokenizer
• core:c/frontend/preprocessor
• core:compress
• core:compress/gzip
• core:compress/zlib
• core:image
• core:image/png
• core:io
• core:math/fixed
• core:path (URI-like paths)
• core:path/filepath (OS paths)
• core:slice
• core:sort
• core:text/scanner

Experimental Packages

• core:sync/sync2 (will replace core:sync when finished)

New Additions to package intrinsics

• volatile_load
• volatile_store
• debug_trap
• trap
• alloca
• cpu_relax
• read_cycle_counter
• count_ones
• count_zeros
• count_trailing_zeros
• count_leading_zeros
• reverse_bits
• byte_swap
• overflow_add
• overflow_sub
• overflow_mul
• expect
• type_has_field
• type_proc_parameter_count
• type_proc_return_count
• type_proc_parameter_type
• type_proc_return_type
• type_polymorphic_record_parameter_count
• type_polymorphic_record_parameter_value
• type_field_index_of
• type_equal_proc
• type_hasher_proc