# Racket v8.17 draft Release Notes **URL:** \ **Category:** Internals\ **Tags:** release-management\ **Created:** [May 8, 2025, 9:36pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735 "2025-05-08T21:36:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jbclements](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/jbclements/32/11_2.png) [@jbclements](https://racket.discourse.group/u/jbclements)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 9:36pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/1 "2025-05-08T21:36:00Z")
Here are the current draft release notes, let me know about things that are incorrect or missing! * * * - The package manager computes checksums for packages when required, allowing the use and automatic upgrade of packages without them. - The `bitwise-first-bit-set` function returns the smallest bit that is set in the twos-complement representation of the given number. - Dynamic-require makes it easier to use syntax bindings by allowing a syntax-thunk (or 'eval) to be used for them. - The `error-module-path->string-handler` parameter allows the customization of the display of module-paths in error messages. - Precision of certain numeric functions (`sin`, `cos`, and others) is improved on Windows platforms by using the MSVCRT/UCRT libraries. The `string-append` function has improved performance and reduced memory use for long lists of strings in the Racket CS implementation. Differences are clearly noticeable for lists of length 1 million. - TCP ports use SO\_KEEPALIVE, instructing the kernel to send periodic messages while waiting for data to check whether the connection is still responsive - Racket code using a windows terminal can receive mouse events as virtual terminal characters after using SetConsoleMode. - The `#:replace-malformed-surrogate?` keyword can be used to specify a replacement for malformed unicode surrogates in JSON input - The http-client module no longer sends "Content-Length: 0" for requests without a body. - The demodularizer (`compiler/demod`) can prune more unused assignments - Several judgment rendering forms in `Redex` are replaced by functions, allowing more convenient abstraction. - The new `drracket-core` package provides a version of drracket with a smaller set of dependencies. - The language menu, including the configuration sub-pane, have improved for installations that have no user-facing languages installed. - Typed Racket has support for treelists. - Racket and Typed Racket have better support for block-diagonal matrices. - The math library contains improved implementations of acos and matrix-(cos-)angle. - The stepper again works for big-bang programs. - There are many other repairs and documentation imprevements! The following people contributed to this release: Alexander Shopov, Andrei Dorian Duma, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Bogdana Vereha, Cameron Moy, Chung-chieh Shan, Cutie Deng, D. Ben Knoble, Dario Hamidi, Dominik Pantůček, Gustavo Massaccesi, halfminami, Jacqueline Firth, Jason Hemann, Jens Axel Søgaard, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jordan Harman, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, owaddell-ib, Philippe Meunier, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Ryan Ficklin, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, sogaiu, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Vincent Lee, and Wing Hei Chan. * * * ---
**Author:** ![soegaard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/soegaard/32/19_2.png) [@soegaard](https://racket.discourse.group/u/soegaard)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/2 "2025-05-08T21:39:51Z")
> [@jbclements](#): > > Racket code using a windows terminal can receive mouse events as > virtual terminal characters after using SetConsoleMode. Is it possible somehow to mention that this already works on macOS and Linux? ---
**Author:** ![jbclements](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/jbclements/32/11_2.png) [@jbclements](https://racket.discourse.group/u/jbclements)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/3 "2025-05-08T21:41:30Z")
It does? I spent a while looking for a chunk of example code, I definitely felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. If I just use read-char/special on macOS, do I get mouse movement messages? ---
**Author:** ![samth](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/samth/32/3_2.png) [@samth](https://racket.discourse.group/u/samth)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 9:53pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/4 "2025-05-08T21:53:58Z")
> Dynamic-require makes it easier to use syntax bindings by allowing a `dynamic-require` should be referecend as a function. > The `string-append` function This should be a new bullet. > TCP ports use SO\_KEEPALIVE `SO_KEEPALIVE` should be in tt font. > Several judgment rendering forms in `Redex` Redex does not have a capital letter in any of the actual identifiers in Racket. > The stepper again works for big-bang programs. `big-bang` is an identifier > Racket and Typed Racket have better support for block-diagonal Isn't this actually about the `math` library? > The language menu, including the configuration sub-pane, have > improved for installations that have no user-facing languages > installed. What "user facing languages" are should be explained better. ---
**Author:** ![soegaard](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/soegaard/32/19_2.png) [@soegaard](https://racket.discourse.group/u/soegaard)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 10:08pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/5 "2025-05-08T22:08:52Z")
@dominik.pantucek You are the best to answer this one. ---
**Author:** ![jbclements](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/jbclements/32/11_2.png) [@jbclements](https://racket.discourse.group/u/jbclements)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 10:11pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/6 "2025-05-08T22:11:46Z")
First, and clearly most important... how did you manage to intersperse responses to bullets like that? Did you have to quote each one you were responding to separately ? Email was nicer here, sigh. > [@samth](#): > > > Dynamic-require makes it easier to use syntax bindings by allowing a > > `dynamic-require` should be referecend as a function. Done > [@samth](#): > > > The `string-append` function > > This should be a new bullet. Done > [@samth](#): > > > TCP ports use SO\_KEEPALIVE > > `SO_KEEPALIVE` should be in tt font. Okay, this actually raises a question. What I'm using here is scribble that generates text and also markdown, so the real question I have for you is what specific textual and markdown elements you'd like to see here. Would backticks be sufficient? Would you prefer a `` tag in markdown? > [@samth](#): > > > Several judgment rendering forms in `Redex` > > Redex does not have a capital letter in any of the actual identifiers in Racket. Removed the backticks > [@samth](#): > > > The stepper again works for big-bang programs. > > `big-bang` is an identifier Backticked > [@samth](#): > > > Racket and Typed Racket have better support for block-diagonal > > Isn't this actually about the `math` library? reworded > [@samth](#): > > > The language menu, including the configuration sub-pane, have > > improved for installations that have no user-facing languages > > installed. > > What "user facing languages" are should be explained better. Yeah, actually I already wrote to Robby to see if he could help me with the wording on this. I agree that this is not acceptable yet. Here's my revised copy. * * * - The package manager computes checksums for packages when required, allowing the use and automatic upgrade of packages without them. - The `bitwise-first-bit-set` function returns the smallest bit that is set in the twos-complement representation of the given number. - The `dynamic-require` form makes it easier to use syntax bindings by allowing a syntax-thunk (or 'eval) to be used for them. - The `error-module-path->string-handler` parameter allows the customization of the display of module-paths in error messages. - Precision of certain numeric functions (`sin`, `cos`, and others) is improved on Windows platforms by using the MSVCRT/UCRT libraries. - The `string-append` function has improved performance and reduced memory use for long lists of strings in the Racket CS implementation. Differences are clearly noticeable for lists of length 1 million. - TCP ports use SO\_KEEPALIVE, instructing the kernel to send periodic messages while waiting for data to check whether the connection is still responsive - Racket code using a windows terminal can receive mouse events as virtual terminal characters after using SetConsoleMode. - The `#:replace-malformed-surrogate?` keyword can be used to specify a replacement for malformed unicode surrogates in JSON input - The http-client module no longer sends "Content-Length: 0" for requests without a body. - The demodularizer (`compiler/demod`) can prune more unused assignments - Several judgment rendering forms in Redex are replaced by functions, allowing more convenient abstraction. - The new `drracket-core` package provides a version of drracket with a smaller set of dependencies. - The language menu, including the configuration sub-pane, have improved for installations that have no user-facing languages installed. - Typed Racket has support for treelists. - The math library has better support for block-diagonal matrices, including both Racket and Typed Racket. - The math library contains improved implementations of acos and matrix-(cos-)angle. - The stepper again works for `big-bang` programs. - There are many other repairs and documentation imprevements! The following people contributed to this release: Alexander Shopov, Andrei Dorian Duma, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Bogdana Vereha, Cameron Moy, Chung-chieh Shan, Cutie Deng, D. Ben Knoble, Dario Hamidi, Dominik Pantůček, Gustavo Massaccesi, halfminami, Jacqueline Firth, Jason Hemann, Jens Axel Søgaard, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jordan Harman, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, owaddell-ib, Philippe Meunier, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Ryan Ficklin, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, sogaiu, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Vincent Lee, and Wing Hei Chan. * * * ---
**Author:** ![samth](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/samth/32/3_2.png) [@samth](https://racket.discourse.group/u/samth)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 10:56pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/7 "2025-05-08T22:56:18Z")
> [@jbclements](#): > > First, and clearly most important... how did you manage to intersperse responses to bullets like that? Did you have to quote each one you were responding to separately ? Email was nicer here, sigh. If you select text in the web interface there's a quote button. > [@jbclements](#): > > > [@samth](#): > > > > > TCP ports use SO\_KEEPALIVE > > > > `SO_KEEPALIVE` should be in tt font. > > Okay, this actually raises a question. What I'm using here is scribble that generates text and also markdown, so the real question I have for you is what specific textual and markdown elements you'd like to see here. Would backticks be sufficient? Would you prefer a `` tag in markdown? Yes backticks are fine. For prioritization, I think the most significant ones are: drracket-core, treelists in TR, package manager checksums. ---
**Author:** ![jbclements](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/jbclements/32/11_2.png) [@jbclements](https://racket.discourse.group/u/jbclements)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2025, 11:19pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/8 "2025-05-08T23:19:33Z")
> [@samth](#): > > > [@jbclements](#): > > > > First, and clearly most important... how did you manage to intersperse responses to bullets like that? Did you have to quote each one you were responding to separately ? Email was nicer here, sigh. > > If you select text in the web interface there's a quote button. Yes, but when you do that you get a separate quote block for each piece; you can see the person's name at the top of each block. I see that for your most recent message, but not for your first one in this thread, suggesting you did something different there. Perhaps you manually inserted not-quote quote pairs? Not sure. Not important. > [@samth](#): > > > [@jbclements](#): > > > > > [@samth](#): > > > > > > > TCP ports use SO\_KEEPALIVE > > > > > > `SO_KEEPALIVE` should be in tt font. > > > > Okay, this actually raises a question. What I'm using here is scribble that generates text and also markdown, so the real question I have for you is what specific textual and markdown elements you'd like to see here. Would backticks be sufficient? Would you prefer a `` tag in markdown? > > Yes backticks are fine. Done > [@samth](#): > > For prioritization, I think the most significant ones are: drracket-core, treelists in TR, package manager checksums. Agreed, updated. New version: * * * - The new `drracket-core` package provides a version of drracket with a smaller set of dependencies. - Typed Racket has support for treelists. - The package manager computes checksums for packages when required, allowing the use and automatic upgrade of packages without them. - The `bitwise-first-bit-set` function returns the smallest bit that is set in the twos-complement representation of the given number. - The `dynamic-require` form makes it easier to use syntax bindings by allowing a syntax-thunk (or 'eval) to be used for them. - The `error-module-path->string-handler` parameter allows the customization of the display of module-paths in error messages. - Precision of certain numeric functions (`sin`, `cos`, and others) is improved on Windows platforms by using the MSVCRT/UCRT libraries. - The `string-append` function has improved performance and reduced memory use for long lists of strings in the Racket CS implementation. Differences are clearly noticeable for lists of length 1 million. - TCP ports use `SO_KEEPALIVE`, instructing the kernel to send periodic messages while waiting for data to check whether the connection is still responsive - Racket code using a windows terminal can receive mouse events as virtual terminal characters after using SetConsoleMode. - The `#:replace-malformed-surrogate?` keyword can be used to specify a replacement for malformed unicode surrogates in JSON input - The http-client module no longer sends "Content-Length: 0" for requests without a body. - The demodularizer (`compiler/demod`) can prune more unused assignments - Several judgment rendering forms in Redex are replaced by functions, allowing more convenient abstraction. - The language menu, including the configuration sub-pane, have improved for installations that have no user-facing languages installed. - The math library has better support for block-diagonal matrices, including both Racket and Typed Racket. - The math library contains improved implementations of acos and matrix-(cos-)angle. - The stepper again works for `big-bang` programs. - There are many other repairs and documentation imprevements! The following people contributed to this release: Alexander Shopov, Andrei Dorian Duma, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Bogdana Vereha, Cameron Moy, Chung-chieh Shan, Cutie Deng, D. Ben Knoble, Dario Hamidi, Dominik Pantůček, Gustavo Massaccesi, halfminami, Jacqueline Firth, Jason Hemann, Jens Axel Søgaard, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jordan Harman, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, owaddell-ib, Philippe Meunier, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Ryan Ficklin, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, sogaiu, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Vincent Lee, and Wing Hei Chan. * * * ---
**Author:** ![samth](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/samth/32/3_2.png) [@samth](https://racket.discourse.group/u/samth)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2025, 1:00am UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/9 "2025-05-09T01:00:57Z")
For most of those I copied and pasted manually. One last note: dynamic-require is a procedure not a syntactic form. ---
**Author:** ![dominik.pantucek](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/dominik.pantucek/32/144_2.png) [@dominik.pantucek](https://racket.discourse.group/u/dominik.pantucek)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2025, 6:14am UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/10 "2025-05-09T06:14:06Z")
> [@soegaard](#): > > @dominik.pantucek You are the best to answer this one. Hehe, I'll try my best 😉 > [@soegaard](#): > > > [@jbclements](#): > > > > Racket code using a windows terminal can receive mouse events as > > virtual terminal characters after using SetConsoleMode. > > Is it possible somehow to mention that this already works on macOS and Linux? > [@jbclements](#): > > It does? I spent a while looking for a chunk of example code, I definitely felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. If I just use read-char/special on macOS, do I get mouse movement messages? Yes, it does - if you enable that. In `tui-term`[1], there's a procedure just for that: `term-enable-mouse`[2]. On Linux and/or a Mac, it just sends SET\_ANY\_EVENT\_MOUSE and SET\_SGR\_EXT\_MODE\_MOUSE VT/ANSI/ECMA sequences. See the source[3]. The Windows Console support gets "injected" into the whole layered support in [4] using a "platform hook". Windows is the only platform, where this operates on a completely different layer than one would expect. The actual hook is then passed along as the last field of the `tterm` struct as [5]. Yup, jumping hoops thru loops only to: - either send `"\x1b[?1003h\x1b[?1006h"` to the standard output, or - update ConsoleMode on hStdin with bits `#x290` set to one and cleared bit `#x40` I plan to provide some example code in the `tui-term` package, however this is pretty low-level and I think only TUI toolkit authors would even want to use it. Ok, perhaps cursor positioning in expeditor using mouse is another cool feature someone might implement, but that's about it 🙂 [1] [TUI Terminal Support](https://docs.racket-lang.org/tui-term/index.html) [2] [2 Virtual Terminal](https://docs.racket-lang.org/tui-term/Virtual_Terminal.html#%28def._%28%28lib._tui%2Fterm%2Fvt-output-port..rkt%29._term-enable-mouse%29%29) [3] [term/vt-output-port.rkt · master · Dominik Joe Pantůček / tui-term · GitLab](https://gitlab.com/racketeer/tui-term/-/blob/master/term/vt-output-port.rkt?ref_type=heads#L23) [4] [term/tty-input-port.rkt · master · Dominik Joe Pantůček / tui-term · GitLab](https://gitlab.com/racketeer/tui-term/-/blob/master/term/tty-input-port.rkt?ref_type=heads#L53) [5] [term/tty.rkt · master · Dominik Joe Pantůček / tui-term · GitLab](https://gitlab.com/racketeer/tui-term/-/blob/master/term/tty.rkt?ref_type=heads#L13) ---
**Author:** ![jbclements](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/jbclements/32/11_2.png) [@jbclements](https://racket.discourse.group/u/jbclements)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/11 "2025-05-15T13:58:44Z")
Well, I think a link to your code and a parenthetical comment is maybe the way to go, here. Here's what I've got now: * * * - The new `drracket-core` package provides a version of drracket with a smaller set of dependencies. - Typed Racket has support for treelists. - The package manager computes checksums for packages when required, allowing the use and automatic upgrade of packages without them. - The `bitwise-first-bit-set` function returns the smallest bit that is set in the twos-complement representation of the given number. - The updated `dynamic-require` function makes it easier to use syntax bindings by allowing a syntax-thunk (or 'eval) to be used for them. - The `error-module-path->string-handler` parameter allows the customization of the display of module-paths in error messages. - Precision of certain numeric functions (`sin`, `cos`, and others) is improved on Windows platforms by using the MSVCRT/UCRT libraries. - The `string-append` function has improved performance and reduced memory use for long lists of strings in the Racket CS implementation. Differences are clearly noticeable for lists of length 1 million. - TCP ports use `SO_KEEPALIVE`, instructing the kernel to send periodic messages while waiting for data to check whether the connection is still responsive - Racket code using a terminal in Windows can receive mouse events as virtual terminal characters after using SetConsoleMode. (This is also already possible on macOS and Linux.) See the tui-term package for related example code. - The `#:replace-malformed-surrogate?` keyword can be used to specify a replacement for malformed unicode surrogates in JSON input - The http-client module no longer sends "Content-Length: 0" for requests without a body. - The demodularizer (`compiler/demod`) can prune more unused assignments - Several judgment rendering forms in Redex are replaced by functions, allowing more convenient abstraction. - When a distribution includes no teaching languages, DrRacket’s language-dialog configuration moves into the preferences dialog and the “Language” menu disappears. - The math library has better support for block-diagonal matrices, including both Racket and Typed Racket. - The math library contains improved implementations of acos and matrix-(cos-)angle. - The stepper again works for `big-bang` programs. - There are many other repairs and documentation imprevements! The following people contributed to this release: Alexander Shopov, Andrei Dorian Duma, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Bogdana Vereha, Cameron Moy, Chung-chieh Shan, Cutie Deng, D. Ben Knoble, Dario Hamidi, Dominik Pantůček, Gustavo Massaccesi, halfminami, Jacqueline Firth, Jason Hemann, Jens Axel Søgaard, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jordan Harman, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, owaddell-ib, Philippe Meunier, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Ryan Ficklin, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, sogaiu, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Vincent Lee, and Wing Hei Chan. * * * ---
**Author:** ![jbclements](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/jbclements/32/11_2.png) [@jbclements](https://racket.discourse.group/u/jbclements)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-17-draft-release-notes/3735/12 "2025-05-15T13:58:58Z")
Got it, many thanks.