Racket version 8.7 is now available

[spdegabrielle]

Racket version 8.7 is now available from
https://download.racket-lang.org/

As of this release:

• Typed Racket offers Shallow and Optional modes for its gradual
  types. These modes lower the cost of interacting with untyped code,
  but provide less protection against buggy interactions.
  (see https://docs.racket-lang.org/ts-reference/behavior-of-types.html )

• Racket uses Unicode 14.0 for character and string operations, and
  includes grapheme operations. DrRacket supports emojis.
  (see https://docs.racket-lang.org/gui/editor-overview.html#%28part._graphemes%29 )

• Racket supports RV64G (RISC-V).

• Programmers can disable definition shadowing using
  (#%declare #:require=define).
  (see https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/module.html#%28form.%28%28quote.~23~25kernel%29._~23~25declare%29%29 )

• The module dependency graphs available using raco dependencies-graph
  and DrRacket's Module browser are faster and have new package
  filtering support.
  (see https://docs.racket-lang.org/drracket/module-browser.html#%28idx._%28gentag.39.%28lib._scribblings%2Fdrracket%2Fdrracket..scrbl%29%29%29 )

• DrRacket is more responsive when killing programs that produce a lot
  of output.

• Plot 3D allows negative altitude values (e.g., looking at the plot
  from "below").
  (see https://docs.racket-lang.org/plot/plotting.html#%28def._%28%28lib._plot%2Fmain..rkt%29._plot3d%29%29 )

• The scriblib/bibtex and scriblib/autobib libraries support DOIs.
  (see https://docs.racket-lang.org/scriblib/autobib.html#%28def._%28%28lib._scriblib%2Fautobib..rkt%29._make-bib%29%29 )

• There are many other repairs and improvements!

The following people contributed to this release:

Adit Cahya Ramadhan, Alex Harsányi, Bart van Strien, Ben Greenman, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Cameron Moy, cheeze2000, D. Ben Knoble, Dan Anderson, Fred Fu, Geoffrey Knauth, Gustavo Massaccesi, J. Ryan Stinnett, Jack Firth, Jason Hemann, Jimmy McNutt, John Clements, Lîm Tsú-thuàn, M. Taimoor Zaeem, Mao Yifu, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, Oliver Flatt, Paulo Matos, Philip McGrath, Reuben Thomas, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Sam Phillips, Sam
Tobin-Hochstadt, Samuel Bronson, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase,
Sorin Muntean, Stephen Chang, William J. Bowman, and Winston Weinert

Official installers for Racket on many platforms are available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

If you are new to Racket try our Getting started guide

[Dominique]

Your last link is missing the '.org' bit.

[zyga]

Racket 8.7 snap package is now available in the latest/stable channel.

Install racket on Linux | Snap Store

[LiberalArtist]

Guix's Racket packages have been updated for the 8.7 release:

racket — Packages — GNU Guix

racket-minimal — Packages — GNU Guix

chez-scheme-for-racket — Packages — GNU Guix

zuo — Packages — GNU Guix

[richb-hanover]

I am fairly new to Racket. I started playing a couple years ago, and keep coming back to it. So I play for a few days, go away for a couple months (or more) and come back to find a new release.

I always have to farble around to get it working after an upgrade, most recently from 8.6 to 8.7. For example, I saw a long error message about /Users/richb/Library/Racket/...collects (might not be the right path - I didn't write it down) when I first opened DrRacket 8.7. I also had to re-install beautiful-racket.

I'm on macOS Monterey (12.6.1). Can someone give me a straightforward "just do this" set of instructions that preserves the various state that I had built up?

My goal would be simply to drag the newest DrRacket distribution to my /Applications folder, (actually, I place it in /Applications/Developer-Tools), perform a well-tested set of steps, and be on the air. Many thanks.

[sorawee]

When you freshly install a new version, no package from your previous version will be available. You can either use raco pkg migrate or “Copy from Version” in DrRacket (in File > Package Manager) to install all packages from a previous version.

Re the error: it would be nice to get the full error message. But one possibility is that it is an error from Quickscript. Quickscript shares all scripts across all Racket versions. So if you have a script that depends on an installed package in your previous version while not having the same package installed in the current version, that would cause an error. If this is the case, after using raco pkg migrate, the error would go away.

[richb-hanover]

Sorry to necro-post, but this was the good advice I was seeking for migrating to a new version:

@sorawee

...“Copy from Version” in DrRacket (in File > Package Manager) to install all packages from a previous version.

It worked great for the upgrade from 8.8 to 8.11.1. Thanks!

[spdegabrielle]

Thanks for the reminder - we really need this on the download page and on the announcements.