Release Announcement for v8.15

[jbclements]

The release announcement sketch that I have so far is below.  Please
mail me new items and/or edits.

Please phrase announcements using complete sentences and avoid the
word "now".

---

• Documentation search results are ordered, with visual cues indicating
  what their source is (core, main-distribution, etc.). These results
  are also grouped by language family (Racket, Rhombus, etc.)
• The Rhombus language is distributed as part of the main distribution.
• DrRacket offers to restore previously open files when starting, which
  can be made the default.
• In DrRacket, Picts can be saved by right-clicking.
• iOS is a compilation target, distinct from macOS.
• Hostname resolution on some platforms passes the AI_V4MAPPED and
  AI_ADDRCONFIG flags to getaddrinfo, for some improvement in
  IPv4 vs. IPv6 handling.
• Raco pkg introduces the uninstall command, deprecating the remove
  command.
• Raco pkg improves the handling of --clone and --unclone.
• Memory allocated using the ffi/unsafe library can be initially
  zeroed, using the 'zeroed-atomic and 'zeroed-atomic-interior
  flags.

The following people contributed to this release:

Alec Mills, Alex Knauth, Ashlynn Anderson, Ashton Wiersdorf, Ben
Greenman, Benjamin Yeung, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Breck Yunits, Carl
Gay, Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), CooperCorad, Crystal Jacobs, D. Ben Knoble,
Dexter Santucci, Eduardo Cavazos, Emil Szpakowski, evelynmitchell, Greg
Hendershott, Gunnar Ahlberg, Gwen Weinholt, Idiomdrottning, Ikko
Eltociear Ashimine, Jacqueline Firth, Jarhmander, Jay McCarthy, Jens
Axel Søgaard, Jimmy McNutt, jinser, Jinser Kafka, John Clements,
lukejianu, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matej Fandl, Matthew Flatt, Matthias
Felleisen, Michael Ballantyne, Mike Sperber, olopierpa, Paul Morris,
Phil Nguyen, Philip McGrath, Robby Findler, Ronald Garcia, Ryan
Culpepper, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Siddhartha Kasivajhula,
Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Syntacticlosure, Taylor
Allred, Tomas Fabrizio Orsi, Wing Hei Chan, and Yafei Yang.

---

Current package regressions: Release Regressions for 8.15 · Issue #5092 · racket/racket · GitHub

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[usao]

• The Rhombus language is distributed as part of the main distribution.

Really?

To clarify, Rhombus itself is changed to come with a “main distribution”, but it isn’t a part of the (Racket) main distribution (unless I’m missing anything).

[benknoble]

• Raco pkg introduces the uninstall command, deprecating the remove
  command.

Perhaps we should mention the parallelism, like

• Raco pkg introduces the uninstall command as the opposite of install, deprecating the remove command.

?

[badkins]

• iOS is a compilation target, distinct from macOS.

Can someone elaborate on this capability?

[jbclements]

Looks like this is primarily my misunderstanding; there's currently a dependency from main-distribution-test on gui-lib which depends on shrubbery-lib, which brings the rhombus repo into the build chain, along with all its commits. I interpreted the inclusion of the rhombus repository in the build chain as indicating that the full rhombus library was included; instead, it appears just to be shrubbery-lib and whatever it depends on, if anything.

[samth]

Also, just to be clear, main-distribution-test is not part of what's distributed at all. So nothing is changing about the main Racket distribution.

[samth]

See cs,iOS: add iOS-specific machine type and make OpenSSL work by Bogdanp · Pull Request #5057 · racket/racket · GitHub and add {,t}{a6,arm64}ios machine types by Bogdanp · Pull Request #864 · cisco/ChezScheme · GitHub

[jbclements]

Took this suggestion, thanks!

[shhyou]

1

I feel like fixes and improvements to raco demod is worth mentioning:

Trying out raco demod

Hi Thought I’d try out raco demod but I’ve run into a little roadblock I’ve got a nice little module cli-command/hello.rkt at master · racket-templates/cli-command · GitHub I ran raco demod -o hellod -g hello.rkt and it made hellod with no problems. Then I ran raco exe -o hellodemod hellod to make my executable. Sadly this fails with missing submodule declaration: ‘configure-runtime . Would appreciate any guidance and/or pointers to the manual. Best regards Stephen (Edit corrected typos…

2

@jbclements

• Hostname resolution on some platforms passes the AI_V4MAPPED and
  AI_ADDRCONFIG flags to getaddrinfo, for some improvement in
  IPv4 vs. IPv6 handling.

How about something user-oriented like: Racket supports falling back to IPv4 during hostname resolution when IPv6 fails.

From:

IPv6 fallback to IPv4

I recently had an issue where my IPv6 connection was not working (ping google.com resolved to an IPv6 address and failed to get a response), but IPv4 was working (ping -4 google.com got responses). I was able to use Firefox without noticing any issues, but my racket programs had failed with timeout errors. Is there perhaps a way to either force racket to use IPv4 or try to set a fallback mechanism to use IPv4 in case of IPv6 connection failures? So far, this situation seems very rare for my inte…

3

@jbclements

• Raco pkg introduces the uninstall command, deprecating the remove
  command.

Maybe this can be mentioned earlier because it's user-facing.

[LiberalArtist]

@benknoble

Raco pkg introduces the uninstall command as the opposite of install, deprecating the remove command.

Sometimes people understand “deprecated” to mean something like “will be removed in the next release,” whereas in Racket we more often mean “is no longer recommended.” Maybe we should consider something like:

Raco pkg introduces the uninstall command as the opposite of install. The remove command is retained for compatibility.

Also, I don't love writing raco pkg as “Raco pkg”.

[greghendershott]

This is the first I noticed this, and maybe I'm reading an outdated version of the docs, but:

It looks like it's merely an alternative new name -- both "uninstall" and "remove" are aliases for the exact same functionality; "uninstall" is preferred as a clear antonym of "install".

Is that correct?

[If so: I really agree that "deprecated" is misleading. My first reaction was, dang, I need to learn about some defect with the old "remove" -- and even it continues to work (badly) for compatibility, maybe I ought to run around and update things to use the shiny new "uninstall" instead.]

[al_shopov]

Is it possible to also include authors of updated translations in the announcement?

In this case in the GitHub - racket/string-constants repo:

cd string-constants
git log v8.14.. | grep Author

It is only Robby (who added strings) and me.

But in principle - is it possible to regularly add translators as well?

Kind regards:
al_shopov

[robby]

@al_shopov

Is it possible to also include authors of updated translations in the announcement?

I think this is a great idea.

(Just in case it wasn't clear, I didn't add any translations! )

[jbclements]

Okay, I've adopted @LiberalArtist's wording, with the following tweak to try to avoid your misunderstanding:

• raco pkg introduces the uninstall command as the opposite of install. The remove name for this functionality is retained for compatibility.

[jbclements]

Sounds good. To check on my understanding; there's some reason why this repo's committers don't already wind up on this list?

[jbclements]

1. Well, I do see that a general "many bugs are fixed" message is missing, I've added that. Do you think that this bug is particularly notable?

2. Took your suggestion. Just to check: have you read the docs for these flags, to ensure this is a reasonable summary?

3. I reordered somewhat, to move the user-facing changes up.

Many thanks!

[jbclements]

Sorry, neglected to post the updated notes:

---

• Documentation search results are ordered, with visual cues indicating
  what their source is (core, main-distribution, etc.). These results
  are also grouped by language family (Racket, Rhombus, etc.).
• DrRacket offers to restore previously open files when starting, which
  can be made the default.
• In DrRacket, Picts can be saved by right-clicking.
• raco pkg introduces the uninstall command as the opposite of install.
  The remove name for this functionality is retained for compatibility.
• raco pkg improves the handling of --clone and --unclone.
• iOS is a compilation target, distinct from macOS.
• Racket supports falling back to IPv4 during hostname resolution when
  IPv6 fails.
• Memory allocated using the ffi/unsafe library can be initially
  zeroed, using the 'zeroed-atomic and 'zeroed-atomic-interior
  flags.
• Many other bugs are fixed and documentation has been improved!

The following people contributed to this release:

Alec Mills, Alex Knauth, Ashlynn Anderson, Ashton Wiersdorf, Ben
Greenman, Benjamin Yeung, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Breck Yunits, Carl
Gay, Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), CooperCorad, Crystal Jacobs, D. Ben Knoble,
Dexter Santucci, Eduardo Cavazos, Emil Szpakowski, evelynmitchell, Greg
Hendershott, Gunnar Ahlberg, Gwen Weinholt, Idiomdrottning, Ikko
Eltociear Ashimine, Jacqueline Firth, Jarhmander, Jay McCarthy, Jens
Axel Søgaard, Jimmy McNutt, jinser, Jinser Kafka, John Clements,
lukejianu, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matej Fandl, Matthew Flatt, Matthias
Felleisen, Michael Ballantyne, Mike Sperber, olopierpa, Paul Morris,
Phil Nguyen, Philip McGrath, Robby Findler, Ronald Garcia, Ryan
Culpepper, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Siddhartha Kasivajhula,
Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Syntacticlosure, Taylor
Allred, Tomas Fabrizio Orsi, Wing Hei Chan, and Yafei Yang.

---

[jbclements]

I did a small amount of investigation, and it looks to me (take a look at the 8.14 release notes) as though contributors to the string-constants repository are already included in the list of contributors. With respect to the most recent updates, on October 20, those were not part of this release, so they should be picked up by the next one. Let me know if I'm mistaken, or if I'm misunderstanding your suggestion!

[al_shopov]

If these get auto-included - then it is fine.
Still by the look of it - my update of translations on Oct 20 was not part of tag v8.14 but is part of tag v8.15:

cd string-constants
git log v8.14..v8.15

outputs:

commit ebf2ac6d3ce2278b573b14c3723caab712a04357 (tag: v8.15, origin/release)
Author: Alexander Shopov <ash@kambanaria.org>
Date:   Sun Oct 20 08:06:46 2024 +0200

    Update Bulgarian translation (v1.47)

    Signed-off-by: Alexander Shopov <ash@kambanaria.org>
    (cherry picked from commit fc906f79f4459bcbf57e55d5e01bfcf04abe4aae)

commit 2f5680fd12e0c26d23bab8705813416a0496d621
Author: Robby Findler <robby@racket-lang.org>
Date:   Tue Aug 20 15:32:14 2024 -0500

    add string constants for opening the files from a previous session

You decide.

[jbclements]

You are correct! This is a bit of a corner case, it looks like Robby picked this commit for the release after I had already scraped the logs for the names of the committers. I have added you to the list of contributors for the 8.15 release, many thanks for your help!