LDC 1.43.0

(Changes since 1.43.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.113.0, incl. new command-line option -foptimize-nothrow to restore the nothrow optimizations. (#5113, #5221, #5239, #5273) (new)
  • -foptimize-nothrow is the default setting when targeting Windows or WebAssembly, to make hitting #3504 much less likely.
• Support for LLVM 22. The prebuilt packages use v22.1.8. (#5097, #5102, #5172)
• Minimum LLVM version raised to 18. (#5094)
• DRuntime and Phobos now support WASI preview levels 1 and 2, based on wasi-libc, as well as Emscripten. Two caveats being that WASI (and our Emscripten support) is strictly single-threaded (currently), and that fibers are unavailable. (#5186, #5229, #5230, #5242, #5259) (new)
• New prebuilt addon packages (ldc2-*-addon-<target OS>.tar.xz) for simple cross-compilation. Simply unpack them directly into your LDC installation directory, and then cross-compile via -mtriple=… (or dub --target=…): (#5240)
  • Windows: x86_64-windows-msvc, i686-windows-msvc; no SDK required.
  • Android: aarch64-linux-android30, armv7a-linux-androideabi29, x86_64-linux-android29, i686-linux-android29; needs an Android NDK (r27) and its toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/*/bin/ dir in your PATH.
  • WASI: wasm32-unknown-wasip1, wasm32-unknown-wasip2; needs a WASI SDK and its bin/ dir in your PATH. (#5207, #5242)
  • Emscripten: wasm32-unknown-emscripten; needs a Emscripten SDK and its upstream/emscripten/ dir in your PATH. (#5259) (new)
• The @ldc.attributes.restrict UDA is now supported for dynamic-array parameters too. Builtin array ops (c[] = a[] * b[] etc.) use it, enabling auto-vectorization. Note that for such array ops, the dlang spec prescribes that the slice on the left and any slices on the right must not overlap (https://dlang.org/spec/arrays.html#array-operations), and this knowledge is now used by the optimizer; e.g., x[] *= x[] is invalid. (#5148, #5168, #5176)
• DMD-style inline assembly: asm { naked; } is now much less of a special case wrt. codegen - such naked functions are now emitted as if asm { naked; } was replaced with the @naked function UDA. IR-wise, they are not emitted as module-level asm blobs anymore, but regular IR functions. This should lift a few former asm { naked; }-specific restrictions and fixed at least one LTO issue. (#5041)
• dcompute: Added support for Native device code Embedding (PTX and SPIR-V) into the host executable's .rodata section. (#5140)
• WebAssembly:
  • The default -fvisibility setting was changed to hidden, like clang, so that only explicit exported symbols are not hidden. And -L--export-dynamic isn't used by default for linking anymore either; add it manually to export all non-hidden symbols, as for normal Posix targets. The net effect is that the size of linked wasm binaries shrinks significantly by default. (#5216)
  • Exceptions are now supported. Currently, using D and C++ exceptions are mutually exclusive. If linking in DRuntime, you cannot link in C++ code relying on libunwind (exceptions), due to the hacks required to convince LLVM to use D's EH personality. A future LLVM release may help remove the constraint. (#5162)
  • In order to allow the GC to function correctly, a new pass is run after optimizations, to spill potential pointers onto the "stack". This pass is enabled by default for all Wasm targets, but can be disabled with -betterC or the new -disable-wasm-ptrs-spill. (#5178)
• A new -fno-moduleinfo-localclasses switch has been added. This disables populating ModuleInfo.localClasses for each module. This can help eliminate/strip more dead-code (thus decreasing binary sizes), but breaks Object.factory and any other code relying on iterating over said localClasses. Enabled by default for Wasm targets. (#5224, #5231)
• Predefined version LDC_LLVM_* now only contains the LLVM major version, i.e., former version (LDC_LLVM_1801) with LLVM v18.1 is now version (LDC_LLVM_18). Use ldc.intrinsics.LLVM_version for backwards compatibility if really needed. (#5109)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 18 - 22.
• WebAssembly: extern(C) main is now mangled as __main_void or __main_argc_argv as appropriate, matching Clang behavior (#5186).

Bug fixes

• Posix: Don't export non-class TypeInfos from binaries. (#5217)
• Apple: Pre-define version(Apple) on iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS. (#5192, #5195)
• Don't enable loop-vectorization by default with -Oz and -O1. (#5233, #5253)

LDC 1.43.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version ~2.113.0, incl. new command-line option -foptimize-nothrow to restore the nothrow optimizations. (#5113, #5221, #5239)
  • -foptimize-nothrow is the default setting when targeting Windows or WebAssembly, to make hitting #3504 much less likely.
• Support for LLVM 22. The prebuilt packages use v22.1.8. (#5097, #5102, #5172)
• Minimum LLVM version raised to 18. (#5094)
• DRuntime and Phobos now support WASI preview levels 1 and 2, based on wasi-libc. Two caveats being that WASI is strictly single-threaded (currently), and that fibers are unavailable. (#5186, #5229, #5230, #5242)
• New prebuilt addon packages (ldc2-*-addon-<target OS>.tar.xz) for simple cross-compilation. Simply unpack them directly into your LDC installation directory, and then cross-compile via -mtriple=… (or dub --target=…): (#5240)
  • Windows: x86_64-windows-msvc, i686-windows-msvc; no SDK required.
  • Android: aarch64-linux-android30, armv7a-linux-androideabi29, x86_64-linux-android29, i686-linux-android29; needs an Android NDK (r27) and its toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/*/bin/ dir in your PATH.
  • WASI: wasm32-unknown-wasip1, wasm32-unknown-wasip2; needs a WASI SDK and its bin/ dir in your PATH. (#5207, #5242)
• The @ldc.attributes.restrict UDA is now supported for dynamic-array parameters too. Builtin array ops (c[] = a[] * b[] etc.) use it, enabling auto-vectorization. Note that for such array ops, the dlang spec prescribes that the slice on the left and any slices on the right must not overlap (https://dlang.org/spec/arrays.html#array-operations), and this knowledge is now used by the optimizer; e.g., x[] *= x[] is invalid. (#5148, #5168, #5176)
• DMD-style inline assembly: asm { naked; } is now much less of a special case wrt. codegen - such naked functions are now emitted as if asm { naked; } was replaced with the @naked function UDA. IR-wise, they are not emitted as module-level asm blobs anymore, but regular IR functions. This should lift a few former asm { naked; }-specific restrictions and fixed at least one LTO issue. (#5041)
• dcompute: Added support for Native device code Embedding (PTX and SPIR-V) into the host executable's .rodata section. (#5140)
• WebAssembly:
  • The default -fvisibility setting was changed to hidden, like clang, so that only explicit exported symbols are not hidden. And -L--export-dynamic isn't used by default for linking anymore either; add it manually to export all non-hidden symbols, as for normal Posix targets. The net effect is that the size of linked wasm binaries shrinks significantly by default. (#5216)
  • Exceptions are now supported. Currently, using D and C++ exceptions are mutually exclusive. If linking in DRuntime, you cannot link in C++ code relying on libunwind (exceptions), due to the hacks required to convince LLVM to use D's EH personality. A future LLVM release may help remove the constraint. (#5162)
  • In order to allow the GC to function correctly, a new pass is run after optimizations, to spill potential pointers onto the "stack". This pass is enabled by default for all Wasm targets, but can be disabled with -betterC or the new -disable-wasm-ptrs-spill. (#5178)
• A new -fno-moduleinfo-localclasses switch has been added. This disables populating ModuleInfo.localClasses for each module. This can help eliminate/strip more dead-code (thus decreasing binary sizes), but breaks Object.factory and any other code relying on iterating over said localClasses. Enabled by default for Wasm targets. (#5224, #5231)
• Predefined version LDC_LLVM_* now only contains the LLVM major version, i.e., former version (LDC_LLVM_1801) with LLVM v18.1 is now version (LDC_LLVM_18). Use ldc.intrinsics.LLVM_version for backwards compatibility if really needed. (#5109)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 18 - 22.
• WebAssembly: extern(C) main is now mangled as __main_void or __main_argc_argv as appropriate, matching Clang behavior (#5186).

Bug fixes

• Posix: Don't export non-class TypeInfos from binaries. (#5217)
• Apple: Pre-define version(Apple) on iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS. (#5192, #5195)
• Don't enable loop-vectorization by default with -Oz and -O1. (#5233, #5253)

LDC 1.42.0

(Changes since 1.42.0-beta3 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.112.1+, incl. new command-line options -extI, -dllimport=externalOnly and -edition. (#4949, #4962, #4988, #5029, #5042, #5046, #5051, #5061, #5067, #5069, #5076) (new)
• Support for LLVM 21. The prebuilt packages use v21.1.8. (#4950, #5033)
• New prebuilt package for Alpine Linux aarch64 with musl libc, analogous to the existing x86_64 package. (#4943)
• Breaking change for dcompute: The special @kernel UDA is now a function and requires parentheses as in @kernel() void foo(){}. Optionally you can provide launch dimensions, @kernel([2,4,8]), to specify to the compute runtime how the kernel is intended to be launched.
• ldc2.conf can now be a directory. All the files inside it, ordered naturally, will be concatenated and treated like a big config. (#4954)
  • Running ldc-build-runtime --installWithSuffix now includes installing a target-specific .conf file to that directory. (#4978)
• Breaking change for ldc2.conf cmake generation: The cmake build process now generates the ldc2.conf and ldc2_install.conf as directories. ldc2*.conf.in and ADDITIONAL_DEFAULT_LDC_SWITCHES have been removed, if you need to add switches check out makeConfSection in LdcConfig.cmake. (#4954)
• When cross-compiling, the fallback value for the (cross) C compiler will be picked based on some heuristics.
  The old behavior was to default to cc.
  As an example, when cross-compiling for aarch64-linux-gnu the compilers that are checked are:
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-clang
  • clang --target=aarch64-linux-gnu
• The prebuilt arm64/universal macOS packages additionally bundle the arm64 iOS-simulator libraries, for out-of-the-box cross-compilation support via e.g. -mtriple=arm64-apple-ios12.0-simulator. (#4974)
• New --fdebug-prefix-map command-line option and changed debuginfo file/directory name splitting logic (both now similar to clang), to aid reproducible builds. (#5039)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 21.
• PowerPC64: real now matches the C++ host compiler's long double when compiling for the native target, not just on Linux hosts. (#5054)

LDC 1.42.0-beta3

(Changes since 1.42.0-beta2 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.112.1+, incl. new command-line options -extI, -dllimport=externalOnly and -edition. (#4949, #4962, #4988, #5029, #5042, #5046, #5051, #5061, #5067) (new)
• Support for LLVM 21. The prebuilt packages use v21.1.8. (#4950, #5033)
• New prebuilt package for Alpine Linux aarch64 with musl libc, analogous to the existing x86_64 package. (#4943)
• Breaking change for dcompute: The special @kernel UDA is now a function and requires parentheses as in @kernel() void foo(){}. Optionally you can provide launch dimensions, @kernel([2,4,8]), to specify to the compute runtime how the kernel is intended to be launched.
• ldc2.conf can now be a directory. All the files inside it, ordered naturally, will be concatenated and treated like a big config. (#4954)
  • Running ldc-build-runtime --installWithSuffix now includes installing a target-specific .conf file to that directory. (#4978)
• Breaking change for ldc2.conf cmake generation: The cmake build process now generates the ldc2.conf and ldc2_install.conf as directories. ldc2*.conf.in and ADDITIONAL_DEFAULT_LDC_SWITCHES have been removed, if you need to add switches check out makeConfSection in LdcConfig.cmake. (#4954)
• When cross-compiling, the fallback value for the (cross) C compiler will be picked based on some heuristics.
  The old behavior was to default to cc.
  As an example, when cross-compiling for aarch64-linux-gnu the compilers that are checked are:
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-clang
  • clang --target=aarch64-linux-gnu
• The prebuilt arm64/universal macOS packages additionally bundle the arm64 iOS-simulator libraries, for out-of-the-box cross-compilation support via e.g. -mtriple=arm64-apple-ios12.0-simulator. (#4974)
• New --fdebug-prefix-map command-line option and changed debuginfo file/directory name splitting logic (both now similar to clang), to aid reproducible builds. (#5039)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 21.
• PowerPC64: real now matches the C++ host compiler's long double when compiling for the native target, not just on Linux hosts. (#5054)

LDC 1.42.0-beta2

(Changes since 1.42.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.112.1+, incl. new command-line options -extI, -dllimport=externalOnly and -edition. (#4949, #4962, #4988, #5029, #5042, #5046, #5051) (new)
• Support for LLVM 21. The prebuilt packages use v21.1.8. (#4950, #5033) (new)
• New prebuilt package for Alpine Linux aarch64 with musl libc, analogous to the existing x86_64 package. (#4943)
• Breaking change for dcompute: The special @kernel UDA is now a function and requires parentheses as in @kernel() void foo(){}. Optionally you can provide launch dimensions, @kernel([2,4,8]), to specify to the compute runtime how the kernel is intended to be launched.
• ldc2.conf can now be a directory. All the files inside it, ordered naturally, will be concatenated and treated like a big config. (#4954)
  • Running ldc-build-runtime --installWithSuffix now includes installing a target-specific .conf file to that directory. (#4978)
• Breaking change for ldc2.conf cmake generation: The cmake build process now generates the ldc2.conf and ldc2_install.conf as directories. ldc2*.conf.in and ADDITIONAL_DEFAULT_LDC_SWITCHES have been removed, if you need to add switches check out makeConfSection in LdcConfig.cmake. (#4954)
• When cross-compiling, the fallback value for the (cross) C compiler will be picked based on some heuristics.
  The old behavior was to default to cc.
  As an example, when cross-compiling for aarch64-linux-gnu the compilers that are checked are:
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-clang
  • clang --target=aarch64-linux-gnu
• The prebuilt arm64/universal macOS packages additionally bundle the arm64 iOS-simulator libraries, for out-of-the-box cross-compilation support via e.g. -mtriple=arm64-apple-ios12.0-simulator. (#4974)
• New --fdebug-prefix-map command-line option and changed debuginfo file/directory name splitting logic (both now similar to clang), to aid reproducible builds. (#5039) (new)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 21.
• PowerPC64: real now matches the C++ host compiler's long double when compiling for the native target, not just on Linux hosts. (#5054) (new)

LDC 1.42.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version ~2.112.0, incl. new command-line options -extI, -dllimport=externalOnly and -edition. (#4949, #4962, #4988, #5029)
• Support for LLVM 21. Beware that we have seen misoptimizations for std.json at one point (not anymore). (#4950, #5033)
• New prebuilt package for Alpine Linux aarch64 with musl libc, analogous to the existing x86_64 package. (#4943)
• Breaking change for dcompute: The special @kernel UDA is now a function and requires parentheses as in @kernel() void foo(){}. Optionally you can provide launch dimensions, @kernel([2,4,8]), to specify to the compute runtime how the kernel is intended to be launched.
• ldc2.conf can now be a directory. All the files inside it, ordered naturally, will be concatenated and treated like a big config. (#4954)
  • Running ldc-build-runtime --installWithSuffix now includes installing a target-specific .conf file to that directory. (#4978)
• Breaking change for ldc2.conf cmake generation: The cmake build process now generates the ldc2.conf and ldc2_install.conf as directories. ldc2*.conf.in and ADDITIONAL_DEFAULT_LDC_SWITCHES have been removed, if you need to add switches check out makeConfSection in LdcConfig.cmake. (#4954)
• When cross-compiling, the fallback value for the (cross) C compiler will be picked based on some heuristics.
  The old behavior was to default to cc.
  As an example, when cross-compiling for aarch64-linux-gnu the compilers that are checked are:
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
  • aarch64-linux-gnu-clang
  • clang --target=aarch64-linux-gnu
• The prebuilt arm64/universal macOS packages additionally bundle the arm64 iOS-simulator libraries, for out-of-the-box cross-compilation support via e.g. -mtriple=arm64-apple-ios12.0-simulator. (#4974)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 21.

LDC 1.41.0

(Changes since 1.41.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.111.0+. (#4877, #4910, #4918, #4941) (new)
• Support for LLVM 20. The prebuilt packages use v20.1.5. (#4843, #4911, #4935) (new)
  • The dynamic-compile (JIT) feature has regressed with LLVM 20. Use LLVM 18 or 19 for that feature.
• Keep frame pointers by default with -O for some targets, notably AArch64 (except Windows), x86_64 (except Windows and glibc Linux), Windows x86, and Android. This fixes druntime backtraces with optimized code (incl. prebuilt druntime/Phobos). (#4889)
• The prebuilt (non-musl) Linux packages are now generated on Ubuntu 22.04; the minimum glibc version has accordingly been raised from v2.31 to v2.35. (#4893)
• druntime: Optimize core.int128 via inline IR/assembly. (#4892)
• Follow clang wrt. unwind tables emission, enabling them for most popular targets. (#4888)
• ldc2.conf: Arrays can now be appended to via the ~= operator. (#4848, #4856)
• New --installWithSuffix command-line option for the ldc-build-runtime tool, to simplify copying the libraries to an existing LDC installation. (#4870)
• CMake changes (for building LDC itself):
  • Minimum CMake version bumped to v3.16. (#4898)
  • macOS: Fix weird linker error when running CMake the first time. (#3901, #4926) (new)
  • Reworked integration of the LLVM compiler-rt libraries. Package maintainers may want to see docs/compiler_rt.md. (#4665)
  • Somewhat simplify separate compiler and runtime builds, incl. cross-compiling LDC itself. (#4872)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 20. (new)
• RISC-V: Fiber context switching is now implemented natively. (#4867) (new)

Bug fixes

• Prebuilt macOS packages: Fix ldmd2 and other bundled executables crashing on macOS v15.4. (#4899, #4912) (new)
• ImportC: Run C preprocessor in C11 mode. (#4933) (new)
• ImportC Windows: Disable clang headers when C-preprocessing with clang-cl. (#4934) (new)
• Fix ICE on invalid constant address-of expressions. (#4938, #4939) (new)
• Allow Unicode in fully qualified label names. (#4927, #4929) (new)

LDC 1.41.0-beta1

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.111.0+. (#4877, #4910)
• Keep frame pointers by default with -O for some targets, notably AArch64 (except Windows), x86_64 (except Windows and glibc Linux), Windows x86, and Android. This fixes druntime backtraces with optimized code (incl. prebuilt druntime/Phobos). (#4889)
• The prebuilt (non-musl) Linux packages are now generated on Ubuntu 22.04; the minimum glibc version has accordingly been raised from v2.31 to v2.35. (#4893)
• ldc2.conf: Arrays can now be appended to via the ~= operator. (#4848, #4856)
• New --installWithSuffix command-line option for the ldc-build-runtime tool, to simplify copying the libraries to an existing LDC installation. (#4870)

LDC 1.40.1

(Changes since 1.40.1-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend and druntime bumped to version 2.110.0 final. (#4854, #4868)
• LLVM for prebuilt packages bumped to v19.1.7. (#4822)
• New prebuilt package for Alpine Linux x86_64 with musl libc. It's currently generated on Alpine v3.21, using its default LLVM 19. Most bundled executables are fully static and can be run on ~all distros. (#4826, #4862)
• Revived dynamic-compile (JIT) functionality (formerly unsupported since LLVM 12), supporting LLVM 18+ now. (#4774)
• ldc2.conf: %%ldcversion%% placeholder added, allowing to refer to version-specific directories.
• Windows: The prebuilt packages now bundle an official libcurl build (from https://curl.se/windows/), currently v8.12.1. The static library (curl_a.lib) isn't available anymore. When bundling this libcurl.dll with your binaries, make sure to include curl-ca-bundle.crt too (in the same directory as the DLL), to prevent 'SSL peer certificate or SSH remote key was not OK' exceptions. (#4855, #4875) (new)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 19.
• Initial compiler and runtime support for ppc64 and ppc64le systems that use IEEE 754R 128-bit floating-point as the default 128-bit floating-point format. (#4833, #4840)
• Initial support for Windows on ARM64. The prebuilt Windows multilib package/installer bundles prebuilt arm64 druntime and Phobos; cross-compiling works out of the box via -mtriple=aarch64-windows-msvc, but you currently need to set up a suited MSVC arm64 build environment before yourself (e.g., by running vsdevcmd.bat -arch=arm64 -host_arch=x64). (#4835, #4846)

Bug fixes

• Prebuilt macOS universal package: Fix automatic bundled libLTO.dylib usage when linking with LTO. (#4857)
• Building multi-file D applications with control-flow protection will no longer cause LDC to throw an internal compiler error. (#4828)

LDC 1.40.1-beta1

Big news

• Frontend and druntime bumped to version 2.110.0 final. (#4854, #4868)
• LLVM for prebuilt packages bumped to v19.1.7. (#4822)
• New prebuilt package for Alpine Linux x86_64 with musl libc. It's currently generated on Alpine v3.21, using its default LLVM 19. Most bundled executables are fully static and can be run on ~all distros. (#4826, #4862)
• Revived dynamic-compile (JIT) functionality (formerly unsupported since LLVM 12), supporting LLVM 18+ now. (#4774)
• ldc2.conf: %%ldcversion%% placeholder added, allowing to refer to version-specific directories.
• Windows: The prebuilt packages now bundle an official libcurl build (from https://curl.se/windows/), currently v8.12.1. The static library (curl_a.lib) isn't available anymore. (#4855)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 15 - 19.
• Initial compiler and runtime support for ppc64 and ppc64le systems that use IEEE 754R 128-bit floating-point as the default 128-bit floating-point format. (#4833, #4840)
• Initial support for Windows on ARM64. The prebuilt Windows multilib package/installer bundles prebuilt arm64 druntime and Phobos; cross-compiling works out of the box via -mtriple=aarch64-windows-msvc, but you currently need to set up a suited MSVC arm64 build environment before yourself (e.g., by running vsdevcmd.bat -arch=arm64 -host_arch=x64). (#4835, #4846)

Bug fixes

• Prebuilt macOS universal package: Fix automatic bundled libLTO.dylib usage when linking with LTO. (#4857)
• Building multi-file D applications with control-flow protection will no longer cause LDC to throw an internal compiler error. (#4828)