changelog.md

Summary of user-visible changes

Backwards-incompatible changes are marked in bold.

0.9.3 / ???

• Fix a bug when the repl does completion on tables with a function metatable index
• Change how auto-gensym prefixes are calculated in compilation output
• Add separate FENNEL_MACRO_PATH environment variable for fennel.macro-path
• Add separate fennel.macro-path for searching for macro modules
• Fix a bug with strict global checking in macro modules
• Make macro tables shadow runtime tables more consistently
• Add ,complete foo repl command
• Add fennel.syntax function describing built-ins
• Add accumulate macro
• Keep gaps when printing sparse sequences; see max-sparse-gap option in fennel.view

0.9.2 / 2021-05-02

• Add Fennel for Clojure Users guide
• Never treat _ENV as an unknown global
• Fix multi-value destructuring in pattern matches that use where
• Fix a bug around disambiguating parens in method calls
• Improve behavior of ?. when used directly on nil
• Fix a bug where line number correlation was thrown off in macros
• Fix a bug where --use-bit-lib was not propagating to the REPL
• Fix a launcher bug where -v was not implemented as an alias for --version

0.9.1 / 2021-04-10

• Fix a bug in compiled output for statement separators in LuaJIT

0.9.0 / 2021-04-08

• Add --use-bit-lib flag to allow bitwise operations to work in LuaJIT
• Add macro-searchers table for finding macros similarly to package.searchers
• Support &as inside pattern matches
• Include stack trace for errors during macroexpansion
• The sym function in compile scope now takes a source table second argument
• Support :until clauses for early termination in all loops
• Support :escape-newlines? and :prefer-colon? options in fennel.view
• Add nil-safe table access operator ?.
• Add support for guards using where/or clauses in match
• Allow symbols to compare as equal in macros based on name
• Fix a bug where newlines were emitted with backslashes in fennel.view
• Fix a bug in the compiler sandbox where requiring had the wrong scope

0.8.1 / 2021-02-02

• Improve compiler sandboxing to copy standard tables and protect metatables
• Fix an issue where loading nested copies of Fennel would fail
• Fix a bug where sparse tables were displayed incorrectly in fennel view
• Ensure the compiler runs under strict mode
• Fix a bug where certain numbers would be emitted incorrectly

0.8.0 / 2021-01-18

• Allow the parser to optionally include comments in the parsed AST
• The fennelview module is now incorporated into the compiler as fennel.view
• Fully rewrite fennelview for better indentation handling; see fennelview docstring for detailed description of API changes
• Improve printing of destructured args in function arglist in doc
• Allow plugins to provide repl commands
• Fix a bug where decimal numbers would be emitted with commas in some locales
• Label auto-generated locals in Lua output for improved readability
• Fix the behavior of ... inside eval-compiler
• Warn when using the & character in identifiers; will be disallowed later
• Add whole-table destructuring with &as
• Add list/table "comprehension" macros (collect/icollect)
• Numbers using underscores for readability may not begin with an underscore
• Provide ... arguments consistently with Lua when requiring modules
• Fix a bug where import-macros would not respect certain compiler options
• fennelview: respect presence of __fennelview metamethod on userdata metatables
• Fix a bug where shebang caused incorrect sourcemapped row/col in stacktraces

0.7.0 / 2020-11-03

• Improve printing of multiple return values in the repl
• Add repl commands including ,reload; see ,help for a full list
• Fix several bugs in the linter
• Fix a bug where --no-compiler-sandbox did not apply in import-macros
• Fix a bug where compiler sandboxing makes macrodebug fail to print correctly
• Correct --no-sandbox-compiler to --no-compiler-sandbox in help/docs
• Fix a bug in : when used with methods that are not valid Lua names

0.6.0 / 2020-09-03

This release introduces the plugin system as well as starting to sandbox the compiler environment for safer code loading. Nothing is blocked yet, but it emits warnings when macros use functionality that is not considered safe; future versions will prevent this.

• Change table reference notation in fennelview to use @
• Fix a bug where long arglists could get jumbled.
• Add plugin system.
• Sandbox compiler environment and emit a warning when it leaks.
• Fix a bug where repls would fail when provided with an overridden env.
• Expose list? and sym? in compiler API.
• Fix a bug where method calls would early-evaluate their receiver.
• Fix a bug where multi-arity comparisons would early-evaluate their arguments.
• Add --lua CLI flag for specifying a custom Lua command/executable. (#324)

0.5.0 / 2020-08-08

This release features a version of the Fennel compiler that is self-hosted and written entirely in Fennel!

• Fix a bug where lambdas with no body would return true instead of nil.
• Fix a bug where global mangling would break when used with an environment.
• Fix a bug where globals tracking would lose track of allowed list.
• Fix a bug where top-level expressions in include would get skipped.
• The "fennelfriend" module is now incorporated into the compiler, not separate.

0.4.2 / 2020-07-11

This release mostly includes small bug fixes but also adds the with-open macro for automating closing file handles, etc.

• Fix a bug where multiple include calls would splice locals incorrectly
• Support varargs in hashfn with $... (#298)
• Add with-open macro for auto-closing file handles (#295)
• Add --native-module and --native-library to --compile-binary command
• Make autogensym symbols omit "#" when appending unique suffix
• Fix a bug where autogensyms (using #) couldn't be used as multisyms (#294)
• Add fennel.searchModule function to module API
• Fix a bug causing include to ignore compiler options
• Fix a bug causing the repl to fail when $HOME env var was not set

0.4.1 / 2020-05-25

This release mostly includes small bug fixes, but also introduces a very experimental command for compiling standalone executables.

• Experimental --compile-binary command (#281)
• Support shebang in all contexts, not just dofile
• Pinpoint source in compile errors even when loading from a string
• Fix a bug where included modules could get included twice (#278)
• Fix a 0.4.0 bug where macros can't expand to string/boolean/number primitives (#279)
• Fix a bug in macros returning forms of a different length from their input (#276)

0.4.0 / 2020-05-12

This release adds support for Lua 5.3's bitwise operators as well as a new way of importing macro modules. It also adds pick-values and pick-args for a little more flexibility around function args and return values. The compiler now tries to emit friendlier errors that suggest fixes for problems.

• Add import-macros for more flexible macro module loading (#269)
• Ensure deterministic compiler output (#257)
• Add bit-wise operators rshift, lshift, bor, band, bnot, and bxor
• Friendlier compiler/parse error messages with suggestions
• Omit compiler internal stack traces by default unless FENNEL_DEBUG=trace
• Add support for __fennelview metamethod for custom serialization
• Fix a bug where dofile would report the wrong filename
• Fix bug causing failing include of Lua modules that lack a trailing newline (#234)
• Introduce pick-values and pick-args macros (as limit-*: #246, as pick-*: #256)
• Add new macroexpand helper to expand macro forms during compilation (#258)
• Add macrodebug utility macro for printing expanded macro forms in REPL (#258)

0.3.2 / 2020-01-14

This release mostly contains small bug fixes.

• Fix a bug where include could not be nested without repetition (#214)
• Fix a bug where globals checking would mistakenly flag locals (#213)
• Fix a bug that would cause incorrect filenames in error messages (#208)
• Fix a bug causing else to emit twice in some contexts (#212)
• Dissallow naming a local the same as global in some contexts

0.3.1 / 2019-12-17

This release mostly contains small bug fixes.

• Look for init file for repl in XDG config dirs as well as ~/.fennelrc (#193)
• Add support for --load FILE argument to command-line launcher (#193)
• Fix each to work with raw iterator values (#201)
• Optionally check for unused locals with --check-unused-locals
• Make repl completion descend into nested table fields (#192)
• Fix repl completer to correctly handle symbol mangling (#195)

0.3.0 / 2019-09-22

This release introduces docstrings as well as several new features to the macro system and some breaking changes; the most significant being the new unquote syntax and the requirement of auto-gensym for identifiers in backtick.

• Fix a bug where errors would show incorrect line numbers
• Add support for docstrings and doc for displaying them in repl
• Support :detect-cycles? false in fennelview to turn off "#<table 1>" output
• Disallow non-gensym identifiers in backtick/macros
• Support x# syntax for auto-gensym inside backtick
• Fix a bug in lambda arity checks when using destructuring
• Support :one-line output in fennelview
• Add include special form to selectively inline modules in compiled output
• Add --require-as-include to inline required modules in compiled output
• Add --eval argument to command-line launcher
• Add environment variable FENNEL_PATH to path
• Fix a few bugs in match
• Remove undocumented support for single-quoted strings
• Add support for guard clauses with ? in pattern matching
• Support completion in repl when readline.lua is available
• Add --globals and --globals-only options to launcher script
• Remove luaexpr and luastatement for a single lua special
• Improve code generation for if expressions in many situations
• Alias # special with length
• Replace @ (unquote) with ,; comma is no longer whitespace
• Disallow ~ in symbols other than ~=
• Add hashfn and # reader macro for shorthand functions like #(+ $1 $2)
• Allow hashfn arguments to be used in multisyms
• Add macro to make defining a single macro easier
• Add (comment) special which emits a Lua comment in the generated source
• Allow lua-style method calls like (foo:bar baz); disallow : in symbols

0.2.1 / 2019-01-22

This release mostly contains small bug fixes.

• Add not= as an alias for ~=
• Fix a bug with in-scope? which caused match outer unification to fail
• Fix a bug with variadic ~= comparisons
• Improve error reporting for mismatched delimiters

0.2.0 / 2019-01-17

The second minor release introduces backtick, making macro authoring much more streamlined. Macros may now be defined in the same file, and pattern matching is added.

• Prevent creation of bindings that collide with special forms and macros
• Make parens around steps optional in arrow macros for single-arg calls
• Allow macros to be defined inline with macros
• Add --add-package-path and --add-fennel-path to launcher script
• Add -?> and -?>> macros
• Add support for quoting with backtick and unquoting with @ (later changed to ,)
• Support key/value tables when destructuring
• Add match macro for pattern matching
• Add optional GNU readline support for repl
• Fix a bug where runtime errors were not reported by launcher correctly
• Allow repl to recover gracefully from parse errors

0.1.1 / 2018-12-05

This release contains a few small bug fixes.

• Fix luarocks packaging so repl includes fennelview
• Fix bug in the repl where locals-saving would fail for certain input
• Fix launcher to write errors to stderr, not stdout

0.1.0 / 2018-11-29

The first real release sees the addition of several "creature comfort" improvements such as comments, iterator support, line number tracking, accidental global protection, pretty printing, and repl locals. It also introduces the name "Fennel".

• Save locals in between chunks in the repl
• Allow destructuring in more places
• Remove redundant defn macro
• Add doto macro
• Support newlines in strings
• Prevent typos from accidentally referring to unknown globals
• Improve readability of compiler output
• Add -> and ->> macros
• Remove deprecated special forms: pack, $, block, *break, special
• Support nested lookup in . form
• Add var; disallow regular locals from being set
• Add global; refuse to set globals without it
• Make comparison operators variadic
• Support destructuring "rest" of a table into a local with &
• Add fennelview pretty-printer
• Add require-macros
• Add // for integer division on Lua 5.3+
• Add fennel.dofile and fennel.searcher for require support
• Track line numbers
• Add partial
• Add local
• Support binding against multiple values
• Add : for method calls
• Compile tail-calls properly
• Rename to Fennel
• Add each
• Add lambda/λ for arity-checked functions
• Add when
• Add comments

0.0.1 / 2016-08-14

The initial version (named "fnl") was created in 8 days and then set aside for several years.