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Julia v1.12 Release Notes

New language features

  • New experimental option --trim that creates smaller binaries by removing code not proven to be reachable from entry points. Entry points can be marked using Base.Experimental.entrypoint (#55047). Not all code is expected to work with this option, and since it is experimental you may encounter problems.
  • Redefinition of constants is now well defined and follows world age semantics (#57253). Additional redefinitions (e.g. of types) are now allowed. See the new manual chapter on world age.
  • A new keyword argument usings::Bool has been added to names, returning all names visible via using (#54609).
  • The @atomic macro family now supports reference assignment syntax, e.g. @atomic :monotonic v[3] += 4, which modifies v[3] atomically with monotonic ordering semantics (#54707). The supported syntax allows
    • atomic fetch (x = @atomic v[3]),
    • atomic set (@atomic v[3] = 4),
    • atomic modify (@atomic v[3] += 2),
    • atomic set once (@atomiconce v[3] = 2),
    • atomic swap (x = @atomicswap v[3] = 2), and
    • atomic replace (x = @atomicreplace v[3] 2=>5).
  • New option --task-metrics=yes to enable the collection of per-task timing information, which can also be enabled/disabled at runtime with Base.Experimental.task_metrics(::Bool) (#56320). The available metrics are:
    • actual running time for the task (Base.Experimental.task_running_time_ns), and
    • wall-time for the task (Base.Experimental.task_wall_time_ns).
  • Support for Unicode 16 (#56925).
  • Threads.@spawn now takes a :samepool argument to specify the same threadpool as the caller. Threads.@spawn :samepool foo() which is shorthand for Threads.@spawn Threads.threadpool() foo() (#57109).
  • The @ccall macro can now take a gc_safe argument, that if set to true allows the runtime to run garbage collection concurrently to the ccall (#49933).

Language changes

  • When a method is replaced with an exactly equivalent one, the old method is not deleted. Instead, the new method takes priority and becomes more specific than the old method. Thus if the new method is deleted later, the old method will resume operating. This can be useful in mocking frameworks (as in SparseArrays, Pluto, and Mocking, among others), as they do not need to explicitly restore the old method. At this time, inference and compilation must be repeated in this situation, but we may eventually be able to re-use the old results (#53415).
  • Macro expansion will no longer eagerly recurse into Expr(:toplevel) expressions returned from macros. Instead, macro expansion of :toplevel expressions will be delayed until evaluation time. This allows a later expression within a given :toplevel expression to make use of macros defined earlier in the same :toplevel expression (#53515).
  • Trivial infinite loops (like while true; end) are no longer undefined behavior. Infinite loops that do things (e.g. have side effects or sleep) were never and are still not undefined behavior (#52999).
  • It is now an error to mark a binding as both public and exported (#53664).
  • Errors during getfield now raise a new FieldError exception type instead of the generic ErrorException (#54504).
  • Macros in function-signature-position no longer require parentheses. E.g. function @main(args) ... end is now permitted, whereas function (@main)(args) ... end was required in prior Julia versions.
  • Calling using on a package name inside of that package of that name (especially relevant for a submodule) now explicitly uses that package without examining the Manifest and environment, which is identical to the behavior of ..Name. This appears to better match how users expect this to behave in the wild (#57727).

Compiler/Runtime improvements

  • Generated LLVM IR now uses pointer types instead of passing pointers as integers. This affects llvmcall: Inline LLVM IR should be updated to use i8* or ptr instead of i32 or i64, and remove unneeded ptrtoint/inttoptr conversions. For compatibility, IR with integer pointers is still supported, but generates a deprecation warning (#53687).

Command-line option changes

  • The -m/--module flag can be passed to run the main function inside a package with a set of arguments. This main function should be declared using @main to indicate that it is an entry point (#52103).
  • Enabling or disabling color text in Julia can now be controlled with the NO_COLOR or FORCE_COLOR environment variables. These variables are also honored by Julia's build system (#53742, #56346).
  • --project=@temp starts Julia with a temporary environment (#51149).
  • New --trace-compile-timing option to report how long each method reported by --trace-compile took to compile, in ms (#54662).
  • --trace-compile now prints recompiled methods in yellow or with a trailing comment if color is not supported (#55763).
  • New --trace-dispatch option to report methods that are dynamically dispatched (#55848).

Multi-threading changes

  • Julia now defaults to 1 "interactive" thread, in addition to the 1 default "worker" thread. i.e. -t1,1. This means in default configuration the main task and repl (when in interactive mode), which both run on thread 1, now run within the interactive threadpool. The libuv IO loop also runs on thread 1, helping efficient utilization of the worker threadpool used by Threads.@spawn. Asking for specifically 1 thread (-t1/JULIA_NUM_THREADS=1) or 0 interactive threads will disable the interactive thread i.e. -t1,0 or JULIA_NUM_THREADS=1,0 , or -tauto,0 etc. Asking for more than 1 thread will enable the interactive thread so -t2 will set the equivalent of -t2,1. As a reminder, buffers should not be managed based on threadid() (#57087).
  • New types are defined to handle the pattern of code that must run once per process, called a OncePerProcess{T} type, which allows defining a function that should be run exactly once the first time it is called, and then always return the same result value of type T every subsequent time afterwards. There are also OncePerThread{T} and OncePerTask{T} types for similar usage with threads or tasks (#55793).

Build system changes

  • There are new Makefiles to build Julia and LLVM using the Binary Optimization and Layout Tool (BOLT). See contrib/bolt and contrib/pgo-lto-bolt (#54107).

New library functions

  • logrange(start, stop; length) makes a range of constant ratio, instead of constant step (#39071).
  • The new isfull(c::Channel) function can be used to check if put!(c, some_value) will block (#53159).
  • waitany(tasks; throw=false) and waitall(tasks; failfast=false, throw=false) which wait for multiple tasks at once (#53341).
  • uuid7() creates an RFC 9562 compliant UUID with version 7 (#54834).
  • insertdims(array; dims) inserts singleton dimensions into an array –- the inverse operation of dropdims (#45793).
  • A new Fix type generalizes Fix1/Fix2 for fixing a single argument (#54653).
  • Sys.detectwsl() tests whether Julia is running inside WSL at runtime (#57069).

New library features

  • escape_string takes additional keyword arguments ascii=true (to escape all non-ASCII characters) and fullhex=true (to require full 4/8-digit hex numbers for u/U escapes, e.g. for C compatibility) (#55099).
  • tempname can now take a suffix string to allow the file name to include a suffix and include that suffix in the uniquing checking (#53474).
  • RegexMatch objects can now be used to construct NamedTuples and Dicts (#50988).
  • Lockable is now exported (#54595).
  • Base.require_one_based_indexing and Base.has_offset_axes are now public (#56196).
  • New ltruncate, rtruncate and ctruncate functions for truncating strings to text width, accounting for char widths (#55351).
  • isless (and thus cmp, sorting, etc.) is now supported for zero-dimensional AbstractArrays (#55772).
  • invoke now supports passing a Method instead of a type signature (#56692).
  • invoke now supports passing a CodeInstance instead of a type, which can enable certain compiler plugin workflows (#56660).
  • Timer(f, ...) will now match the stickiness of the parent task when creating timer tasks, which can be overridden by the new spawn keyword argument. This avoids the issue where sticky tasks (i.e. @async) make their parent sticky (#56745).
  • Timer now has readable timeout and interval properties, and a more descriptive show method (#57081).
  • sort now supports NTuples (#54494).
  • map!(f, A) now stores the results in A, like map!(f, A, A) or A .= f.(A) (#40632).
  • setprecision with a function argument (typically a do block) is now thread safe. Other forms should be avoided, and types should switch to an implementation using ScopedValue (#51362).

Standard library changes

  • gcdx(0, 0) now returns (0, 0, 0) instead of (0, 1, 0) (#40989).
  • fd returns a RawFD instead of an Int (#55080).

JuliaSyntaxHighlighting

  • A new standard library for applying syntax highlighting to Julia code, this uses JuliaSyntax and StyledStrings to implement a highlight function that creates an AnnotatedString with syntax highlighting applied (#51810).

LinearAlgebra

  • rank can now take a QRPivoted matrix to allow rank estimation via QR factorization (#54283).
  • Added keyword argument alg to eigen, eigen!, eigvals and eigvals! for self-adjoint matrix types (i.e., the type union RealHermSymComplexHerm) that allows one to switch between different eigendecomposition algorithms (#49355).
  • Added a generic version of the (unblocked) pivoted Cholesky decomposition (callable via cholesky[!](A, RowMaximum())) (#54619).
  • The number of default BLAS threads now respects process affinity, instead of using the total number of logical threads available on the system (#55574).
  • A new function zeroslike is added that generates the zero elements for matrix-valued banded matrices. Custom array types may specialize this function to return an appropriate result (#55252).
  • The matrix multiplication A * B calls matprod_dest(A, B, T::Type) to generate the destination. This function is now public (#55537).
  • The function haszero(T::Type) is used to check if a type T has a unique zero element defined as zero(T). This is now public (#56223).
  • A new function diagview is added that returns a view into a specific band of an AbstractMatrix (#56175).

Profile

  • Profile.take_heap_snapshot takes a new keyword argument, redact_data::Bool, which is true by default. When set, the contents of Julia objects are not emitted in the heap snapshot. This currently only applies to strings (#55326).
  • Profile.print() now colors Base/Core/Package modules similarly to how they are in stacktraces. Also paths, even if truncated, are now clickable in terminals that support URI links to take you to the specified JULIA_EDITOR for the given file & line number (#55335).

REPL

  • Using the new usings=true feature of the names() function, REPL completions can now complete names visible via using (#54610).
  • REPL completions can now complete input lines like [import|using] Mod: xxx| e.g. complete using Base.Experimental: @op to using Base.Experimental: @opaque (#54719).
  • The REPL will now warn if it detects a name is being accessed via a module which does not define it (nor has a submodule which defines it), and for which the name is not public in that module. For example, map is defined in Base, and executing LinearAlgebra.map in the REPL will now issue a warning the first time it occurs (#54872).
  • When the result of a REPL input is printed, the output is now truncated to 20 KiB. This does not affect manual calls to show, print, etc. (#53959).
  • Backslash completions now print the respective glyph or emoji next to each matching backslash shortcode (#54800).

Test

  • A failing DefaultTestSet now prints to screen the random number generator (RNG) of the failed test, to help reproducing a stochastic failure which only depends on the state of the RNG. It is also possible seed a test set by passing the rng keyword argument to @testset:
    using Test, Random
@testset rng=Xoshiro(0x2e026445595ed28e, 0x07bb81ac4c54926d, 0x83d7d70843e8bad6, 0xdbef927d150af80b, 0xdbf91ddf2534f850) begin
    @test rand() == 0.559472630416976
end

InteractiveUtils

  • New macros @trace_compile and @trace_dispatch for running an expression with --trace-compile=stderr --trace-compile-timing and --trace-dispatch=stderr respectively enabled (#55915).

External dependencies

  • The terminal info database, terminfo, is now vendored by default, providing a better REPL user experience when terminfo is not available on the system. Julia can be built without vendoring the database using the Makefile option WITH_TERMINFO=0 (#55411).

Tooling Improvements

  • A wall-time profiler is now available for users who need a sampling profiler that captures tasks regardless of their scheduling or running state. This type of profiler enables profiling of I/O-heavy tasks and helps detect areas of heavy contention in the system (#55889).