LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!

Hi everyone!

On behalf of the LDC team I am proud to announce the LDC 0.16.0 beta1 release!
It is based on the 2.067.1 front-end and LLVM 3.1-3.7 (OS X: no support for 3.3).

This beta version is an important milestone as all tests on Travis-CI are green now! The LDC team already considers this the best LDC release of all times!

Nonetheless there are still bugs - known and unknown. The best way to uncover and fix these bugs if you try out this beta release and share your experience with us.

This release has been checked to work on Linux/PPC64 and OpenSolaris (x86), too. There is still a major issue on FreeBSD (x86_64).
Due to a library build problem with druntime/Phobos there is currently no MinGW32 version. This is currently under investigation but we are also looking for volunteers. If you need this platform please consider helping us!!!

Big thanks to everyone who provided feedback on the last alpha version! Without your feedback it would not be possible to eliminate the bugs so fast!

Most important changes are:

- Frontend is now at 2.067.1
- LLVM 3.7 is supported
- DMD-style coverage analysis is added
- ABI changes which fixes a lot of bugs in the Win64 compiler
- The ldc2 driver now only use slow -debuglib libraries if explicitly asked to

Be sure to read the change log at the GitHub release page which also has the package download links:
https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/releases/tag/v0.16.0-beta1

MD5 checksums for the release packages:

108019692b6d4bffed81555fe60c926b ldc-0.16.0-beta1-src.tar.gz
01a05448faf3c29147309f536338007d ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-linux-x86.tar.gz
9c54e31c89652eb809dc41e94e00f84d ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-linux-x86.tar.xz
35fb921f7b092a47ba8e3c14a9916569 ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
99665d38139c5d5a03a5bcb8f73144cf ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-linux-x86_64.tar.xz
a3010e1c8dcd7d69a894c7b93848b810 ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-osx-x86_64.tar.gz
75c4366987d16679d65593e6249c8036 ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-osx-x86_64.tar.xz
e42779315279bbf05fcc577c2ae0d85d ldc2-0.16.0-beta1-win64-msvc.zip

Regarding the binaries:
The Linux binaries are built on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with gcc 4.8.x and LLVM 3.7.0. They work on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (or later) without installing additional software.

The OS X binaries are built with LLVM 3.6.2 on OS X 10.10.

The Win64 MSVC version is built with VS2015 using LLVM 3.7 in release mode. The distribution now contains a precompiled libcurl 7.40.0 from http://d.darktech.org/libcurl.html. For any other VisualStudio version you need to rebuild the library.
You find the build script here: https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc-scripts/blob/master/ldc2-win64/RELEASE.proj

Please be sure to report any bugs at https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/issues, and feel free to drop by at the digitalmars.D.ldc forums (http://forum.dlang.org/group/digitalmars.D.ldc) for any questions or comments.

Thanks to everybody involved in making this happen!

Regards,
Kai

On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 19:09:39 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
> LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!

Yay, llvm 3.7 for all OS:es! No issues found this far. :)

On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 19:09:39 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
> LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> [...]

Looks great so far, I have tested most of my code on github using travis-ci (awesome that the current versions are on there).
Great work so far!

Now I wanted to go the lazy way on my osx using brew:

```
ldc: stable 0.15.2-beta2 (bottled)
Portable D programming language compiler
http://wiki.dlang.org/LDC
/usr/local/Cellar/ldc/0.15.2-beta2 (267 files, 66M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/ldc.rb
```

could you update the formular there ?

-- Stephan

On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 19:09:39 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
> LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!

I know it seems trivial, but for marketing purposes, would you consider dumping the version number to 1.0? Because currently, your signaling to developers that LDC is not ready for prime time when it is.

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 03:55:44 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 19:09:39 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
>> LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!
>
> I know it seems trivial, but for marketing purposes, would you consider dumping the version number to 1.0? Because currently, your signaling to developers that LDC is not ready for prime time when it is.

Hi Jack,

I am aware of this. See discussion here: http://forum.dlang.org/thread/ohuianuptmikfzzeyuqq@forum.dlang.org

Nothing is decided yet but my wish is that the first release with the D frontend will be version 1.0.

Regards,
Kai

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 02:09:39 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
> On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 19:09:39 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
>> LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!
>>
>> Hi everyone!
>>
>> [...]
>
> Looks great so far, I have tested most of my code on github using travis-ci (awesome that the current versions are on there).
> Great work so far!
>
> Now I wanted to go the lazy way on my osx using brew:
>
> ```
> ldc: stable 0.15.2-beta2 (bottled)
> Portable D programming language compiler
> http://wiki.dlang.org/LDC
> /usr/local/Cellar/ldc/0.15.2-beta2 (267 files, 66M) *
>   Poured from bottle
> From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/ldc.rb
> ```
>
> could you update the formular there ?
>
> -- Stephan

Under normal circumstances you would get 0.15.1 there, but it won't build with recent llvm, hence the beta. If you want the latest development version (0.16.0-beta1), do this:

brew reinstall ldc --devel

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 05:20:27 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 02:09:39 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
>> [...]
>
> Under normal circumstances you would get 0.15.1 there, but it won't build with recent llvm, hence the beta. If you want the latest development version (0.16.0-beta1), do this:
>
> brew reinstall ldc --devel

Btw, ldc devs, what happened to 0.15.2? Is that ever gonna happen?

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 05:20:27 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 02:09:39 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
>> On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 19:09:39 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
>>> LDC 0.16.0 beta1 is out! We highly appreciate your feedback!
>>>
>>> Hi everyone!
>>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> Looks great so far, I have tested most of my code on github using travis-ci (awesome that the current versions are on there).
>> Great work so far!
>>
>> Now I wanted to go the lazy way on my osx using brew:
>>
>> ```
>> ldc: stable 0.15.2-beta2 (bottled)
>> Portable D programming language compiler
>> http://wiki.dlang.org/LDC
>> /usr/local/Cellar/ldc/0.15.2-beta2 (267 files, 66M) *
>>   Poured from bottle
>> From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/ldc.rb
>> ```
>>
>> could you update the formular there ?
>>
>> -- Stephan
>
> Under normal circumstances you would get 0.15.1 there, but it won't build with recent llvm, hence the beta. If you want the latest development version (0.16.0-beta1), do this:
>
> brew reinstall ldc --devel

Well... that did not work out like expected:

```
$ brew reinstall ldc --devel
==> Reinstalling ldc
==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
==> Pouring ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/ldc/0.15.2-beta2: 267 files, 66M
```

I even ran brew update before?!

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 06:25:10 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 05:20:27 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 02:09:39 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> Under normal circumstances you would get 0.15.1 there, but it won't build with recent llvm, hence the beta. If you want the latest development version (0.16.0-beta1), do this:
>>
>> brew reinstall ldc --devel
>
> Well... that did not work out like expected:
>
> ```
> $ brew reinstall ldc --devel
> ==> Reinstalling ldc
> ==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
> Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
> ==> Pouring ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
> 🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/ldc/0.15.2-beta2: 267 files, 66M
> ```
>
> I even ran brew update before?!

Makes no sense to me. What does the first line of
brew info ldc
give you now?

Perhaps something failed in 'brew update'? 'brew doctor' may contain some hints.

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 08:41:32 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 06:25:10 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 05:20:27 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> Well... that did not work out like expected:
>>
>> ```
>> $ brew reinstall ldc --devel
>> ==> Reinstalling ldc
>> ==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
>> Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
>> ==> Pouring ldc-0.15.2-beta2.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
>> 🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/ldc/0.15.2-beta2: 267 files, 66M
>> ```
>>
>> I even ran brew update before?!
>
> Makes no sense to me. What does the first line of
> brew info ldc
> give you now?
>
> Perhaps something failed in 'brew update'? 'brew doctor' may contain some hints.

Yeah uninstall and clean and install did the trick! thank you!

-- Stephan