posted by Stephen De Gabrielle

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We are pleased to announce Racket v8.16 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

As of this release:

• Racket has expanded support for immutable and mutable treelists:
  • A variety of new treelist utility functions are available: treelist-filter, treelist-flatten, et cetera.
  • The mutable-treelist-prepend! function allows prepending to mutable treelists.
  • Mutable treelists are serializable.
• The serialize-structs module allows the minimization of dependencies by providing only a handful of core forms.
• The flbit-field function allows access to the binary representation of IEEE floating-point numbers.
• The top-left search box in the documentation works once more.
• The XML reader is 2–3x faster on inputs with long CDATA and comments, and avoids some internal contract checks to obtain a 25% speedup on large documents generally.
• The pregexp syntax includes "\X" to match a grapheme cluster, following Perl and PCRE.
• The read-json* and write-json* functions allow customization of the Racket representation of JSON elements, eliminating the need for a separate “translation” pass.
• Racket has new port I/O functions:
  • The open-input-nowhere function creates an empty input port.
  • The pipe-port? function makes it possible to determine whether a port is created by make-pipe.
  • The port-file-stat function allows gathering information about the file that is the source or target of a file-stream port.
• A revised representation of pointers improves the performance of foreign function calls. As a result, ptr-ref and ptr-set! are substantially faster.
• In anticipation of the fifteenth RacketCon, the fifteenth function returns the fifteenth element of a list.
• Racket has an improved multi-line convention for error messages.
• The db library allows prepare on virtual statements.
• The student-t distribution is part of the math/distributions library.
• Expeditor supports customizing the prompt, using the #:prompt keyword argument to call-with-expeditor.
• There is a guide to adding internationalization for a new (human) language.
• Optimizations to racket/profile improve asymptotic speed for very large call graphs.
• The #lang htdp/asl language incorporates Graphical Debugger support.
• There is lots of new documentation, and many defects repaired!

Thank you

The following people contributed to this release:

a11ce, Alex Knauth, Alexander Shopov, Alexis King, Andrew Mauer-Oats, Anthony Carrico, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, D. Ben Knoble, David Van Horn, Gustavo Massaccesi, halfminami, Hao Zhang, Jacqueline Firth, Jinser Kafka, JJ, John Clements, Jörgen Brandt, Kraskaska, lafirest, Laurent Orseau, lukejianu, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, mehbark, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, Onorio Catenacci, Oscar Waddell, Pavel Panchekha, payneca, Robby Findler, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Wing Hei Chan, Yi Cao, and ZhangHao.

Racket is a community developed open source project and we welcome new contributors. See racket/README.md to learn how you can be a part of this amazing project.

Feedback Welcome

Questions and discussion welcome at the Racket community Discourse or Discord

Please share

If you can - please help get the word out to users and platform specific repo packagers

Racket - the Language-Oriented Programming Language - version 8.16 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org
See https://blog.racket-lang.org/2024/08/racket-v8-16.html for the release announcement and highlights.

posted by Stephen De Gabrielle

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We are pleased to announce Racket v8.15 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

As of this release:

• 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.). Search e.g. second to see an example.

• DrRacket offers to restore previously open files when starting, which can be made the default.

DrRacket restore open files dialog

• In DrRacket, Images in editing panels can be saved by right-clicking, including those generated by the functional picture libraries pict and 2htdp/image.

DrRacket save image in context menu

• raco pkg introduces the uninstall command as the opposite of install. The remove name for this functionality is retained for compatibility. (See Package Management in Racket – 3.3 raco pkg uninstall.)

• raco pkg improves the handling of --clone and --unclone. (See Package Management in Racket – 3.2 raco pkg update.)

• iOS is a compilation target, distinct from macOS. (See Inside:Racket C API – 29 Cross-compiling Racket Sources for iOS.)

• 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. (See The Racket Foreign Interface – 4.2 Memory Management malloc mode 'zeroed-atomic and 'zeroed-atomic-interior.)

• Many other bugs are fixed and documentation has been improved!

Thank you

The following people contributed to this release:

Alec Mills, Alex Knauth, Alexander Shopov, 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.

Racket is a community developed open source project and we welcome new contributors. See racket/README.md to learn how you can be a part of this amazing project.

Feedback Welcome

Questions and discussion welcome at the Racket community Discourse announcement(join) or on the Racket Discord.

Please share

If you can - please help get the word out to users and platform specific repo packagers

Racket - the Language-Oriented Programming Language - version 8.15 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org
See https://blog.racket-lang.org/2024/08/racket-v8-15.html for the release announcement and highlights.

posted by Stephen De Gabrielle

---

We are pleased to announce Racket v8.14 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

As of this release:

• 64-bit ARM Windows is one of the standard pre-built downloads.

• The compiler/demod language integrates demodularization into the program rather than an external tool. Using the language approach cooperates with other Racket tools and allows demodularization to be used on libraries. Additionally, demodularization handles submodules and can prune definitions, significantly shrinking the size of some programs. (#lang compiler/demod)

• The contract-in form enables contracts to be specified in an importing module. (8.6 Attaching Contracts to Values)

• The #%declare form supports the #:flatten-requires and #:unlimited-compile keywords (#%declare)

• Identifiers such as case-λ, match-λ and λ are equivalent to their Latin-alphabet equivalents (case-lambda, match-lambda, and lambda) in more contexts, including uses of match.

• The hash-filter function allows the use of a predicate to select a sub-table of a hash table. (hash-filter)

• The module browser can perform filtering on submodules.

• The raco test command-line form respects the current-test-invocation-directory parameter, and shows well-formed module paths in its output. (current-test-invocation-directory)

• Racket CS allows the use of in-memory boot files.

• The raco/testing collection brings together a variety of testing- related functions and forms. (raco/testing)

• This release also includes many bug-fixes and documentation updates!

• NOTE: This release (and version 8.13) have a known build problem that affects the builtpkgs source bundle on Windows. In order to avoid this problem, use a pre-built bundle or build using a source bundle other than the “builtpkgs” one. Nightly builds do not suffer from this problem.

Thank you

The following people contributed to this release:

Alex Knauth, Alexander Shopov, Ben Greenman, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Cadence Ember, Carl Gay, D. Ben Knoble, Gregory Rosenblatt, Gustavo Massaccesi, John Clements, John Sullivan, Jordan Johnson, luistung, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Noah Ma, Philip McGrath, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Sergey Fedorov, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Wing Hei Chan, and ZhangHao.

Racket is a community developed open source project and we welcome new contributors. See racket/README.md to learn how you can be a part of this amazing project.

Feedback Welcome

Questions and discussion welcome at the Racket community Discourse or Discord

Please share

If you can - please help get the word out to users and platform specific repo packagers

Racket - the Language-Oriented Programming Language - version 8.14 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org
See https://blog.racket-lang.org/2024/08/racket-v8-14.html for the release announcement and highlights.

posted by Stephen De Gabrielle

---

We are pleased to announce Racket v8.13 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

As of this release:

• The racket/treelist and racket/mutable-treelist libraries provide list-like containers that support many operations in effectively constant time, including appending and extracting sub-lists without mutating the given list. Treelists are implemented as RRB Vectors, invented by Stucki, Riompf, Ureche, and Bagwell. (see 4.16 Treelists and RRB vector: a practical general purpose immutable sequence, ICFP 2015)

• The hash-filter-keys and hash-filter-values functions allow users to filter hashes using a predicate on either keys or values. (see 4.15 Hash Tables: hash-filter-keys, hash-filter-values)

• The vector-extend and vector*-extend functions provide a way to pre-populate the prefix of a newly allocated vector using the elements of an existing vector. (see 4.12 Vectors: vector-extend)

• Command-line raco setup, package update, and package installation use terminal control (when available) to show what they are working on more compactly and with a progress bar.

• Racket v8.13 uses Unicode 15.1 for character and string operations.

• Machine-specific cross-module optimization allows improved support for static generation of foreign-function bindings.

• The scribble/acmart language uses v2.01, which avoids errors concerning the hyperref package in some latex installations.

Thank you

The following people contributed to this release:

Alec Mills, Ben Greenman, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, dr-neptune, Fred Fu, Gustavo Massaccesi, Jason Hemann, Jay McCarthy, John Clements, Jordan Johnson, Justin Dhillon, Mao Yifu, Matias Eyzaguirre, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, olopierpa, Oscar Waddell, Pavel Panchekha, Philip McGrath, Robby Findler, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Siddhartha Kasivajhula, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Tim Standen, William E. Byrd, and Wing Hei Chan.

Racket is a community developed open source project and we welcome new contributors. See racket/README.md to learn how you can be a part of this amazing project.

Feedback Welcome

Questions and discussion welcome at the Racket community Discourse or Discord

Please share

If you can - please help get the word out to users and platform specific repo packagers

Racket - the Language-Oriented Programming Language - version 8.13 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org
See https://blog.racket-lang.org/2024/05/racket-v8-13.html for the release announcement and highlights.

posted by Stephen De Gabrielle

---

We are pleased to announce Racket v8.12 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

As of this release:

• The “Die Macht der Abstraktion” language levels are no longer present, replaced by the “Schreibe dein Programm” language levels which have been available for several years. (see DeinProgramm - Schreibe Dein Programm! )
• The release fixes a problem with the binding structure of the for/fold form in the rare situation when an iteration clause identifier shadowed an accumulator identifier. This change may break code that depends on the old binding structure. (see 3.18 Iterations and Comprehensions: for, for/list, … )
• Racket automatically sets the close-on-exec flag when opening a file, on systems where this is available. This change lowers the cost of avoiding problems that can occur when file descriptors become accidentally shared between processes. (see 13.1.5 File Ports )
• Match includes hash and hash* patterns. (see 9 Pattern Matching )
• The vector-set/copy function allows creation of a new vector that differs at only one index. This change also adds vector-append and vector-copy primitives. (see 4.12 Vectors )
• The pregexp-quote function brings the functionality of regexp-quote to pregexps. (see 4.8 Regular Expressions )
• The C FFI convention-based converter supports PascalCase and camelCase in addition to an underscore-based convention. (see 5.6 Defining Bindings )
• The racket/case library allows case-like forms that use different equality comparisons, such as eq? and equal-always?. (see 3.13 Dispatch: case)
• Scribble rendering to HTML adds linking and information buttons when hovering over heading titles.

• The interval-map data structure supports iterator functions in the style of gen:ordered-dict. (see 3 Orders and Ordered Dictionaries )

This release also includes many other documentation improvements, optimizations, and bug fixes!

Thank you

Thank you to the people who contributed to this release:

Alex Harsányi, Alex Knauth, Alex Muscar, Alexis King, Ben Greenman, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Chris Payne, Fred Fu, J. Ryan Stinnett, Jamie Taylor, Jared Forsyth, Jarhmander, Jens Axel Søgaard, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jordan Johnson, Ken Harris, Laurent Orseau, Mao Yifu, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matteo d’Addio, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Micah Cantor, Mike Sperber, naveen srinivasan, Oscar Waddell, Philip McGrath, Philippe Meunier, Robby Findler, Rocketnia, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Sarthak Shah, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Tom Price, ur4t, Wing Hei Chan, and ZhangHao

Feedback Welcome

Questions and discussion welcome at the Racket community Discourse or Discord

Please share

If you can - please help get the word out to users and platform specific repo packagers

Racket - the Language-Oriented Programming Language - version 8.12 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org
See https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-12-is-now-available/2709 for the release announcement and highlights.
Thank you to the many people who contributed to this release!
Feedback Welcome

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Racket version 8.11.1 is now available from https://racket-lang.org/

This bug-fix release repairs a problem with building from source when using the “builtpkgs” source distribution.

Feedback Welcome

---

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Racket version 8.11 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

As of this release:

• Match clauses can include a #:do option to allow evaluation of code and bindings before a following #:when clause. See match.

• JSON Serialization supports indentation with an #:indent option to write-json. See write-json.

• An initiate-sequence function simplifies the creation of sequences. See initiate-sequence.

• The :do-in form allows an inner definition sequence. See :do-in.

• The redex-define form allows pattern-matching in PLT Redex using a define-like syntax. See redex-define.

• Racket and Chez Scheme use Robert L. Smith’s “Algorithm 116” for division of complex numbers. See Robert L. Smith. 1962. Algorithm 116: Complex division. Commun. ACM 5, 8 (Aug. 1962), 435. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/368637.368661 .

• DrRacket has indentation guides that provide visual cues indicating how code is indented and grouped, accessible by using (<menu-key>-shift-i). See text:indent-guides<%>.

• “Comment-out” menu items can be specific to the #lang used by the current file. See Comments.

• Unused identifiers have a tooltip indicating that they have no bound occurrences.

• Quickscript includes a new form of scripting in the form of “hook” functions that can be attached to existing events. See Hooks.

• Plots include plot-inset and plot-legend-padding parameters to control the amount of space left unused around the plot edge and plot legend. See plot-inset.

• There are many other documentation improvements, optimizations, and bug fixes!

Thank You

Thank you to the people who contributed to this release:

Alex Harsányi, Ben Greenman, Bogdan Popa, Cameron Moy, Camille d’Alméras, D. Ben Knoble, Efraim Flashner, Eric S. Raymond, Fred Fu, Greg Hendershott, Gustavo Massaccesi, Jay McCarthy, jim, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jon Eskin, Laurent Orseau, Lucas Sta Maria, mAdkins, Mark Hedlund, Matteo d’Addio, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, Oscar Waddell, Philip McGrath, Qifan Wang, Robby Findler, Ross Angle, Ryan Culpepper, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, shenleban tongying, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Wing Hei Chan, xxyzz, and ZhangHao

Feedback Welcome

Racket version 8.10 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/

As of this release:

• syntax/parse no longer always compiles its patterns; this release includes an interpreter which is used to reduce code size

• Racket includes primitives [im]mutable-string?, [im]mutable-bytes?, [im]mutable-vector?, [im]mutable-box?, and [im]mutable-hash? (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/booleans.html#%28mod-path._racket%2Fmutability%29)

• Redex adds judgment-form->rule-names (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/redex/reference.html#%28def._%28%28lib._redex%2Freduction-semantics..rkt%29._judgment-form-~3erule-names%29%29)

• Fasl and compiled code allow fxvectors and flvectors

• DrRacket allows #lang-specific customization of the definition navigation popdown (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/tools/drracket_language.html#%28idx._%28gentag.55.%28lib._scribblings%2Ftools%2Ftools..scrbl%29%29%29)

• Racket and DrRacket include Finnish internationalization

• Check Syntax binding arrows are drawn for names bound with define-local-member-name

• Many other improvements and bug fixes are included, including to the scribble and plot packages

Thank you

Thank you to the people who contributed to this release:

Adrien Ludwig, Alex Harsányi, Alex Knauth, Alexis King, Ben Greenman, Cameron Moy, D. Ben Knoble, Greg Hendershott, Gustavo Massaccesi, Jay McCarthy, Joel Dueck, John Clements, Jordan Johnson, Kamil Laskowski, Laurent Orseau, Liam Avella-Pisera, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Oscar Waddell, Pavel Panchekha, Philip McGrath, reflektoin, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, Stefan Schwarzer, Stephen De Gabrielle, and Yongming Shen

Feedback Welcome

Racket version 8.9 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/

As of this release:

• The HtDP student languages come with checked signatures. Programmers can express signatures in a formal notation, and these signatures are checked at run-time (in a performance-neutral manner). The addition of this formal language associates meaning with several names that had no meaning before. — This feature is experimental, and we may amend or retract it later. (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/htdp-langs/beginner-abbr.html?q=signatures#%28part._beginner-abbr-signatures%29)

• Switching into and out of dark mode is handled better on Mac OS and Linux.

• Racket uses Unicode 15.0 for character and string operations.

• The racket/hash-code library provides support for combining hash codes. (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/Equality.html#%28mod-path._racket%2Fhash-code%29)

• A language module can have a configure-expand submodule that is dynamically required to configure a parameterization before expansion of another module. (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/running-sa.html#%28part._configure-expand%29)

• stream-cons supports multiple values. (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/streams.html#%28form._%28%28lib._racket%2Fstream..rkt%29._stream-cons%29%29)

• unit/c subcontracts may depend on bindings from any imported or exported signature. Additionally, bindings’ contracts are enforced within subcontracts, and violations blame the contract itself (like ->i). (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/unitcontracts.html#%28form._%28%28lib._racket%2Funit..rkt%29._unit%2Fc%29%29)

• racket/class provides the dynamic-instantiate procedure for instantiating a class with a dynamic list of by-name initialization arguments. (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/objcreation.html#%28def._%28%28lib._racket%2Fprivate%2Fclass-internal..rkt%29._dynamic-instantiate%29%29)

• TCP output block buffering implies TCP_NODELAY. (cf. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/tcp.html#%28def._%28%28lib._racket%2Ftcp..rkt%29._tcp-connect%29%29)

• Submodules and Check Syntax require arrows work better together.

• Typed Racket’s shallow check generation is improved.

• Many other improvements and bug fixes are included!

Thank you

Thank you to the people who contributed to this release:

Alex Harsányi, Alex Knauth, Alexis King, Ben Greenman, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Cadence Ember, D. Ben Knoble, Denis Hirn, dr-neptune, Eli Barzilay, Fred Fu, Gustavo Massaccesi, J. Ryan Stinnett, Jack Firth, Jamie Taylor, Jesse Alama, Jin-Ho King, John Clements, Lazerbeak12345, Mark Hedlund, Masaya Tojo, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Philip McGrath, Robby Findler, Ryan Culpepper, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, sarna, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, sxzzsf, Tom Price, Yukai Chou, and Zach O’Brien.

Feedback Welcome

Racket version 8.8 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/

As of this release:

• The dependent contract form, ->i, supports a #:param element that specifies dependencies for parameter values that are set during the dynamic extent of the function call. (See: https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/function-contracts.html#%28form._%28%28lib.racket%2Fcontract%2Fbase..rkt%29.-~3ei%29%29 )

• The copy-file library function supports permission-management arguments. (See: https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/Filesystem.html#%28def._%28%28lib._racket%2Fprivate%2Fbase..rkt%29._copy-file%29%29 )

• Pressing <SHIFT>-return in DrRacket’s interactions window makes it easier to edit and enter expressions without sending them to be evaluated.

• The numeric comparison operators (=, etc.) require at least two arguments in the “How To Design Programs” teaching languages.

• Redex has improved typesetting when customized renders are used in certain multi-line situations.

• We have fixed many bugs, and written lots of documentation.

The following people contributed to this release:

Alex Knauth, Alexander Shopov, Andreas Schwab, Ben Greenman, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, Cameron Moy, Chung-chieh Shan, D. Ben Knoble, Dan Anderson, David Van Horn, Geoffrey Knauth, Gustavo Massaccesi, Jamie Taylor, Jason Hemann, Jens Axel Søgaard, Jesse Alama, jestarray, Johann Rudloff, Johannes Maier, John Clements, Jon Zeppieri, Lazerbeak12345, Lîm Tsú-thuàn, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, Mike Sperber, Niklas Larsson, Noah Ma, Pavel Panchekha, Philip McGrath, Philippe Meunier, R. Kent Dybvig, reflektoin, Robby Findler, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, and Stephen De Gabrielle

Official installers for Racket on many platforms are available from https://download.racket-lang.org/.

If you are new to Racket try our Getting started guide.

Questions and feedback about the release are welcome on Discourse.