Posted on August 24, 2018 by Troels Henriksen

Today we released a new version of the Futhark compiler (full changelog). The most notable thing, perhaps, is that this is the third compatible release in a row. That’s a new record! The reason is that the language itself is stabilising, as the 0.6.1 release removed the last major warts from the language.

Of course, the language stabilising doesn’t mean we can’t start breaking the included library instead. This related to the most significant improvement in Futhark 0.6.3 - the new package manager (which I wrote about both before and after it was implemented). I have been quite busy in trying to turn pieces of the basis library into separate packages (here’s a list). Since incompatibly changing the basis library constitutes a breaking language change, it seems like a good strategy to minimise its scope, and instead provide a good package manager.

In conclusion, the next version of Futhark will definitely break compatibility, as it will be stripped of most of the basis library. On the upside, it will have a just merged C# backend implemented by Mikkel Storgaard Knudsen.