[Caml-list] OCaml 4.12.0, second beta release

[Florian Angeletti <florian.angeletti@inria.fr>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3692 bytes --]

Dear OCaml users, 

The release of OCaml 4.12.0 is on the horizon. We have created a new beta 
version to help you adapt your software to the new features ahead of the release. 

Compared to the first beta release, this new release contains one fix for the 
Thread library (for a race condition on Windows), and experimentally re-enables 
building the compiler on illumos and Oracle Solaris. 

We are expecting this beta to be the last one before the release. 

If you find any bugs, please report them here: 
https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/issues 

Happy hacking, 

-- Florian Angeletti for the OCaml team. 

Installation instructions 
-------------------------------- 

The base compiler can be installed as an opam switch with the following commands 

opam update 
opam switch create 4.12.0~beta2 --repositories=default,beta=git+https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-beta-repository.git 

If you want to tweak the configuration of the compiler, you can pick configuration options with 

opam update 
opam switch create <switch_name> --packages=ocaml-variants.4.12.0~beta2+options,<option_list> --repositories=default,beta=git+https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-beta-repository.git 

where <option_list> is a comma separated list of ocaml-option-* packages. For 
instance, for a flambda and afl enabled switch: 

opam switch create 4.12.0~beta2+flambda+afl --packages=ocaml-variants.4.12.0~beta2+options,ocaml-option-flambda,ocaml-option-afl --repositories=default,beta=git+https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-beta-repository.git 

All available options can be listed with "opam search ocaml-option". 

The source code is available at these addresses: 

https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/archive/4.12.0-beta2.tar.gz 
https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-4.12/ocaml-4.12.0~beta2.tar.gz 

If you want to test this version, you may want to install the alpha opam repository 

https://github.com/kit-ty-kate/opam-alpha-repository 

with 

opam repo add alpha git://github.com/kit-ty-kate/opam-alpha-repository.git 

This alpha repository contains various packages patched with fixes in the 
process of being upstreamed. Once the repository installed, these patched 
packages will take precedence over the non-patched version. 

Changes from the first beta 
------------------------------------- 

### Thread library 

+* #9757, #9846, +#10161: check proper ownership when operating over mutexes. 
Now, unlocking a mutex held by another thread or not locked at all 
reliably raises a Sys_error exception. Before, it was undefined 
behavior, but the documentation did not say so. 
Likewise, locking a mutex already locked by the current thread 
reliably raises a Sys_error exception. Before, it could 
deadlock or succeed (and do recursive locking), depending on the OS. 
(Xavier Leroy, report by Guillaume Munch-Maccagnoni, review by 
Guillaume Munch-Maccagnoni, David Allsopp, and Stephen Dolan) 

### Build system 

- #10063: (Re-)enable building on illumos (SmartOS, OmniOS, ...) and 
Oracle Solaris; x86_64/GCC and 64-bit SPARC/Sun PRO C compilers. 
(partially revert #2024). 
(Tõivo Leedjärv and Konstantin Romanov, 
review by Gabriel Scherer, Sébastien Hinderer and Xavier Leroy) 

### Documentation 

- #9755: Manual: post-processing the html generated by ocamldoc and 
hevea. Improvements on design and navigation, including a mobile 
version, and a quick-search functionality for the API. 
(San Vũ Ngọc, review by David Allsopp and Florian Angeletti) 

- #10142, #10154: improved rendering and latex code for toplevel code examples. 
(Florian Angeletti, report by John Whitington, review by Gabriel Scherer) 

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4169 bytes --]