Ocaml 3.09.2+rc1

Ocaml 3.09.2+rc1

[Damien Doligez]

Hello,

We have created a "release candidate" version OCaml 3.09.2+rc1.  This  
will
become release 3.09.2 on April 12 (approximately), unless there is some
serious problem with it.

In the meantime, we are asking for some beta-testing: if you are an
adventurous mind with some free time, check it out from the CVS (tag:
ocaml3092rc1) and compile your favourite programs with it, and report
any problems you might find.

Note that we are deliberately _not_ making it available as a tar archive
or binary package.

This is the list of changes from 3.09.1.  We would especially like some
feedback (positive or negative) about the items marked with "+".  If
you find some problem, please post it to the bug tracker:
< http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/main_page.php >.  If everything goes well,
send a mail to the release manager: <damien.doligez@inria.fr>.

Bug fixes:
- Makefile: problem with "make world.opt" PR#3954
- compilers: problem compiling several modules with one command line  
PR#3979
- compilers,ocamldoc: error message that Emacs cannot parse
- compilers: crash when printing type error PR#3968
- compilers: -dtypes wrong for monomorphic type variables PR#3894
- compilers: wrong warning on optional arguments PR#3980
- compilers: crash when wrong use of type constructor in let rec PR#3976
- compilers: better wording of "statement never returns" warning PR#3889
+ runtime: inefficiency of signal handling PR#3990
+ runtime: crashes with I/O in multithread programs PR#3906
- camlp4: empty file name in error messages PR#3886
- camlp4: stack overflow PR#3948
- otherlibs/labltk: ocamlbrowser ignores its command line options  
PR#3961
- otherlibs/unix: Unix.times wrong under Mac OS X PR#3960
- otherlibs/unix: wrong doc for execvp and execvpe PR#3973
+ stdlib: update_mod not found under Windows PR#3847
- stdlib: Filename.dirname/basename wrong on Win32 PR#3933
- stdlib: incomplete documentation of Pervasives.abs PR#3967
- stdlib: Printf bugs PR#3902, PR#3955
- tools/checkstack.c missing include
- yacc: crash when given argument "-" PR#3956

New features:
+ ported to MacOS X on Intel PR#3985
+ configure: added support for GNU Hurd PR#3991

-- the OCaml team

Re: [Caml-list] Ocaml 3.09.2+rc1

[Markus Mottl]

On 3/30/06, Damien Doligez <damien.doligez@inria.fr> wrote:
> + runtime: inefficiency of signal handling PR#3990

The extreme slowdown observed between 3.08.4 and 3.09.1 seems to be
fixed now.  The example "slow.ml" in the bugtracker now runs approx.
two times slower without thread support with the CVS-release in
comparison to 3.08.4 (due to now correct signal handling), and I don't
see any mentionable slowdown anymore if thread support is compiled in.

The version compiled with thread support is about 30 times slower than
the one compiled without, but there is does not seem to be any way
around this considering the need for locking mutexes, signaling
condition variables, etc.

> + runtime: crashes with I/O in multithread programs PR#3906

I'm very happy to report that I haven't seen any instance of this
nasty problem in the effected application since the patch was
available in CVS, and we would quite likely have seen it already, as
it has been under fairly heavy load since then (for about a week).

All of the above has been tried with OCaml 3.09.2+dev6 (2006-03-22),
and I have proofread both patches, because we run our production
systems with them.  There are only a few additional patches in RC1,
which we will skip until the final release, so we do not expect any
unwanted surprises.

I haven't investigated any of the other fixes that have already made
it into the CVS-release we are running, but we haven't seen any
problems so far.

Thanks for all the hard work making OCaml even better!

Best regards,
Markus

--
Markus Mottl        http://www.ocaml.info        markus.mottl@gmail.com