Fble Release Notes

fble-0.5 (2025-07-13,fble-0.4-212-ga8f8ad0f)

fble-0.5 July 2025

The following list highlights the most notable changes from fble-0.4.

Fble Language

• Replaced abstract types feature with a new private types feature.

• Allow poly kinded values to be used where basic kinds are expected.

Fble Implementation

• Completely revamped profiling support. We now generate pprof profiles.

• Substantial performance improvements.

• Fix support for building in the source directory.

• Miscellaneous backwards incompatible API changes.

Library

• Add mode option for reading and writing files.

Applications

• Implemented fble-pprof application for viewing pprof profiles.

• Added an fble-benchmark benchmark suite.

fble-0.4 March 2025

The following list highlights the most notable changes from fble-0.3.

Fble Language

• Added modular compilation support with .fble.@ header files.

• Added undef expression.

Fble Implementation

• Support for modular compilation.

• Added --deps-file options to executables.

• Improved type inference.

• Miscellaneous backwards incompatible API changes.

Fbld

• Created a spec test suite.

• Reimplemented in C with significant performance improvements.

Library

• Improved /Debug/Trace% printf-like debugging support.

• Made /Core/Map% into a general interface.

• Reordered arguments to Stdio Main@ function.

• Rudimentary support for TCP sockets.

Applications

• Added sample network applications.

fble-0.3 June 2024

The following list highlights the most notable changes from fble-0.2.

Fble Language

• General support for partial and over application of functions.

Fble Implementation

• Added support for compiling on Windows with MSYS2

• Complete rewrite of memory allocator for improved performance.

• Revamped FbleExecutable API for improved performance.

• Miscellaneous backwards incompatible API changes.

Fble Debugger

• Removed difficult-to-maintain support for easy single step in gdb.

Fbld

• Change syntax for explicit implicit blocks from ' @' to '@@'.

Documentation

• Simplified and revised fble language tutorials.

Applications

• Added new satgame application.

fble-0.2 December 2023

The following list highlights the most notable changes from fble-0.1.

Fble Language

• Increase stack limit as part of the fble spec.

• Add struct copy expression.

• Add support for unicode characters in literals.

Fble Implementation

• Fix bug parsing fble programs with non-terminated quoted words.

• Fix off-by-one error in dwarf variable location info.

• Miscellaneous backwards incompatible API changes.

• Performance improvements.

Fbld

• Complete rewrite of fbld documentation language and implementation. Fbld backends are now implemented in fbld directly. The tcl-based implementation is removed in favor of an fble-based implementation with much better error location tracking.

Documentation

• New Fble By Comparison tutorial comparing against other languages.

• Include book, profile, and debug guides in generated documentation.

• Minor improvements to some other tutorials.

Library

• Add getenv and file read/write to Stdio.

• Add Stdio interface to apps.

• Change Map to take order function instead of equality function.

• Miscellaneous backwards incompatible API changes.

• Performance improvements.

Applications

• Invaders game now saves high score.

• Md5 now takes list of files on the command line.

• Sat solver upgraded to a conflict driven clause learning algorithm.

fble-0.1 March 2023

Initial release of fble. Includes:

• The fble language specification, with comprehensive test suite, tutorials, and vim syntax highlighting.

• A reference implementation, with interpreter, compilation to c and aarch64, profiling and debug support and library man pages.

• Sample command line and graphical applications, including fble-md5, fble-invaders, and others.

• An initial fbld markup language specification and rough implementation of it.

Release Instructions

• Commit release candidate with todo for the release removed.

• Verify local build.

• Push to github, verify builds succeed.

• Locally git tag -a fble-?.? to create annotated release tag.

• git push origin tag fble-?.? to upstream to origin and github.

• Create release from github on existing tag.

• Build www.

• Grab tarball from github and move that and www to website.

• Update version numbers in fble-version.h and README.md to next version.