Cobra Changelog

What's new in Cobra 0.9.6

Dec 27, 2013

IDE:
One of the most notable recent developments for Cobra is actually outside the compiler. The Cobra add-in for MonoDevelop / XamarinStudio offers syntax highlighting, background compilation, member completion suggestions, parameter completion, mouseover tooltips, go to declaration
Language:
Support optional and named parameters.
Added modifier sections in type declarations.
Compiler:
Improved error checking on arguments of initializer/constructor calls.
Improved error checking on missed of in generics call.
Fixed: An unfinished assignment statement causes an internal error instead of a normal error message ("unexpected end of file").
Fixed: Internal error for dynamic argument on a method overload.
Fixed: Internal error if source file ends in the middle of a comma separated expression.
Fixed: Cobra internal error when mixin declared after class.
Fixed: In libraries, a field and property that differ only by case of a type with the same name triggers an internal compiler error.
Fixed: Token on line after end of docstring causes parser confusion and 'useless error'.
Fixed: Calling a method with an underscore name from within an initializer/constructor that is overloaded, causes an internal compiler error.
Fixed: The compiler gracefully handles I/O exceptions when trying to delete intermediate files, but not unauthorized access exceptions.
Fixed: If the compiler cannot delete an intermediate file, no warning is recorded.
Fixed: Cobra gives a false parse error if there is a blank line after a doc string and before the get section of a property.
Fixed: Using a namespace as a generic parameter can cause an internal error.
Fixed: Raising a shared event causes an internal compiler error.
Fixed: An anonymous method inside a method with a local variable named result causes a false compilation error.
Fixed: Some CLR libraries cause an internal error when read by the compiler, specifically static readonly generics.
Fixed: Some object creation expressions can cause an internal compiler error if one or more of the arguments has an error.
Library / Run-time:
Changed Cobra's Set to inherit from .NET 4's HashSet?.
In CobraCommand.find, check the C: drive if an attempted file system path is not found on the current drive.
New compiler API improvements. See changeset:2987 changeset:2990 changeset:3014 changeset:3016
Fixed: Accessing Keywords.groups in Cobra.Compiler throws an exception
Added INode.goToDefinitionLocation for IDEs.
Command Line:
Enhanced -lib: option to accept {EnvironmentVariables} and {@latest}.
Minor tweaks to -native-compiler-arg command line option. Now singular. Was always an accumulator.
Installer:
There is no explicit -net4 option as .NET 4.0 and higher is now the base requirement.
Verify that libraries installed in the GAC have the correct version number.
Locate the gacutil that comes with Visual Studio 2012.
Added installer support for Windows 8.1 SDK.
Fixed: When the installer is testing that hello.cobra can be compiled with the new compiler, it does not respect any -platform argument that was passed to the installer, resulting in an error.

New in Cobra 0.9.4 (May 27, 2013)

Language:
Added readonly keyword.
Improved parsing of method sections with respect to contracts, test and body.
Fixed: Enum members that are the same name except in case cause an internal compiler error. Add error check: Cannot have members with the same name in different case ("foo").
Fixed: Incomplete support for vari nilable parameters
Compiler:
When method calls have incorrect number of arguments or types, give the method sigs.
Turned off reflection-only assembly loading. Use only if the COBRA_REFLECTION_ONLY environ var is set to 1, true or yes.
Fixed: Some in expressions, especially those against arrays, can give an invalid error message.
Fixed: A single line comment made with /# ... #/ silently truncates the source file.
Fixed: The compiler can fail with an internal error when reading certain libraries (generic extension methods with test sections).
Fixed: The compiler can produce an internal error in obscure situations involving lambda expressions that have an error.
Fixed: Unfinished multi-line comments are silently ignored.
Fixed: An inline comment nested inside a multi-line comment is erroneously treated as the end of the multi-line comment.
Fixed: Arrays of nilables produce false compilation errors.
Fixed: Shared constructor wants to initialize instance variables of reference types.
Fixed: In compile-time error recovery situations, there are extraneous warnings regarding the inherits operator and the passthrough type.
Fixed: Cobra internal error on mixin method collision.
Fixed: Poor error message for whitespace between method name and opening paren for a call.
Fixed: -test option doesn't handle @args -target:lib
Fixed: False compilation error for complex expressions involving indexing followed by calling (obj.foo[i]()).
Fixed: Internal error on some forward references.
Fixed: A program left unfinished in a parameter list results in a Cobra internal error.
Fixed: Line numbers mysteriously jump around during debugging. Has to do with local vars.
Library / Run-time:
Added new CobraCommand class to the std lib for conveniently finding and invoking the Cobra command line program from within Cobra.
There are more details in the doc strings. This will subsume the CobraCore.findCobraExe shared methods that do the same thing.
It is now easier to specify that you want the .exe and not just the cobra script (CobraCommand.find vs. CobraCommand.findExe).
New env vars COBRA_COMMAND_PATH and COBRA_EXE_PATH are supported. Old COBRA env var is not.
Split CobraCore.runAllTests into .runAppTests and .runAllTests.
Optimization: Add an In() run-time support overload for int arrays.
Fixed: Dynamic arithmetic operations throw an exception when used with small int types (int16 for example).
Fixed: CobraCore.findCobraExe can fail to find cobra.exe when run under sudo as in sudo mono foo.exe.
Command Line:
New -show-shared-data option used during compilation will output all shared/global data in the program.
Give a proper error message for -pkg: if the pkg-config command cannot be found.
The output from -timeit can be unreadable in some environments.
For -turbo, don't exclude trace statements anymore.
Added -embed-version compiler option. Embed a version string in the generated assembly. If version is not explicitly given, embed the current Cobra compiler version.
Installer:
Check for another error condition where the installer package has the same path as the install target.
Fixed: Fails awkwardly when placed at target directory.
Other:
Improved Samples/Sizes?.cobra.
dump-assembly.cobra
Moved from Source/ to Supplements/ as originally intended
Support reading a filename (rather than just a partial name or assembly name).

New in Cobra 0.9.0 (Sep 27, 2012)

LANGUAGE:
Enabled multiple test sections in methods and properties.
Added new try...catch...get expression.
Added support for namespace doc strings.
Added unpacking the new Pair classes with assignments and for loops.
Throw an UnpackException? for multi-target assignment (target1, target2 = source) if there is a mismatch in the number of source items and targets
Enhanced the treatment of == and between objects to fall back to a strongly type .equals method if a strongly typed .compareTo method is not available.
Added numeric literals like 45n for number and 45d for decimal. Previously, the d suffix required a decimal portion (45.0d) and there was no n suffix available.
Added recognition of the interfaces of primitive types such as int implementing IComparable.
Added proper support for DllImport also known as "P/Invoke".
Added local variable creation and type inference for out parameters in method calls.
Improved error checking and improved error messages.
Fixed various bugs.
New warnings:
Do not use the identity operator "is" with an object literal. Use an equality operator such as "==" or "".
Cannot cast a string to a numeric type. Consider using "int.parse" or "int.tryParse". Use "@help int" for details.
LIBRARY:
Renamed "Cobra.Lang" to "Cobra.Core"
Added MultiList? class.
Added Pair and Pair clasess.
Improved the default formatting of the trace statement (which is also configurable).
Added CobraCore.operatingSystemDescription as String.
Added CobraCore.htmlDecode, .urlEncode and .urlDecode.
Improved CobraCore.findCobraExe (changset:2473).
A Cobra.Compiler library is now always provided during installation.
Renamed "CobraInfo" to "CompileTimeInfo" and added .date and .subversionRevision.
Fixed various bugs.
Added extension methods:
interface IList
interface IList
class Stack: def clone as Stack
class String
COMMAND LINE:
Command line: -native-compiler: The absolute path to the native compiler is no longer required. A simple "csc.exe" or "dmcs" will suffice if it is in the system PATH.
Added -clr-platform option (like C#'s -platform option).
For "cobra -about", show the path that cobra.exe comes from.
LEARNING:
Added How To: Customize Object Equality.
Kickstarted Cobra Koans.
Expanded the wiki.
Continued discussion and support in the forums.
Added Samples:
Notepad for WPF
Gtk Source Editor
HexDump
OTHER:
Added support for .NET 4.0.
Improved the output of the @help directive.
Improved the installer in numerous ways.
Expanded the test suite.
Advanced the JVM back-end (could still use open source volunteers).
Bumped the Mono requirement from 2.4 to 2.6 based on a survey about VM versions.

New in Cobra 2010-10-18 (Oct 19, 2010)

Enhancements:
2010-04-23) New -document-library or -doc-lib option to document libraries as opposed to source code.
Use like: cobra -doc-lib:System.Web
2010-04-23) Doc generator improvements
Show values for constants.
Show events.
Show `out` and `inout` modifiers on parameter types.
Support indexers.
Highlight references to types.
Pick up styles from the current directory as well as the sibling ../styles/ directory.
2010-05-01) Missing `inout` produces a C# error message rather than a Cobra error message. ticket:199 credit:hopscc
2010-05-02) Added new overloads to String.split to take a single string rather than a character or an array of strings.
2010-05-05) Improve error messages when in/out/inout arguments and parameters mismatch.
2010-05-07) Improve error checking around capitalized local variables.
2010-05-07) Improve error messages.
2010-05-09) Suggest "print" when user attempts to use "puts" from Ruby.
2010-05-10) Bump the Mono version requirement from 1.9 to 2.0 which was already in the docs and already effectively required. reported-by:themaniac
2010-05-15) For dynamic-typed values, numeric promotion is now applied to comparisons the same way that is applied to arithmetic.
2010-05-22) Added new sample: Simple English Parser.
2010-06-01) Added a comment about a known exception when running unit tests on Windows on network drives.
2010-06-05) Enumeration members can now be placed on the same line separated by commas. credit:hopscc
2010-06-05) Improve -doc and -doc-type HTML output.
2010-06-19) Made properties using `from var` search for a __name after _name. ticket:205 credit:hopscc
2010-06-21) Reserved keyword "par" for parallel programming enhancements.
2010-06-24) Improve the output of `ct_trace`.
2010-07-02) Deprecate `$sharp(...)` in favor of `sharp'...'` and `sharp"..."`. ticket:207 credit:hopscc
2010-07-02) Installer: Don't overwrite symbolic links. Fix bug in copying "cobra" into the path when it already exists. ticket:209 credit:nevdelap,Chuck.Esterbrook
2010-07-04) Update copyright.
2010-07-31) Print errors and warnings to stderr which is preferred by some IDEs and matches some other compilers.
2010-07-31) Accommodate XNA library oddity where some method arguments have empty names ('').
2010-07-31) Added new XNA How-To courtesy of Kurper. Can you outrun the dog?
2010-08-23) Clarify -compile-if-needed in the cobra -help. In response to ticket:240
2010-09-11) Structs have implicit parameterless initializers and do not allow explicit ones to be declared.
2010-10-11) Improvements and fixes around Mono 2.8
2010-10-13) Add a How-To for using OpenTK.
Fixes:
2010-04-10) Fixed: Cannot directly refer to an open generic type such as `t = List`. ticket:192 reported-by:gauthier
2010-04-22) Fixed: Missing error checks for `out` and `inout` being used on an indexer or property. reported-by:omar-syed
2010-04-25) Fixed: `someEnum is nil` causes a run-time exception.
2010-04-25) Fixed: `cobra -compile-if-needed ...` is broken on Mono only.
2010-04-30) Fixed: Cannot access `libtcodWrapper.Console`.
2010-05-01) Fixed: Failure to infer types related to System.Text.RegularExpressions (MatchCollection and GroupCollections items). ticket:163 credit:hopscc
2010-05-05) Fixed: changeset:2304 caused a regression regarding the `void` type and member access.
2010-05-07) Fixed: Cannot use a chained comparison (`0

New in Cobra 2010-04-02 (Apr 7, 2010)

(2010-03-25) Added new initializers for Set including the ability to take an IEqualityComparer.
(2010-03-19) Improvements to the How-To's.
(2010-03-19) Added ObjectLister utility class.
(2010-03-17) Improve some error messages from the C# backend.
(2010-03-12) An above error about numeric types indicates that you may want to set the default numeric type with "@number [expectedType]" in a source file or "cobra -number:[expectedType]" at the command line.
(2010-03-10) Make stackoverflow handling more robust. Stack overflow handling is in effect when -detailed-stack-trace is on.
(2010-03-05) Add test cases for concatenation of dynamic vars.
(2010-02-28) Added -test-runner command line option to specify the method to invoke to run the unit tests.
(2010-02-27) Use the new Cobra.Lang.Test.TestRunner for running inline unit tests.
Fix some test cases from the last checkin.
(2010-02-26) Added new Cobra.Lang.Test namespace with TestRunner, TestSuite, Test and related classes.
(2010-02-13) Improved error recovery. Avoid an uncaught exception in the compiler.
Unfortunately, I do not have a new (self contained, small) test case for this.
Existing test cases pass.
(2009-12-12) Remove Cobra's explicit following of assembly references. Read assembly dependencies on demand from encountered types.
reported-by:gauthier
(2009-12-09) Added -verbosity-ref option to output information about resolving references to libraries.
(2009-11-29) Add STAThread which is the normal approach for WinForms programs.
(2009-11-23) Better error recovery for slicing.
credit:eric.sellon,Chuck
(2009-11-22) Make le.cobra more robust.
(2009-11-14) Add ability to comment a testify .skip. directive.
Add .skip. to two test cases.
(2009-11-08) Added .clone to ISet.
(2009-11-07) Improved error checking for `print to dest` block format.
(2009-11-05) TestifyRunner cleanup.
ticket:186
credit:hopscc,Chuck
(2009-11-05) Added svn:eol-style = native
(2009-11-05) Catch assignments to read-only properties and indexers.
ticket:75
credit:eric.sellon
(2009-11-02) Added support for chain comparisons such as `0