Scala 2.7.3 RC1

Just in time for Christmas, here is the first release candidate of our new Scala distribution: Scala 2.7.3 RC1. This new version is mainly intended as a maintenance release: it fixes a number of bugs and improves on various aspects of the existing code. There are no new features, however; they are being added instead to a new development branch, currently in its early stages, that will become the next major Scala release sometime next year. If no particular problems are found with this first release candidate, a final Scala 2.7.3 release should follow in a few weeks. Please read below for further details.

You can download Scala 2.7.3.RC1, as usual, from our Download Page. An updated Scala plugin for Eclipse is also available.

What is new?

There are no new features, as this is essentially a maintenance release; however, many bug fixes and other improvements are available in this version, including:

• fixes for bugs #1460, #1467, #1461, #1464, #1454, #1382, #1374, #1402, #1379, #1375, #1241, #1263, #1235, #4e4e4e, #1404, #1390, #1329,  #1329, #1367, #1323, #1306, #1294, #1249, #282828, #1206, #1267, #1289, #1271, #979797, #1232, #1167, #1315, #3c3c3c, #1083, #1257, #1264, #1358, #1514, #1541

• fixed IntMap and LongMap.getOrElse
• several optimisation fixes (dead-code elimination)
• scaladoc fixes
• deepToString fixes
• fixed Queue.enqueue
• ScalaSwing fixes and improvements
• optimisation to Range.foreach, #1297
• fixed EOF problem with RegexParsers.phrase
• fixed a problem with files vs. URLs on Windows.
• fixed problem with partest-created compilers not finding scala package.
• fix for testing.Show on .NET
• fixes for Windows platform
• fixed bug where fsc sometimes fails to start

• fix memory leak in handling GC of actors

• remove race condition when linking/unlinking actors

• thread pool in actor runtime now uses Thread.getState() instead of timestamps on JVM 1.5, yielding substantial performance improvements

• improve actor scheduling on JVM 1.4

• fixes to BigDecimal
• improvements to JVM 1.4 support