Announcing Dotty 0.7.0 and 0.8.0-RC1
Today, we are excited to release Dotty versions 0.7.0 and 0.8.0-RC1. These releases serve as a technology preview that demonstrates new language features and the compiler supporting them.
Dotty is the project name for technologies that are considered for inclusion in Scala 3. Scala has pioneered the fusion of object-oriented and functional programming in a typed setting. Scala 3 will be a big step towards realizing the full potential of these ideas. Its main objectives are to
- become more opinionated by promoting programming idioms we found to work well,
- simplify where possible,
- eliminate inconsistencies and surprising behaviors,
- build on strong foundations to ensure the design hangs well together,
- consolidate language constructs to improve the language’s consistency, safety, ergonomics, and performance.
You can learn more about Dotty on our website.
This is our eighth scheduled release according to our 6-week release schedule. The previous technology preview simplified enums, introduced erased terms, improved IDE support and improved pattern matching for GADT.
What’s new in the 0.8.0-RC1 technology preview?
sbt 1 support #3872
Starting with Dotty 0.8.0, we will only support versions of sbt >= 1.1.4. Migrating to sbt 1 lets us use the new improved incremental compiler for Scala called Zinc, and enables integration with tools such as Bloop.
If you are already using Dotty with sbt 0.13, follow these simple steps to upgrade:
- update sbt version to 1.1.4 in
project/build.properties - update sbt-dotty plugin to the latest version:
addSbtPlugin("ch.epfl.lamp" % "sbt-dotty" % "0.2.2") - replace usages of
.withDottyCompat()by.withDottyCompat(scalaVersion.value)
Unchecked warnings #4045
Dotty now emits unchecked warnings like scalac whenever a type test is performed but cannot be fully checked at runtime because of type erasure. For example:
scala> def foo(x: Any) = x.isInstanceOf[List[String]]
1 |def foo(x: Any) = x.isInstanceOf[List[String]]
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| the type test for List[String] cannot be checked at runtime
In some cases, the Dotty compiler is smarter than scalac and will not emit a warning:
trait Marker
def foo[T](x: T) = x match {
case _: T with Marker => // scalac emits a spurious warning
case _ =>
}
Kind Polymorphism #4108
Normally type parameters in Scala are partitioned into kinds. First-level types are types of values. Higher-kinded types are type constructors such as List or Map. The kind of a type is indicated by the top type of which it is a subtype. Normal types are subtypes of Any, covariant single argument type constructors such as List are subtypes of [+X] =>> Any, and the Map type constructor is a subtype of [X, +Y] =>> Any.
Sometimes we would like to have type parameters that can have more than one kind, for instance to define an implicit value that works for parameters of any kind. This is now possible through a form of (subtype) kind polymorphism. Kind polymorphism relies on the special type scala.AnyKind that can be used as an upper bound of a type.
def f[T <: AnyKind] = ..
The actual type arguments of f can then be types of arbitrary kinds. So the following would all be legal:
f[Int]
f[List]
f[Map]
f[[X] =>> String]
Note: This feature is considered experimental and is only enabled under a compiler flag (i.e. -Ykind-polymorphism). For more information, visit the Kind Polymorphism section of our documentation.
Improved support for SAM type #4152
This release includes fixes to SAM types that greatly improve interoperability with Java 8 lambdas. One can now easily write Scala code that uses Java streams:
val myList =
java.util.Arrays.asList("a1", "a2", "b1", "c2", "c1")
myList
.stream
.filter(s => s.startsWith("c"))
.map(_.toUpperCase)
.sorted
.forEach(println(_))
// prints:
// C1
// C2
Trying out Dotty
Scastie
Scastie, the online Scala playground, supports Dotty. This is an easy way to try Dotty without installing anything.
sbt
Using sbt 1.1.4 or newer, do:
sbt new lampepfl/dotty.g8
This will setup a new sbt project with Dotty as compiler. For more details on using Dotty with sbt, see the example project.
IDE support
It is very easy to start using the Dotty IDE in any Dotty project by following the IDE sections of the getting-started page.
Standalone installation
Releases are available for download on the Releases section of the Dotty repository: https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/releases
We also provide a homebrew package that can be installed by running:
brew install lampepfl/brew/dotty
In case you have already installed Dotty via brew, you should instead update it:
brew upgrade dotty
Let us know what you think!
If you have questions or any sort of feedback, feel free to send us a message on our Gitter channel. If you encounter a bug, please open an issue on GitHub.
Contributing
Thank you to all the contributors who made this release possible!
According to git shortlog -sn --no-merges 0.7.0..0.8.0-RC1 these are:
95 Martin Odersky
91 liu fengyun
91 Nicolas Stucki
84 Allan Renucci
73 Guillaume Martres
67 Martin Duhem
18 Jendrik Wenke
16 Paolo G. Giarrusso
8 Robert Stoll
6 Thierry Treyer
4 Aggelos Biboudis
1 tokkiyaa
1 Rajesh Veeranki
1 Maxime Kjaer
1 Saurabh Rawat
1 Joan
1 Jorge Vicente Cantero
1 Jasper Moeys
1 Piotr Gabara
If you want to get your hands dirty and contribute to Dotty, now is a good time to get involved! Head to our Getting Started page for new contributors, and have a look at some of the good first issues. They make perfect entry-points into hacking on the compiler.
We are looking forward to having you join the team of contributors.