2018-08-01

Elvish 0.12 release notes

Version 0.12 has been released six months after 0.11, bringing many new features and bugfixes.

As usual, prebuilt binaries can be found in get.

Breaking Changes

  • The shared: namespace has been removed.

  • Line continuations now use backslashes instead of backquotes, in line with POSIX syntax.

  • The resolve builtin now returns a string.

  • The variables $edit:loc-{pinned,hidden} have been moved into the edit:location: namespace, now $edit:location:{pinned,hidden}

  • The variable $edit:arg-completer has been moved to $edit:completion:arg-completer.

Notable Fixes and Enhancements

  • The Elvish package manager has landed (thanks to @zzamboni!).

  • A str: module has been added (#576).

  • Styling of the web interface (elvish -web) has been reworked, now featuring a dark theme as well as a light theme.

  • Namespaces can now be accessed by as variables with a trailing : in the name (e.g. the edit: namespace variable can be accessed as $edit:). These variables can be indexed like maps (#492, (#631)).

  • Support for urxvt-style key sequences has been improved (#579).

  • Numbers can now be used as normal variable names (e.g. $1).

  • The interactive namespace can now be built dynamically by assigning to the $-exports- variable in rc.elv (#613).

  • Closures can now be introspected (#560, #617).

  • The variable for customizing matchers in completion mode has graduated from $edit:-matcher to $edit:completion:matcher.

  • The joins command no longer ignores leading empty values (#616).

  • The while special command no longer swallows exceptions (#615).

  • The finally block of the try special command no longer swallows exceptions (#619).

  • A set of builtin commands for manipulating environment variables - has-env, get-env, set-env, unset-env - has been added.

  • The prompts are now rendered asynchronously. The appearance of stale prompts can be customized.

  • Experimental support for customizing the eagerness of prompts.

  • Elvish now writes a \r to the terminal before suspending the editor (#629; thanks to @krader1961 for the analysis!).

  • New edit:history:fast-forward command to import command history after the current session started.

  • The completion mode no longer completes the longest common prefix (#637).

  • New store:del-dir command for deleting directory history.

  • Add chdir hooks $before-chdir and $after-chdir.

  • Location mode now supports the notion of workspaces (#643).

  • The output of elvish -buildinfo -json is now actually valid JSON (#682).

  • New styled and styled-segment commands (thanks to @fehnomenal!) (#520, #674).

  • New builtin $notify-bg-job-success variable for suppressing notification of the success of background jobs (thanks to @iwoloschin!) (#689).

  • New builtin $num-bg-jobs variable for tracking number of background jobs (#692).

  • The edit:complete-getopt command now supports supplying a description for arguments of options (thanks to @zzamboni!) (#693).

  • Complex candidates built with edit:complex-candidate are now indexable (thanks to @zzamboni!) (#691).

  • New -norc flag for skipping rc.elv (thanks to @iwoloschin!) (#707).

  • Elvish now guards against commands messing up terminal attributes (#706).