Programming News Archives

Promoted to general availability (GA) status today is the OpenJDK Java 20 update with a number of new features.

While there is Pyston, PyPy, and various other alternative Python implementations being done in the name of performance, Codon is one of the newer ones and is talking up 10~100x faster performance.

Mold 1.11 is out as the newest version of this open-source high performance linker that rivals the likes of LLVM LLD and GNU Gold for very speedy linking across multiple CPU architectures.

Following the PyTorch Foundation talking up PyTorch 2.0 since the end of last year, today marks the PyTorch 2.0 release officially shipping. PyTorch 2.0 has significant optimizations to "supercharge" it with better performance for both CPU and GPU modes of operation.

Back in 2021 Ruby merged the YJIT just-in-time compiler that last year with Ruby 3.2 was deemed production grade. There's also been the MJIT compiler that relies upon an external C compiler. And now landing this week in Ruby is RJIT as the newest just-in-time effort.

Python 3.12 Alpha 6 was released on Tuesday as the newest development release toward this next major Python release.

Coming about over the past two years has been uutils as a re-implementation of GNU Coreutils written within the Rust programming language. This Rust-based version of cp, mv, and other core utilities is reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses.

Google has released a new version of the Go programming language that with today's v1.20 release come a number of notable additions as well as gutting out support for older versions of Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS. Two features alone have me excited about Go 1.20: initial work on CPU architecture feature build flags like for x86_64 micro-architecture feature level handling and initial support for Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO) builds.

TornadoVM is an open-source plugin for OpenJDK and GraalVM that allows for running Java programs on heterogeneous hardware like GPUs and FPGAs. With today's TornadoVM 0.15, it's the first release now supporting discrete Intel Arc Graphics hardware.

Mold 1.10 was released today by lead developer Rui Ueyama as the newest version of this high speed linker that has been outperforming GNU Gold and LLVM LLD.

While many haven't even moved yet to the very speedy Python 3.11 that was released back in October, for those wanting to do some bleeding-edge testing the fourth alpha of Python 3.12 is already out.

Mold as the high performance linker alternative to GNU Gold and LLVM LLD is out with another feature release.

The Tellusim Engine that is focused on professional simulations, visualizations, urban planning, VR/AR, and other 3D tasks has added a comprehensive set of Rust programming language bindings.

OpenCV 4.7 was released today as the newest version of this widely-used, open-source computer vision library.

It's been one year and a few days since the introduction of Mold 1.0 as a high performance linker alternative to GNU Gold and LLVM LLD while debuting today is Mold 1.8 as the newest feature release.

As a timely gift to programmers using the speedy and very successful Meson build system, the Meson 1.0 stable release has debuted just in time for Christmas. Besides the holiday, today is also notable in marking ten years to the day since Meson started development.

Embark Studios has released a new version of Rust-GPU that has a goal of making Rust a first-class programming language and ecosystem for GPU shader development.

While Linux 6.1 merged the initial Rust infrastructure, in this kernel version set to be released as stable today there isn't any Rust-based functionality for end-users. With v6.1 it's just some of the initial code for building up the Rust programming language support and it's continuing that way for Linux 6.2. The pull request of more Rust enablement has already been sent out for the Linux 6.2 merge window.

PHP 8.2 is out today as the annual major feature release to this widely-used scripting language primarily for web purposes.

The GCC Rust front-end that provides very preliminary support for the Rust programming language atop the GNU Compiler Collection is now cleared for merging to the mainline codebase!

PoCL 3.1 is nearing release as the "Portable Computing Language" that is most known for serving as a CPU-based OpenCL implementation but via its LLVM usage also allows supporting OpenCL execution atop NVIDIA CUDA and other targets.

Following the development builds over the summer, Wasmer 3.0 was officially released this weekend as the newest feature release for this open-source software aiming to serve as a universal WebAssembly runtime with a goal to "run any code on any client" via WebAssembly.

While Microsoft is celebrating the GA release today of SQL Server 2022, open-source developers have SQLite 3.40 premiering today as the newest version of this embed-friendly SQL database implementation widely used by many cross-platform applications and other software for lightweight SQL database engine needs.

IBM is working to extend Power10's MMA architecture with a new feature for "dense math" that is expected to premiere with future IBM Power processors.

Mold is the modern, high performance, and open-source linker taking on the likes of LLVM LLD and GNU Gold. Mold 1.7 has been released as the newest update to this very promising linker, but unfortunately the lead developer is evaluating a license change. Due to still losing money over working on it full-time, he may be forced to change the software license without obtaining sustainable funding.

Debuting on Sunday was Meson 0.64 as the newest version of this open-source build system that is increasingly being used by a variety of software projects for its speed, good cross-platform support, and overall feature set compared to alternatives.

Back in September was a proposal to promote Rust's UEFI firmware targets to tier-2. With the current tier-3 designation the Rust UEFI targets they currently lack continuous integration (CI) guarantees and official builds in the Rust release channels, which means users wanting to use Rust for targeting the UEFI binaries need to rely on nightly/unstable compiler builds.

In addition to this week having brought the announcement of GraalVM 22.3 as the newest quarterly feature release and also Oracle announcing that GraalVM CE code will be contributed to OpenJDK, the Eclipse Foundation is ending out their week by having shipped OpenJ9 v0.35.0.

Python 3.11 stable is out today as a rather big update for this popular scripting language.

Mold as the open-source high performance linker continues its ascent in working to prove itself as a viable alternative to LLVM's LLD and GNU Gold. Mold 1.6 is out today with the latest fixes and features.

Longtime open-source developer Keith Packard has announced the release of Picolibc 1.7.9, the newest version of his C library for embedded systems. Picolibc 1.7.9 adds support for several new CPU architectures and other enhancements for his miniature libc implementation.

Among the many Rust-written projects that have been gaining steam in recent years has been uutils as a Rust-based replacement to GNU Coreutils that is commonly used on Linux systems. Out today is uutils 0.0.16 as the latest step in this Rust-replacement quest.

Wireshark 4.0 has been released as the newest version of this leading open-source network protocol analyzer.

Git 2.38 was released on Sunday and most notable with this feature release is the inclusion of scalar as a Microsoft-developed repository management tool to make it easier dealing with very large Git reposotories.

Pyston as what was born at Dropbox as a speedy open-source Python implementation is out with a new update as it continues to focus on maximizing performance. Dropbox ceased work on Pyston years ago while the developers continued and since last year joined Anaconda to continue their performant Python quest.

Mold 1.5 is out today as the newest version of this open-source, high-speed linker alternative to the likes of GNU Gold and LLVM LLD.

Way back in 2019 Intel, Mozilla, and Red Hat started the Bytecode Alliance as an initiative to promote running WebAssembly "everywhere" and expand the scope of WASM outside of the web browser. After being in development now for three years, Wasmtime 1.0 was released for this production-ready WebAssembly runtime.

Out today is OpenJDK Java 19 in its general availability form while adding a number of new features.

Held today during the first day of Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 in Dublin was a Rust mini-conference about the ongoing work on making Rust a suitable systems programming language and integrating support for Rust within the mainline Linux kernel. There were many interesting talks from the status of the Rust integration from the Linux kernel to a Rust-written NVMe driver that can perform as well as the C written driver.

David Rheinsberg of Red Hat who is a contributor to systemd, BUS1, KMSCON, and other projects over the years is leading an effort seeking to get Rust's UEFI firmware targets promoted to a tier-2 class.

Formed back in 2019 by Intel, Mozilla, and Red Hat was the Bytecode Alliance to promote running WebAssembly (WASM) everywhere. As part of the Bytecode Alliance initiatives they have been developing Wasmtime as a WebAssembly run-time and later this month they plan to christen version 1.0.

Following a slight release delay, yesterday saw the release of NetBeans 15 by the Apache Software Foundation as this Java-focused integrated deevelopment environment that also supports C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, and other languages.

After a series of alpha and beta releases over the past several months, out this past week is the first release candidate of the upcoming PHP 8.2.

Following optional "__bf16" support being added to the x86-64 psABI as a special type for representing 16-bit Brain Floating Point Format for deep learning / machine learning applications, the GCC and LLVM compilers have now landed their __bf16 type support.

Last year marked the release of Mold 1.0 as a modern, high-speed linker alternative to the likes of GNU Gold and LLVM LLD. Mold was started by Rui Ueyama who previously worked on the LLVM linker. Mold has continued seeing new features added and out today is version 1.4.1 where "alpha" support for macOS is added and also beginning to work on CMake build system integration.

OpenBLAS as the high performance, open-source BLAS / LAPACK implementation debuted a new version on Sunday with more CPU optimizations and expanded processor coverage.

OpenJ9 v0.33 was released on Friday as the newest version of this Eclipse Foundation Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that was formerly developed by IBM.

Miguel Ojeda has posted the newest patch series implementing the Rust programming language infrastructure and initial sample code for the Linux kernel.

Wasmer's goal is to be "the universal WebAssembly runtime" with aiming to "run any code on any client" and with Wasmer 3.0 they are furthering the potential for this multi-language, multi-platform WASM stack.

Oracle has issued its newest quarterly release of GraalVM as its high performance Java JVM/JDK that also supports additional execution models and programming languages. GraalVM 22.2 is this newest version and contains a number of different optimizations for its growing number of components.