New Language Features

• or_return atom expression (suffix)
  • extremely useful for early returning with multiple return values
  • x, err = foo(); if err != nil { return } can now becomes x = foo() or_return;
• or_else as a binary (infix) operator
• Multi-Pointers [^]T
  • A way to describe foreign (C-like) pointers which act like arrays (pointers that map to multiple items)
  • The main purpose of this type is to aid with foreign code and act as a way to auto-document functionality and allow for easier transition to Odin code, especially converting pointers to slices.
• Allow len and cap to return uint if a type is uint to aid people wanting to use unsigned integers
• Unify semantics of the built-in swizzle procedure with the selector expression semantics e.g. .xyz
• Define where #bounds_check and #no_bounds_check can be applied
  • May only be applied to one of the following statements: {}, if, when, for, switch, return, defer, assignment, variable declaration
  • May only be applied to a variable declaration, and not a constant value declaration

Packages

• core:math/big (big integer support)
• core:encoding/hxa (reader and writer)
• core:c/libc - (mostly) projected all of C11's standard library to Odin, as defined by the C11 specification: N1570, or ISO/IEC 9899:2011.
• Remove core:encoding/cel
• The new vendor library collection
• vendor:sdl2
  • Full bindings to the SDL2 library
  • Ships with DLLs and Libs for Microsoft Windows
  • Bundled with gamecontrollerdb.txt
• vendor:sdl2/image
• vendor:sdl2/mixer
• vendor:sdl2/net
• vendor:sdl2/ttf
• vendor:OpenGL
• vendor:vulkan
• vendor:glfw
• vendor:portmidi

Compiler Improvements

• Unify multithreading logic through the compiler
• Remove numerous possible race conditions
• Disallow using on enum declarations in favour of implicit selector expressions: .A
• Simplify data structures within the compiler for better memory reuse
• Correct DllMain behaviour
• Delete a lot of dead code

General Changes

• Prefer ..= over .. in the core library
• Add Allocator_Error.Mode_Not_Implemented
• Allow + in import paths
• Add #any_int directive to replace auto_cast uses on parameters
• Add map_insert which returns the pointer to the inserted value (assuming no resizes happen in the mean time)