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Darklang Release 5

September 1, 2022

Darklang Release 5 includes support for Tuples, a revamped settings panel with new settings for contributors, and significant internal reworks.

See the blog post for further discussion.

Major feature: experimental Tuple support​

Dark now has work-in-progress support for tuples (#4265, #4425, #4404, #4311) - unstructured lists of heterogeneous data:

  • Tuple expressions can be created by entering ( in a blank expression
  • Tuples may be deconstructed in match patterns
  • New standard library functions have been added to work with Tuples:
    • Tuple2::create, ::first, ::second, ::swap, ::mapFirst, ::mapSecond, ::mapBoth
    • Tuple3::create, ::first, ::second, ::third, ::mapFirst, ::mapSecond, ::mapThird, ::mapAllThree
  • Tuple deconstruction (let (lat long) = (39.9526, 75.1652)) is not yet available, so creating tuples of size greater than 3 is not recommended at this time, unless you plan to use match expressions to deconstruct the values.
  • Tuples are only available after opting in via Settings (see next section)
  • More details on using tuples can be found in Language Details.

Major feature: Contributor settings​

A new Contributor Settings page has been added, allowing devs to look under the hood and use the same tools that employees are using to develop Darklang.

contributor settings and tuple demo

In particular, devs can now build a local version of the Darklang editor, and use it against their production Darklang codebase (#4387, #4402)

We have also made it possible to enable the in-Editor debugger (note: this is useful for the debugging the Darklang editor, not for debugging Darklang programs) (#4343)

Finally, in-progress features can now be enabled for devs, starting with Tuples (#4429)

Language improvements​

  • Allow floats where the whole number part is empty (#4371)

Editor improvements​

  • Allow pressing enter in more expression bodies (#4438)

  • Fixed Undo functionality, which was briefly broken (#4392)

  • Fixed display of Error rail, which was briefly broken (#4373)

  • Prevent Analysis errors due to using Tasks incorrectly (#4436)

  • Revamping settings UI, adding reusuable form components, animations, toggle switches, and switching to TailwindCSS (#4375, #4401, #4420, #4426)

In-progress features - HttpClient and HTTP framework​

The current HttpClient and HTTP framework are quite limited, only supporting text request/response bodies, among many other problems. They also lack the flexibility to control and compose their behavior.

As part of rewriting the Static Assets feature in Dark itself (#4259), we are creating "thinner", more flexible, and more composable HttpClient (#4366) and HTTP handlers (#4353)

Internal improvements​

  • Huge refactor of client types (#4326)
  • Remove OCamlTypes (used for interop with the old OCaml backend) (#4396, #4398)
  • Add internal function to load Ops for a TopLevel (#4391)
  • Test file cleanups (#4412, #4411)