# What's changed?
* Luau allocation scheme was changed to handle allocations in 513-1024
byte range internally without falling back to global allocator
* coroutine/thread creation no longer requires any global allocations,
making it up to 15% faster (vs libc malloc)
* table construction for 17-32 keys or 33-64 array elements is up to 30%
faster (vs libc malloc)
### New Type Solver
* Cyclic unary negation type families are reduced to `number` when
possible
* Class types are skipped when searching for free types in unifier to
improve performance
* Fixed issues with table type inference when metatables are present
* Improved inference of iteration loop types
* Fixed an issue with bidirectional inference of method calls
* Type simplification will now preserve error suppression markers
### Native Code Generation
* Fixed TAG_VECTOR skip optimization to not break instruction use counts
(broken optimization wasn't included in 614)
* Fixed missing side-effect when optimizing generic loop preparation
instruction
---
### Internal Contributors
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <amccord@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vighnesh <vvijay@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aviral Goel <agoel@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: David Cope <dcope@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
### What's changed?
* Syntax for [read-only and write-only
properties](https://github.com/luau-lang/rfcs/pull/15) is now parsed,
but is not yet supported in typechecking
### New Type Solver
* `keyof` and `rawkeyof` type operators have been updated to match final
text of the [RFC](https://github.com/luau-lang/rfcs/pull/16)
* Fixed issues with cyclic type families that were generated for mutable
loop variables
### Native Code Generation
* Fixed inference for number / vector operation that caused an
unnecessary VM assist
---
### Internal Contributors
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
- Implemented [Require by String with Relative
Paths](https://github.com/luau-lang/rfcs/blob/master/docs/new-require-by-string-semantics.md)
RFC
- Implemented [Require by String with
Aliases](https://github.com/luau-lang/rfcs/blob/master/docs/require-by-string-aliases.md)
RFC with support for `paths` and `alias` arrays in .luarc
- Added SUBRK and DIVRK bytecode instructions to speed up
constant-number and constant/number operations
- Added `--vector-lib`, `--vector-ctor` and `--vector-type` options to
luau-compile to support code with vectors
New Solver
- Correctness fixes to subtyping
- Improvements to dataflow analysis
Native Code Generation
- Added bytecode analysis pass to predict type tags used in operations
- Fixed rare cases of numerical loops being generated without an
interrupt instruction
- Restored optimization data propagation into the linear block
- Duplicate buffer length checks are optimized away
Miscellaneous
- Small performance improvements to new non-strict mode
- Introduced more scripts for fuzzing Luau and processing the results,
including fuzzer build support for CMake
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <amccord@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aviral Goel <agoel@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: David Cope <dcope@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vighnesh Vijay <vvijay@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <amccord@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aviral Goel <agoel@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: David Cope <dcope@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
New Solver
* New algorithm for inferring the types of locals that have no
annotations. This
algorithm is very conservative by default, but is augmented with some
control
flow awareness to handle most common scenarios.
* Fix bugs in type inference of tables
* Improve performance of by switching out standard C++ containers for
`DenseHashMap`
* Infrastructure to support clearer error messages in strict mode
Native Code Generation
* Fix a lowering issue with buffer.writeu8 and 0x80-0xff values: A
constant
argument wasn't truncated to the target type range and that causes an
assertion failure in `build.mov`.
* Store full lightuserdata value in loop iteration protocol lowering
* Add analysis to compute function bytecode distribution
* This includes a class to analyze the bytecode operator distribution
per
function and a CLI tool that produces a JSON report. See the new cmake
target `Luau.Bytecode.CLI`
---------
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <amccord@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aviral Goel <agoel@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
## What's Changed
- Improve POSIX compliance in `CLI/FileUtils.cpp` by @SamuraiCrow #1064
- `AstStat*::hasEnd` is deprecated; use `AstStatBlock::hasEnd` instead
- Added a lint for common misuses of the `#` operator
- Luau now issues deprecated diagnostics for some uses of `getfenv` and
`setfenv`
- Fixed a case where we included a trailing space in some error
stringifications
### Compiler
- Do not do further analysis in O2 on self functions
- Improve detection of invalid repeat..until expressions vs continue
### New Type Solver
- We now cache subtype test results to improve performance
- Improved operator inference mechanics (aka type families)
- Further work towards type states
- Work towards [new non-strict
mode](https://github.com/Roblox/luau/blob/master/rfcs/new-nonstrict.md)
continues
### Native Codegen
- Instruction last use locations should follow the order in which blocks
are lowered
- Add a bonus assertion to IrLoweringA64::tempAddr
---
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <amccord@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vighnesh Vijay <vvijay@roblox.com>
* Fixed `Frontend::markDirty` not working on modules that were not
typechecked yet
* Fixed generic variadic function unification succeeding when it should
have reported an error
New Type Solver:
* Implemented semantic subtyping check for function types
Native Code Generation:
* Improved performance of numerical loops with a constant step
* Simplified IR for `bit32.extract` calls extracting first/last bits
* Improved performance of NaN checks
Type checker/autocomplete:
* `Luau::autocomplete` no longer performs typechecking internally, make
sure to run `Frontend::check` before performing autocomplete requests
* Autocomplete string suggestions without "" are now only suggested
inside the ""
* Autocomplete suggestions now include `function (anonymous autofilled)`
key with a full suggestion for the function expression (with arguments
included) stored in `AutocompleteEntry::insertText`
* `AutocompleteEntry::indexedWithSelf` is provided for function call
suggestions made with `:`
* Cyclic modules now see each other type exports as `any` to prevent
memory use-after-free (similar to module return type)
Runtime:
* Updated inline/loop unroll cost model to better handle assignments
(Fixes https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/978)
* `math.noise` speed was improved by ~30%
* `table.concat` speed was improved by ~5-7%
* `tonumber` and `tostring` now have fastcall paths that execute ~1.5x
and ~2.5x faster respectively (fixes#777)
* Fixed crash in `luaL_typename` when index refers to a non-existing
value
* Fixed potential out of memory scenario when using `string.sub` or
`string.char` in a loop
* Fixed behavior of some fastcall builtins when called without arguments
under -O2 to match original functions
* Support for native code execution in VM is now enabled by default
(note: native code still has to be generated explicitly)
* `Codegen::compile` now accepts `CodeGen_OnlyNativeModules` flag. When
set, only modules that have a `--!native` hot-comment at the top will be
compiled to native code
In our new typechecker:
* Generic type packs are no longer considered to be variadic during
unification
* Timeout and cancellation now works in new solver
* Fixed false positive errors around 'table' and 'function' type
refinements
* Table literals now use covariant unification rules. This is sound
since literal has no type specified and has no aliases
* Fixed issues with blocked types escaping the constraint solver
* Fixed more places where error messages that should've been suppressed
were still reported
* Fixed errors when iterating over a top table type
In our native code generation (jit):
* 'DebugLuauAbortingChecks' flag is now supported on A64
* LOP_NEWCLOSURE has been translated to IR
* Added a limit on how many instructions the Compiler can safely produce
(reported by @TheGreatSageEqualToHeaven)
C++ API Changes:
* With work started on read-only and write-only properties,
`Property::type` member variable has been replaced with `TypeId type()`
and `setType(TypeId)` functions.
* New `LazyType` unwrap callback now has a `void` return type, all
that's required from the callback is to write into `unwrapped` field.
In our work on the new type solver, the following issues were fixed:
* Work has started to support https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/77 and
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/79
* Refinements are no longer applied on l-values, removing some
false-positive errors
* Improved overload resolution against expected result type
* `Frontend::prepareModuleScope` now works in the new solver
* Cofinite strings are now comparable
And these are the changes in native code generation (JIT):
* Fixed MIN_NUM and MAX_NUM constant fold when one of the arguments is
NaN
* Added constant folding for number conversions and bit operations
* Value spilling and rematerialization is now supported on arm64
* Improved FASTCALL2K IR generation to support second argument constant
* Added value numbering and load/store propagation optimizations
* Added STORE_VECTOR on arm64, completing the IR lowering on this target
* Fixed exported types not being suggested in autocomplete
* `T...` is now convertible to `...any` (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/767)
* Fixed issue with `T?` not being convertible to `T | T` or `T?`
(sometimes when internal pointer identity is different)
* Fixed potential crash in missing table key error suggestion to use a
similar existing key
* `lua_topointer` now returns a pointer for strings
C++ API Changes:
* `prepareModuleScope` callback has moved from TypeChecker to Frontend
* For LSPs, AstQuery functions (and `isWithinComment`) can be used
without full Frontend data
A lot of changes in our two experimental components as well.
In our work on the new type-solver, the following issues were fixed:
* Fixed table union and intersection indexing
* Correct custom type environments are now used
* Fixed issue with values of `free & number` type not accepted in
numeric operations
And these are the changes in native code generation (JIT):
* arm64 lowering is almost complete with support for 99% of IR commands
and all fastcalls
* Fixed x64 assembly encoding for extended byte registers
* More external x64 calls are aware of register allocator
* `math.min`/`math.max` with more than 2 arguments are now lowered to IR
as well
* Fixed correctness issues with `math` library calls with multiple
results in variadic context and with x64 register conflicts
* x64 register allocator learnt to restore values from VM memory instead
of always using stack spills
* x64 exception unwind information now supports multiple functions and
fixes function start offset in Dwarf2 info
* `table.sort` was improved further. It now guarentees N*log(N) time
complexity in the worst case.
* Fix https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/880
We are also working on fixing final bugs and crashes in the new type
solver.
On the CodeGen front we have a few things going on:
* We have a smarter register allocator for the x86 JIT
* We lower more instructions on arm64
* The vector constructor builtin is now translated to IR
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
* A small subset of control-flow refinements have been added to
recognize type options that are unreachable after a
conditional/unconditional code block. (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/356).
Some examples:
```lua
local function f(x: string?)
if not x then return end
-- x is 'string' here
end
```
Throwing calls like `error` or `assert(false)` instead of 'return' are
also recognized.
Existing complex refinements like type/typeof and tagged union checks
are expected to work, among others.
To enable this feature, `LuauTinyControlFlowAnalysis` exclusion has to
be removed from `ExperimentalFlags.h`.
If will become enabled unconditionally in the near future.
* Linter has been integrated into the typechecker analysis so that
type-aware lint warnings can work in any mode
`Frontend::lint` methods were deprecated, `Frontend::check` has to be
used instead with `runLintChecks` option set.
Resulting lint warning are located inside `CheckResult`.
* Fixed large performance drop and increased memory consumption when
array is filled at an offset (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/590)
* Part of [Type error suppression
RFC](https://github.com/Roblox/luau/blob/master/rfcs/type-error-suppression.md)
was implemented making subtyping checks with `any` type transitive.
---
In our work on the new type-solver:
* `--!nocheck` mode no longer reports type errors
* New solver will not be used for `--!nonstrict` modules until all
issues with strict mode typechecking are fixed
* Added control-flow aware type refinements mentioned earlier
In native code generation:
* `LOP_NAMECALL` has been translated to IR
* `type` and `typeof` builtin fastcalls have been translated to
IR/assembly
* Additional steps were taken towards arm64 support
* Fix#817
* Fix#850
* Optimize math.floor/ceil/round with SSE4.1
* Results in a ~7-9% speedup on the math-cordic benchmark.
* Optimized table.sort.
* table.sort is now ~4.1x faster (when not using a predicate) and ~2.1x
faster when using a simple predicate. Performance may improve further in
the future.
* Reorganize the memory ownership of builtin type definitions.
* This is a small initial step toward affording parallel typechecking.
The new type solver is coming along nicely. We are working on fixing
crashes and bugs.
A few major changes to native codegen landed this week:
* Fixed lowering of Luau IR mod instruction when first argument is a
constant
* Added VM register data-flow/capture analysis
* Fixed issues with optimizations in unreachable blocks
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
* Fixed incorrect lexeme generated for string parts in the middle of an
interpolated string (Fixes https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/744)
* DeprecatedApi lint can report some issues without type inference
information
* Fixed performance of autocomplete requests when suggestions have large
intersection types (Solves
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/discussions/847)
* Marked `table.getn`/`foreach`/`foreachi` as deprecated ([RFC:
Deprecate
table.getn/foreach/foreachi](https://github.com/Roblox/luau/blob/master/rfcs/deprecate-table-getn-foreach.md))
* With -O2 optimization level, we now optimize builtin calls based on
known argument/return count.
Note that this change can be observable if `getfenv/setfenv` is used to
substitute a builtin, especially if arity is different.
Fastcall heavy tests show a 1-2% improvement.
* Luau can now be built with clang-cl (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/736)
We also made many improvements to our experimental components.
For our new type solver:
* Overhauled data flow analysis system, fixed issues with 'repeat'
loops, global variables and type annotations
* Type refinements now work on generic table indexing with a string
literal
* Type refinements will properly track potentially 'nil' values (like
t[x] for a missing key) and their further refinements
* Internal top table type is now isomorphic to `{}` which fixes issues
when `typeof(v) == 'table'` type refinement is handled
* References to non-existent types in type annotations no longer resolve
to 'error' type like in old solver
* Improved handling of class unions in property access expressions
* Fixed default type packs
* Unsealed tables can now have metatables
* Restored expected types for function arguments
And for native code generation:
* Added min and max IR instructions mapping to vminsd/vmaxsd on x64
* We now speculatively extract direct execution fast-paths based on
expected types of expressions which provides better optimization
opportunities inside a single basic block
* Translated existing math fastcalls to IR form to improve tag guard
removal and constant propagation
This week we only have updates to new type solver and JIT. Both projects
are still in the process of being built out. Neither are ready for
general use yet.
In the new solver, we fixed issues with recursive type aliases.
Duplicated type parameters are once again reported, exported types are
being recorder and function argument names are placed inside function
types.
We also made improvements to restore parts of bidirectional type
tracking.
On native code generation side, namecall instruction lowering was fixed,
we fixed inconsistencies in IR command definitions and added utility
function to help with constant folding.
* For autocomplete, additional information is included in Scope for type
alias name locations and names of imported modules
* Improved autocomplete suggestions in 'for' and 'while' loop headers
* String match functions return types are now optional strings and
numbers because match is not guaranteed at runtime
* Fixed build issue on gcc 11 and up (Fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/806)
* Fixed garbage data in module scopes when type graph is not retained
* LOP_MOVE with the same source and target registers is no longer
generated (Fixes https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/793)
* Fixed unions of `nil` types displaying as `?`
* Internal normalization now handles class types which can make
previously failing (incorrectly) sub-typing checks to succeed
* The AST JSON encoder will now stringify infinity and NaN according to the JSON5 spec using the tokens `Infinity`, `-Infinity`, and `NaN`.
* Improve autocompletion of table keys if the type of that key is a union of string singletons.
* Reduce the stack utilization of type checking.
* Improve the error message that's reported when a delimiting comma is
missing from a table literal. eg
```lua
local t = {
first = 1
second = 2
}```
* https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/719
* Improved `Failed to unify type packs` error message to be reported as
`Type pack 'X' could not be converted into 'Y'`
* https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/722
* 1% reduction in executed instruction count by removing a check in fast
call dispatch
* Additional fixes to reported error location of OOM errors in VM
* Improve `math.sqrt`, `math.floor` and `math.ceil` performance on
additional compilers and platforms (1-2% geomean improvement including
8-9% on math-cordic)
* All thrown exceptions by Luau analysis are derived from
`Luau::InternalCompilerError`
* When a call site has fewer arguments than required, error now reports
the location of the function name instead of the argument to the
function
* https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/724
* Fixed https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/725
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
* Reoptimized math.min/max/bit32 builtins assuming at least 2 arguments are used (1-2% lift on some benchmarks)
* Type errors that mention function types no longer have redundant parenthesis around return type
* Luau REPL now supports --compile=remarks which displays the source code with optimization remarks embedded as comments
* Builtin calls are slightly faster when called with 1-2 arguments (~1% improvement in some benchmarks)
- Fix rare type checking bugs with invalid generic types escaping the
module scope
- Fix type checking of variadic type packs in certain cases
- Implement type normalization, which resolves a large set of various
issues with unions/intersections in type checker
- Improve parse errors for trailing commas in function calls and type
lists
- Reduce profiling skew when using --profile with very high frequencies
- Improve performance of `lua_getinfo` (`debug.info`, `debug.traceback`
and profiling overhead are now 20% faster/smaller)
- Improve performance of polymorphic comparisons (1-2% lift on some
benchmarks)
- Improve performance of closure creation (1-2% lift on some benchmarks)
- Improve string comparison performance (4% lift on string sorting)
- Type aliases can no longer override primitive types; attempts to do
that will result in a type error
- Fix misleading type error messages for mismatches in expression list
length during assignment
- Fix incorrect type name display in certain cases
- setmetatable/getmetatable are now ~2x faster
- tools/perfstat.py can be used to display statistics about profiles
captured via --profile switch
- Improve type error messages for argument count mismatch in certain
cases
- Fix type checking variadic returns when the type is incompatible which
type checked in certain cases
- Reduce size of upvalue objects by 8 bytes on 64-bit platforms
- Reduce I$ footprint of interpreter by 1.5KB
- Reduce GC pause during atomic stage for programs with a lot of threads
- Remove support for bytecode v2
- Remove type definitions of
`utf8.nfcnormalize`/`nfdnormalize`/`graphemes` that aren't supported by
standalone Luau library
- Add `lua_costatus` to retrieve extended thread status (similar to
`coroutine.status`)
- Improve GC sweeping performance (2-10% improvement on allocation-heavy
benchmarks)
- Improve ComparisonPrecedence lint suggestions for three-way comparisons (X < Y < Z)
- Improve type checking stability
- Improve location information for errors when parsing invalid type annotations
- Compiler now generates bytecode version 3 in all configurations
- Improve performance of comparisons against numeric constants on AArch64
- Fix DeprecatedGlobal warning text in cases when the global is deprecated without a suggested alternative
- Fix an off-by-one error in type error text for incorrect use of string.format
- Reduce stack consumption further during parsing, hopefully eliminating stack overflows during parsing/compilation for good
- Mark interpolated string support as experimental (requires --fflags=LuauInterpolatedStringBaseSupport to enable)
- Simplify garbage collection treatment of upvalues, reducing cache misses during sweeping stage and reducing the cost of upvalue assignment (SETUPVAL); supersedes #643
- Simplify garbage collection treatment of sleeping threads
- Simplify sweeping of alive threads, reducing cache misses during sweeping stage
- Simplify management of string buffers, removing redundant linked list operations
- Fix autocomplete not suggesting globals defined after the cursor (fixes#622)
- Improve type checker stability
- Reduce parser C stack consumption which fixes some stack overflow crashes on deeply nested sources
- Improve performance of bit32.extract/replace when width is implied (~3% faster chess)
- Improve performance of bit32.extract when field/width are constants (~10% faster base64)
- Heap dump now annotates thread stacks with local variable/function names
* Run clang-format
* Contains a preliminary implementation of deferred constraint resolution
* Reduce stack usage by some recursive functions
* Fix a bug when smartCloning a BoundTypeVar
* Remove some GC related flags from VM
- Rework transaction log used for type checking which should result in more robust type checking internals with fewer bugs
- Reduce the amount of memory consumed by type checker on large module graphs
- Type checker now errors on attempts to change the type of imported module fields
- The return type of newproxy is now any (fixes#296)
- Implement new number printing algorithm (Schubfach) which makes tostring() produce precise (round-trippable) and short decimal output up to 10x faster
- Fix lua_Debug::linedefined to point to the line with the function definition instead of the first statement (fixes#265)
- Fix minor bugs in Tab completion in Repl
- Repl now saves/restores command history in ~/.luau_history
- Fix some cases where type checking would overflow the native stack
- Improve autocomplete behavior when assigning a partially written function call (not currently exposed through command line tools)
- Improve autocomplete type inference feedback for some expressions where previously the type would not be known
- Improve quantification performance during type checking for large types
- Improve type checking for table literals when the expected type of the table is known because of a type annotation
- Fix type checking errors in cases where required module has errors in the resulting type
- Fix debug line information for multi-line chained call sequences (Add function name information for "attempt to call a nil value" #255)
- lua_newuserdata now takes 2 arguments to match Lua/LuaJIT APIs better; lua_newuserdatatagged should be used if the third argument was non-0.
- lua_ref can no longer be used with LUA_REGISTRYINDEX to prevent mistakes when migrating Lua FFI (Inconsistency with lua_ref #247)
- Fix assertions and possible crashes when executing script code indirectly via metatable dispatch from lua_equal/lua_lessthan/lua_getfield/etc. (Hitting a crash in an assert after lua_equal is called. #259)
- Fix flamegraph scripts to run under Python 2
Changes:
- Support for time tracing for analysis/compiler (not currently exposed
through CLI)
- Support for type pack arguments in type aliases (#83)
- Basic support for require(path) in luau-analyze
- Add a lint warning for table.move with 0 index as part of
TableOperation lint
- Remove last STL dependency from Luau.VM
- Minor VS2022 performance tuning
Co-authored-by: Rodactor <rodactor@roblox.com>
