# What's changed?
- Record the location of properties for table types (closes#802)
- Implement stricter UTF-8 validations as per the RFC
(https://github.com/luau-lang/rfcs/pull/1)
- Implement `buffer` as a new type in both the old and new solvers.
- Changed errors produced by some `buffer` builtins to be a bit more
generic to avoid platform-dependent error messages.
- Fixed a bug where `Unifier` would copy some persistent types, tripping
some internal assertions.
- Type checking rules on relational operators is now a little bit more
lax.
- Improve dead code elimination for some `if` statements with complex
always-false conditions
## New type solver
- Dataflow analysis now generates phi nodes on exit of branches.
- Dataflow analysis avoids producing a new definition for locals or
properties that are not owned by that loop.
- If a function parameter has been constrained to `never`, report errors
at all uses of that parameter within that function.
- Switch to using the new `Luau::Set` to replace `std::unordered_set` to
alleviate some poor allocation characteristics which was negatively
affecting overall performance.
- Subtyping can now report many failing reasons instead of just the
first one that we happened to find during the test.
- Subtyping now also report reasons for type pack mismatches.
- When visiting `if` statements or expressions, the resulting context
are the common terms in both branches.
## Native codegen
- Implement support for `buffer` builtins to its IR for x64 and A64.
- Optimized `table.insert` by not inserting a table barrier if it is
fastcalled with a constant.
## Internal Contributors
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: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny@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 readability of unions and intersections by limiting the number
of elements of those types that can be presented on a single line (gated
under `FFlag::LuauToStringSimpleCompositeTypesSingleLine`)
- Adds a new option to the compiler `--record-stats` to record and
output compilation statistics
- `if...then...else` expressions are now optimized into `AND/OR` form
when possible.
### VM
- Add a new `buffer` type to Luau based on the [buffer
RFC](https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/739) and additional C API
functions to work with it; this release does not include the library.
- Internal C API to work with string buffers has been updated to align
with Lua version more closely
### Native Codegen
- Added support for new X64 instruction (rev) and new A64 instruction
(bswap) in the assembler
- Simplified the way numerical loop condition is translated to IR
### New Type Solver
- Operator inference now handled by type families
- Created a new system called `Type Paths` to explain why subtyping
tests fail in order to improve the quality of error messages.
- Systematic changes to implement Data Flow analysis in the new solver
(`Breadcrumb` removed and replaced with `RefinementKey`)
---
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: Vighnesh Vijay <vvijay@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
---------
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: Lily Brown <lbrown@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aaron Weiss <aaronweiss@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <amccord@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aviral Goel <agoel@roblox.com>
* AST queries at position where function name is will now return
AstExprLocal
* Lexer performance has been slightly improved
* Fixed incorrect string singleton autocomplete suggestions (fixes#858)
* Improved parsing error messages
* Fixed crash on null pointer access in unification (fixes#1017)
* Native code support is enabled by default and `native=1`
(make)/`LUAU_NATIVE` (CMake)/`-DLUA_CUSTOM_EXECUTION` configuration is
no longer required
New typechecker:
* New subtyping check can now handle generic functions and tables
(including those that contain cycles)
Native code generation:
* Loops with non-numeric parameters are now handled by VM to streamline
native code
* Array size check can be optimized away in SETLIST
* On failure, CodeGen::compile returns a reason
* Fixed clobbering of non-volatile xmm registers on Windows
* Added support for async typechecking cancellation using a token passed
through frontend options
* Added luaC_enumheap for building debug tools that need a graph of Luau
heap
In our new typechecker:
* Errors or now suppressed when checking property lookup of
error-suppressing unions
In our native code generation (jit):
* Fixed unhandled value type in NOT_ANY lowering
* Fast-call tag checks will exit to VM on failure, instead of relying on
a native fallback
* Added vector type to the type information
* Eliminated redundant direct jumps across dead blocks
* Debugger APIs are now disabled for call frames executing natively
* Implemented support for unwind registration on macOS 14
* Fixed indexing table intersections using `x["prop"]` syntax:
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/971
* Add console output codepage for Windows:
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/pull/967
* Added `Frontend::parse` for a fast source graph preparation
* luau_load should check GC
* Work toward a type-diff system for nicer error messages
New Solver
* Correctly suppress errors in more cases
* Further improvements to typechecking of function calls and return
statements
* Crash fixes
* Propagate refinements drawn from the condition of a while loop into
the loop body
JIT
* Fix accidental bailout for math.frexp/modf/sign in A64
* Work toward bringing type annotation info in
* Do not propagate Luau IR constants of wrong type into load
instructions
* CHECK_SAFEENV exits to VM on failure
* Implement error handling in A64 reg allocator
* Inline the string.len builtin
* Do not enter native code of a function if arguments don’t match
---------
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Vyacheslav Egorov <vegorov@roblox.com>
* 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
Once again, all of our changes this week are for new type solver and the
JIT.
In the new type solver, we fixed cyclic type alias handling and multiple
stability issues.
In the JIT, our main progress was for arm64, where, after lowering 36%
of instructions, we start seeing first Luau functions executing
natively.
For x64, we performed code cleanup and refactoring to allow for future
optimizations.
* 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 rare use-after-free in analysis during table unification
A lot of work these past months went into two new Luau components:
* A near full rewrite of the typechecker using a new deferred constraint
resolution system
* Native code generation for AoT/JiT compilation of VM bytecode into x64
(avx)/arm64 instructions
Both of these components are far from finished and we don't provide
documentation on building and using them at this point.
However, curious community members expressed interest in learning about
changes that go into these components each week, so we are now listing
them here in the 'sync' pull request descriptions.
---
New typechecker can be enabled by setting
DebugLuauDeferredConstraintResolution flag to 'true'.
It is considered unstable right now, so try it at your own risk.
Even though it already provides better type inference than the current
one in some cases, our main goal right now is to reach feature parity
with current typechecker.
Features which improve over the capabilities of the current typechecker
are marked as '(NEW)'.
Changes to new typechecker:
* Regular for loop index and parameters are now typechecked
* Invalid type annotations on local variables are ignored to improve
autocomplete
* Fixed missing autocomplete type suggestions for function arguments
* Type reduction is now performed to produce simpler types to be
presented to the user (error messages, custom LSPs)
* Internally, complex types like '((number | string) & ~(false?)) |
string' can be produced, which is just 'string | number' when simplified
* Fixed spots where support for unknown and never types was missing
* (NEW) Length operator '#' is now valid to use on top table type, this
type comes up when doing typeof(x) == "table" guards and isn't available
in current typechecker
---
Changes to native code generation:
* Additional math library fast calls are now lowered to x64: math.ldexp,
math.round, math.frexp, math.modf, math.sign and math.clamp
* Fixed unions of `nil` types displaying as `?`
* Internal normalization now handles class types which can make
previously failing (incorrectly) sub-typing checks to succeed
- 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
- 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
- Improve error recovery during type checking
- Initial (not fully complete) implementation for singleton types (RFC RFC: Singleton types #37)
- Implement a C-friendly interface for compiler (luacode.h)
- Remove C++ features from lua.h (removed default arguments from luau_load and lua_pushcfunction)
- Fix lua_breakpoint behavior when enabled=false
- Implement coroutine.close (RFC RFC: coroutine.close #88)
Note, this introduces small breaking changes in lua.h:
- luau_load env argument is now required, pass an extra 0
- lua_pushcfunction now must be called with 3 arguments; if you were calling it with 2 arguments, pass an extra NULL; if you were calling it with 4, use lua_pushcclosure.
These changes are necessary to make sure lua.h can be used from pure C - the future release will make it possible by adding an option to luaconf.h to change function name mangling to be C-compatible. We don't anticipate breaking the FFI interface in the future, but this change was necessary to restore C compatibility.
Closes#121Fixes#213
- Type mismatch errors now show detailed information for compound types, highlighting the mismatching component
- Fix string.pack bug on ARM when packing negative numbers using unsigned formats
- Implement bit32.countlz/countrz (RFC RFC: bit32.countlz/countrz #89)
- Minor compiler throughput optimization (~2% faster compilation)
- Improve transpiler behavior for edge cases and better test coverage (not exposed through CLI at the moment)
- Improve error recovery when parsing invalid assignments
- Build fixes for fuzzing targets
