# What's changed?
Add program argument passing to scripts run using the Luau REPL! You can
now pass `--program-args` (or shorthand `-a`) to the REPL which will
treat all remaining arguments as arguments to pass to executed scripts.
These values can be accessed through variadic argument expansion. You
can read these values like so:
```
local args = {...} -- gets you an array of all the arguments
```
For example if we run the following script like `luau test.lua -a test1
test2 test3`:
```
-- test.lua
print(...)
```
you should get the output:
```
test1 test2 test3
```
### Native Code Generation
* Improve A64 lowering for vector operations by using vector
instructions
* Fix lowering issue in IR value location tracking!
- A developer reported a divergence between code run in the VM and
Native Code Generation which we have now fixed
### New Type Solver
* Apply substitution to type families, and emit new constraints to
reduce those further
* More progress on reducing comparison (`lt/le`)type families
* Resolve two major sources of cyclic types in the new solver
### Miscellaneous
* Turned internal compiler errors (ICE's) into warnings and errors
-------
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: 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>
# What's changed?
* Compiler now targets bytecode version 5 by default, this includes
support for vector type literals and sub/div opcodes with a constant on
lhs
### New Type Solver
* Normalizer type inhabitance check has been optimized
* Added ability to reduce cyclic `and`/`or` type families
### Native Code Generation
* `CodeGen::compile` now returns more specific causes of a code
generation failure
* Fixed linking issues on platforms that don't support unwind frame data
registration
---
### Internal Contributors
Co-authored-by: Andy Friesen <afriesen@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Aviral Goel <agoel@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>
- 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>
# 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?
* Fixed a bug in type cloning by maintaining persistent types.
* We now parse imprecise integer literals to report the imprecision as a
warning to developers.
* Add a compiler flag to specify the name of the statistics output file.
### New type solver
* Renamed `ConstraintGraphBuilder` to `ConstraintGenerator`
* LValues now take into account the type being assigned during
constraint generation.
* Normalization performance has been improved by 33% by replacing the an
internal usage of `std::unordered_set` with `DenseHashMap`.
* Normalization now has a helper to identify types that are equivalent
to `unknown`, which is being used to fix some bugs in subtyping.
* Uses of the old unifier in the new type solver have been eliminated.
* Improved error explanations for subtyping errors in `TypeChecker2`.
### Native code generation
* Expanded some of the statistics recorded during compilation to include
the number of instructions and blocks.
* Introduce instruction and block count limiters for controlling what
bytecode is translated into native code.
* Implement code generation for byteswap instruction.
### 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: Aviral Goel <agoel@roblox.com>
Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lbrown@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>
* Better indentation in multi-line type mismatch error messages
* Error message clone can no longer cause a stack overflow (when
typechecking with retainFullTypeGraphs set to false); fixes
https://github.com/Roblox/luau/issues/975
* `string.format` with %s is now ~2x faster on strings smaller than 100
characters
Native code generation:
* All VM side exits will block return to the native execution of the
current function to preserve correctness
* Fixed executable page allocation on Apple platforms when using
hardened runtime
* Added statistics for code generation (no. of functions compiler,
memory used for different areas)
* Fixed issue with function entry type checks performed more that once
in some functions
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
* `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>
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.
* 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
* 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
* 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 unions of `nil` types displaying as `?`
* Internal normalization now handles class types which can make
previously failing (incorrectly) sub-typing checks to succeed
* 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)
- 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
Implements the string interpolation RFC (#165).
Adds the string interpolation as per the RFC.
```lua
local name = "world"
print(`Hello {name}!`) -- Hello world!
```
Co-authored-by: Arseny Kapoulkine <arseny.kapoulkine@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Alexander McCord <11488393+alexmccord@users.noreply.github.com>
- TableOperations lint now includes a warning for table.create(N, {}) (which is likely a mistake since the table is shared by all entries)
- Type checker now type checks #v when v is a union
- Parser now rejects sources that consists of a single unfinished long comment
- Work around significant MSVC 2022 performance regression, bringing it more or less in line with MSVC 2019
- Compiler now predicts array size for newly allocated tables when the table is filled in a short loop
- Small improvements in compilation throughput (~2% faster)
- Implement paged sweeper for GC which improves sweep throughput 2-3x and reduces memory consumption by 8 bytes per object (once it is stabilized we will see additional 8 bytes per object of savings)
- Improve Repl Tab completion
- Repl now supports -i (interactive mode to run code in context of a script's environment) and -On (to control optimization flags)
- 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
- 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
- A series of major optimizations to type checking performance on complex
programs/types (up to two orders of magnitude speedup for programs
involving huge tagged unions)
- Fix a few issues encountered by UBSAN (and maybe fix s390x builds)
- Fix gcc-11 test builds
- Fix a rare corner case where luau_load wouldn't wake inactive threads
which could result in a use-after-free due to GC
- Fix CLI crash when error object that's not a string escapes to top level
- Fix Makefile suffixes on macOS
Co-authored-by: Rodactor <rodactor@roblox.com>
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>
