[Chapel-education] Chapel version 1.13 is now available!

SourceForge Headquarters 225 Broadway Suite 1600 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 454-5900

Dear Chapel community --

Cray Inc. and the Chapel open-source community are pleased to announce the 
release of version 1.13.0 of Chapel. This release's highlights include:

* Dramatic improvements to Chapel's support for strings, including
   significant performance improvements for string computations, the
   introduction of standard library routines for strings, and the
   plugging of longstanding compiler-introduced memory leaks.  For
   documentation on the new string library, please see:

     http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/String.html

* Significant improvements to, and reorganization of, Chapel's online
   documentation, including web-based versions of the 'chpl' and
   'chpldoc' man pages.  See:

     http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13

* Extensions to the standard library to include a new 'Reflection'
   module for reasoning about Chapel code; a new Jama-based library for
   linear algebra; a revamped 'Random' module that includes support for
   PCG-based RNG and an expanded API; and some new capabilities in the
   'HDFS', 'FileSystem', and 'Path' libraries.  For details, see:

     http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/modules.html

* A change in Chapel's default allocator to 'jemalloc', resulting in
   significant performance improvements for memory-intensive programs
   and permitting us to retire our traditional support for 'tcmalloc'
   and 'dlmalloc'.

* A significant expansion of the 'use' statement's capabilities to
   support symbol filtering and renaming, as well as the 'use' of
   enumerated types to avoid being required to enter fully-qualified
   names.

* Chapel ports of the ISx and LCALS proxy applications, which have been
   added to the examples/benchmarks/ directory.

* For users of the Cray module, this release includes significant
   improvements to the 'ugni' communication layer which has resulted in 2x
   performance improvements in some cases.  The Cray module also includes
   initial support for running Chapel programs on Intel's
   next-generation Intel® Xeon Phi™ product family of processors,
   codenamed Knights Landing (KNL).

* Numerous other improvements to error messages, performance, language
   features, and much more!

To see a far more complete enumeration of changes in version 1.13.0, refer 
to the list at the end of this message, or to CHANGES.md within the 
release or online:

   https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chapel-lang/chapel/release/1.13/CHANGES.md

Contributors to this release include:

   Ben Albrecht, Cray Inc.
   Kyle Brady, Cray Inc.
   Paul Cassella, Cray Inc.
   Brad Chamberlain, Cray Inc.
   Sung-Eun Choi, Cray Inc.
   Lydia Duncan, Cray Inc.
   Michael Ferguson, Cray Inc.
   Ben Harshbarger, Cray Inc.
   David Iten, Cray Inc.
   Przemysław Leśniak, individual contributor
   Vassily Litvinov, Cray Inc.
   Tom MacDonald, Cray Inc.
   Phil Nelson, Western Washington University / Cray Inc.
   Michael Noakes, Cray Inc.
   Joshua Olson, individual contributor
   Nicholas Park, DOD
   Elliot Ronaghan, Cray Inc.
   Kushal Singh, individual contributor
   George Stelle, Sandia National Laboratories
   Chris Taylor, DOD
   Akash Thorat, individual contributor
   Greg Titus, Cray Inc.
   Tony Wallace, Cray Inc.

To download and install the release, see:

    http://chapel.cray.com/download.html

Our development repository is also hosted at GitHub, making it the
best place to track or contribute to ongoing Chapel development:

    https://github.com/chapel-lang/chapel

Whether you're a Facebook or Twitter user, or would simply enjoy
stalking us online, check our project's social media pages for a
steady stream of informal posts about the project and language:

    https://www.facebook.com/ChapelLanguage
    https://twitter.com/ChapelLanguage

Chapel mailing lists devoted to users, developers, educators, and
announcements like this one continue to be hosted from our SourceForge
project page (which also hosts a mirror of the 1.13.0 release):

    http://sourceforge.net/p/chapel/mailman/

Our main project page continues to be hosted at:

    http://chapel.cray.com

and it remains the best place to find Chapel-related information such
as papers, presentations, blog posts, tutorials, news items,
collaborations, job listings and the like.

As always, we're interested in your feedback on how we can make the Chapel 
language and implementation more useful to you.

On behalf of the Chapel Development Team,
-Brad Chamberlain

=======================================
Release Changes List for version 1.13.0
=======================================

Sixteenth public release of Chapel, April 7, 2016

Highlights
----------
* string improvements:
   - dramatically improved string performance and reduced memory leaks
   - added standard library routines on strings
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/String.html)
* language feature highlights:
   - added support for filtering and renaming symbols with the 'use' statement
     (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
   - added support for min/max reduce intents and reduce intents on coforalls
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/reduceIntents.html)
   - significantly improved memory management and reduced leaks for record types
   - added support for creating subclasses of generic classes
   - replaced 'locale.numCores' with a richer 'locale.numPUs()' interface
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/ChapelLocale.html)
   - added the ability to 'use' an enumerated type to avoid qualifying names
     (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
   - added support for casting types to strings and deprecated typeToString()
     (see 'Explicit Type to String Conversions' in the Chapel language spec)
* standard library highlights:
   - added a new 'Reflection' module to support reasoning about code
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
   - added a new JAMA-based Linear Algebra matrix package
     (see modules/packages/LinearAlgebraJama.chpl)
   - added a new PCG-based random number generator to 'Random' as the default
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Random.html)
   - extended the 'HDFS' module to support libhdfs3
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/auxIO.html)
   - added additional routines to the 'FileSystem' and 'Path' modules
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/FileSystem.html
      and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Path.html)
* implementation improvement highlights:
   - made Chapel's default allocator 'jemalloc', resulting in better performance
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/chplenv.html#chpl-mem)
   - 'complex' types are now code generated as C99 complex rather than a record
   - added compiler flags for all of the traditional CHPL_* environment vars.
     (see 'Compiler Configuration Options' in 'chpl --help' or the man page)
* added initial support for Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing (KNL) processors
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/knl.html)
* added new Chapel ports of the ISx and LCALS proxy applications to the release
   (see examples/benchmarks/isx and examples/benchmarks/lcals/)
* documentation highlights:
   - dramatically improved the organization of the online Chapel documentation
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/)
   - created web-based versions of the 'chpl' and 'chpldoc' man pages
     (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/man.html
      and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/tools/chpldoc/man.html)
* performance improvement highlights:
   - made significant performance improvements for common use cases of 'reduce'
   - implemented amortized reallocation when resizing arrays due to vector ops
   - made significant performance improvements for 'ugni' communication on Crays
   - broadened the applicability of the bulk communication optimization
   - significantly improved the performance resulting from the LLVM back-end
* additional highlights:
   - renamed the 'etc/' directory 'highlight/' to better identify its contents
     (see highlight/README)
   - made Chapel's scripts compatible with key versions of Python 2 and 3
   - unified the support of third-party packages and runtime options on Crays
     (see  http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/cray.html)
   - numerous error message improvements, bug fixes, feature improvements, ...

Configuration Changes
---------------------
* made 'jemalloc' the default allocator for most configurations
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/chplenv.html#chpl-mem)
* made 'cray-prgenv-cray' default to using 'qthreads'+'hwloc' and 'ugni'
   (see  http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/cray.html)
* added support for 're2' when using Cray and PGI compilers
* changed 'knc' to default to using 'qthreads'+'hwloc'
* deprecated 'knc' support
   (see  http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/knc.html)
* switched to using pg++ rather than pgCC as the C++ compiler for 'pgi'
* removed stale support for Xcode

Syntactic/Naming Changes
------------------------
* added new keywords, 'as', 'except', and 'only', for filtering 'use'd symbols
   (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
* replaced 'locale.numCores' with a richer interface 'locale.numPUs()'
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/ChapelLocale.html)
* removed the 'Writer' and 'Reader' types in favor of unifying on 'channel's

Semantic Changes / Changes to Chapel Language
---------------------------------------------
* added support for a 'const ref' return intent
   (see "The Const Ref Return Intent" in "Procedures" in the Chapel spec)
* improved the handling of "return by ref" functions in setter/getter contexts
   (see 'http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/evolution.html
    and 'The Ref Return Intent' under 'Procedures' in the language spec)
* made default I/O routines ignore 'param' fields as they have 'type' fields
* restricted 'sync'/'single' types to sufficiently simple types
* removed support for performing Chapel I/O on 'c_string's
* removed coercions from 'c_string's to 'string's

New Features
------------
* added a standard library of routines on the 'string' type
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/String.html)
* added support for filtering on 'use' statements with 'only' and 'except'
   (e.g., 'use M only foo;' or '... except foo;' to restrict to / exclude 'foo')
   (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
* added support for renaming symbols made accessible by a 'use'
   (e.g., 'use M only foo as M_foo;' causes 'foo' to be referred to as 'M_foo')
   (see 'The Use Statement' in the Chapel language specification)
* added the ability to 'use' an enumerated type
   (e.g., "...mycolor.green..." can now be written "use mycolor;  ...green...")
* added support for casting types to strings and deprecated typeToString()
   (e.g., 'writeln(x.type:string);' can be used to print the name of x's type)
* added a capability to iterate over the fields in a class or record
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
* added the ability to query whether a call can be resolved or not
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
* added support for annotating an on-clause as being 'local'
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/local.html)
* added support for 'c_string' values
   (e.g., "this is a Chapel string" while c"this is a C string")

Feature Improvements
--------------------
* added support for creating subclasses of a generic class
* added support for min/max reduce intents
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/reduceIntents.html)
* added support for reduce intents on coforall loops
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/reduceIntents.html)
* added the ability to pass sync/single variables via generic arguments
* improved the type signatures of min()/max() to support better type resolution
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/UtilMisc_forDocs.html)
* extended comparison operators (==, !=, <=, etc.) to support mixed int/uints
   (see 'Expressions' in the Chapel language specification)
* added support for range slicing between mixed int/uint idxTypes
* added support for comparing between 'c_void_ptr' expressions and 'nil'
* added support for implicitly coercing 'c_ptr' types to 'c_void_ptr'
* added support for casting from fully-qualified enum strings to enum values
   (e.g., '"mycolor.green":mycolor' now works where it wouldn't have previously)
* extended channel.readbits/writebits to accept other integral types
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/IO.html)
* added scalar versions of domain.exterior(), interior(), and translate()
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/internal/ChapelArray.html)

Standard Library/Modules
------------------------
* started distinguishing between "standard Chapel modules" and "packages"
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/modules.html
    and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/packages.html)
* added a new JAMA-based linear algebra matrix package
   (see modules/packages/LinearAlgebraJama.chpl)
* added a new PCG-based random number generator to 'Random' as the default
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Random/PCGRandom.html)
* added a new 'Reflection' module supporting reflection about a program
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Reflection.html)
* extended the 'HDFS' module to support libhdfs3
   (http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/technotes/auxIO.html)
* added support for skipping unknown fields when reading JSON records/classes
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/IO.html)
* made the default I/O routines for records/classes support arbitrary orders
* added 'basename', 'dirname', and 'splitPath' to the 'Path' module
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Path.html)
* added rmTree(), moveDir() to the 'FileSystem' module
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/FileSystem.html)
* added an optional time units argument to 'sleep()' in the Time module
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Time.html#Time.sleep)
* added support for sending signals to subprocesses for the 'Spawn' module
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Spawn.html)
* added an optional 'buffer' boolean to the 'Spawn' module's wait() routine
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/Spawn.html)
* added an isclosed() method to the 'channel' type
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/modules/standard/IO.html)
* improved the 'List' module to support JSON format
* improved error handling in the IO and Spawn modules
* added the ability to call exit() without arguments for a 0 default status
* removed deprecated functions from 'Memory' module

Performance Improvements
------------------------
* obtained notable performance improvements from the switch to 'jemalloc'
* made significant performance improvements to common uses of 'reduce'
* implemented amortized reallocation when resizing arrays due to vector ops
* made significant performance improvements for 'ugni' communication on Crays
* made bulk data transfers more likely to fire by removing a conservative check
* enabled bulk data transfers between portions of the same array
* generally improved the performance of string-based computations
* optimized iteration over anonymous range values of the form 'lo..#size'
* improved the performance of code generated by the LLVM back-end

Memory Improvements
-------------------
* dramatically reduced the compiler-generated leaks due to strings and records
* significantly improved construction/destruction/copy behavior for records
* stopped heap-allocating variables referred to within 'begin' scopes
* stopped heap-allocating variables referred to within non-blocking on-clauses
* stopped heap-allocating index variables of coforall loops

Documentation
-------------
* dramatically improved the organization of the online Chapel documentation
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/)
* created web-based versions of the 'chpl' and 'chpldoc' man pages
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/man.html
    and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/tools/chpldoc/man.html)
* linked to the language specification and quick reference from the online docs
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/spec.html
    and http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/reference.html)
* converted a number of top-level README-style files to markdown format
   (e.g., see $CHPL_HOME/CHANGES.md, CONTRIBUTORS.md, PERFORMANCE.md, ...)
* moved the Chapel evolution page from chapel.cray.com to the online docs
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/language/evolution.html)
* split the top-level README.rst file into README.rst and QUICKSTART.rst
* started writing a Chapel Users Guide, though much work remains
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/users-guide/index.html)
* improved the accuracy of Chapel's prerequisites list
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/usingchapel/prereqs.html)
* improved wordings and descriptions in the language specification
* fixed many instances of broken links / formatting in online documentation

Example Codes
-------------
* added new Chapel ports of the ISx and LCALS proxy applications to the release
   (see examples/benchmarks/isx/ and examples/benchmarks/lcals/)
* made correctness, performance, and style improvements to MiniMD in Chapel
   (see examples/benchmarks/miniMD/)
* extended the linkedList example program to support additional methods
   (see examples/programs/linkedList.chpl)
* fixed some typos and explanations in the primer examples
   (see examples/primers/*.chpl)
* updated example tests to reflect the changes to the language and libraries
* removed README.features from the examples subdirectory

Compiler Flags (see 'man chpl' for details)
-------------------------------------------
* added compiler flags for all of the traditional CHPL_* environment variables
   (see 'Compiler Configuration Options' in 'chpl's '--help' output or man page)
* made the --ldflags stack when used multiple times, similar to --ccflags
* made the --no-warnings flag reversible by changing it to --[no-]warnings

Execution Flags
---------------
* added support for specifying enum configs using fully-qualified names
   (e.g., '--myColor=color.red' is now supported where only '--myColor=red' was)

Environment Changes
-------------------
* the setchplenv[.bash|.fish|.sh] scripts can now be sourced from any directory
* removed the CHPL_THREADS environment variable

Directory Structure Changes
---------------------------
* renamed the 'etc/' directory to 'highlight/' to better identify its contents
* split 'modules/standard' into 'modules/standard' and 'modules/packages'

Cray-specific Changes
---------------------
* streamlined 'ugni' resource management, dramatically improving performance
* hugepages are now optional with the 'ugni' communication layer
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/cray.html)
* improved the Spawn module to support 'ugni' when hugepages are not in use
* started statically linking 'chpl' in the Cray module to ensure portability

Portability Improvements
------------------------
* added initial support for Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing (KNL) processors
   (see http://chapel.cray.com/docs/1.13/platforms/knl.html)
* made Chapel's scripts compatible with key versions of Python 2 and 3
* improved the portability of the code base to gcc 5.1
* improved the portability of the code base to newer versions of Cygwin

Tool Changes
------------
* 'chpldoc' improvements:
   - made modules automatically list any submodules that they contain
   - it now generates a doc page per module rather than .chpl source file
   - it now only documents files listed on its command line by default
   - added a --[no-]html option to opt in/out of the rst->html phase
* added basic support for folding for 'vim' users
* added an option to disable chplvis tracing for a given run in 'VisualDebug'
* improved 'chpltags' support for older versions of 'ctags'

Error Message Improvements
--------------------------
* improved 'const' checking for domains and arrays
* added an error message for variable declarations over incomplete generics
* stopped warning about reductions being serialized -- that's completely legal
* added an error message for non-extern functions with no-op bodies
* reduced the degree to which internal module line numbers are named in errors
* implemented an error message for strings containing bad escape sequences
* improved the error message for bad CHPL_RT_NUM_THREADS_PER_LOCALE values
* improved error messages for illegal/incorrect 'use' statements
* added an error message for references to fields within 'with' clauses
* added an error message for 'real*2' suggesting the user wants '2*real'

Bug Fixes
---------
* fixed a bug in applying reduce intents to forall loops over ranges
* fixed a bug in zippered iteration over equivalent associative domains/arrays
* fixed the ability to declare a 'ref' to a domain or array
* fixed a bug in which overridden/overloaded methods were not resolved properly
* fixed a bug in assigning between distributed domains and non- with arrays
* fixed a bug in the computation of 'maxTaskPar' for the numa locale model
* fixed a bug in which generic types were not printed properly
* fixed a bug in which assignment between generic records did not work properly
* fixed a bug in which extern type declarations in generic procedures broke
* fixed a bug with isHomogeneousTuple*() queries when passed non-tuples
* fixed a bug with self-references in module use lists
* fixed a bug when calling exit() without arguments
* fixed the runtime sizes of boolean literals of varying bit widths
* fixed a bug w.r.t. reduce intents interacting poorly with on-clauses
* fixed a bug in which returning tuples of arrays did not work
* fixed a bug in the initialization of nearly-maximally-sized arrays
* fixed a bug in the Block and Cyclic parallel iterators for arrays of arrays
* fixed a bug in which subtype checking now handles transitive instantiation
* fixed bugs in default I/O routines for subclasses
* fixed a few bugs in the Spawn module's communicate() routine
* made some improvements to the Spawn module relative to QIO
* made some I/O functions more tolerant of EINTR
* fixed some bugs in which I/O routines executed on the wrong locale
* fixed a bug in formatted reads of digits
* fixed a bug preventing channel.itemWriter() from working
* improved the handling of C escapes in string literals
* fixed the handling of escape characters in compilerWarning()/compilerError()
* fixed a bug related to nested modules sharing a name, each defining main()
* fixed a bug in which Qthreads tasks weren't allocating sufficient storage
* fixed the line numbers reported for standalone iterators
* fixed a bug in which record fields were not properly widened
* fixed a bug in which records could be double-freed for out/inout arg passing
* fixed a bug in 'chpldoc' in the handling of multiline mid-variable comments
* fixed a bug in which failure to open files for codegen caused internal errors
* made the compiler resilient to usernames containing backslashes
* fixed a bug in the checking of definitions made in SysCTypes
* fixed the chpl-venv path to be based on the host platform rather than target
* fixed line numbers related to domain query expressions in formal arguments
* fixed a bug in which sleep() could result in tasks awakening prematurely

Cray-specific Bug Fixes
-----------------------
* 'ugni' now supports communication to/from any unregistered address
* resolved a rare program hang in 'ugni' communication
* fix 'ugni' memory mis-registration under CLE 6.*
* plug a memory leak in 'ugni' for certain remote on-statements

Third-Party Software Changes
----------------------------
* turned on optimizations when compiling 're2' for optimized builds
* enabled 're2' when using Cray and PGI compilers
* added jemalloc version 4.0.4 and retired tcmalloc and dlmalloc
* upgraded GASNet to version 1.26.0
* upgraded hwloc to version 1.11.2
   - and cherry-picked a /proc/mounts buffer overflow fix from hwloc master
* upgraded LLVM to version 3.7
* switched several third-party directories to a more GIT-friendly organization

Runtime Library Changes
-----------------------
* updated the names of several runtime communication interface routines

Generated Code Cleanups
-----------------------
* started code-generating 'complex' types as C99 complexes rather than a record
* filenames are now represented a table + indices rather than string literals

Testing System
--------------
* added support for many files, such as compopts, to be executable scripts
* added .compenv files as a means of changing the compiler environment
* made 'make check' clean up after itself better
* made the test system no longer mail out the list of unresolved future tests
* parallel testing now ignores symbolic links to avoid infinite loops
* made the test system deal better with unexpected failures
* improved start_test's error message if CHPL_HOME is not set

Makefile Changes
----------------
* added an "always build chpldoc" capability via CHPL_ALWAYS_BUILD_CHPLDOC
* only generate 'tags' commands when CHPL_DEVELOPER or TAGS is set at make-time
* improved the logic for updating/re-building the 'chpl' version number

Developer-oriented changes: Process Improvements
------------------------------------------------
* changed the generation of the man page from txt2man into an rst-based scheme
* added a 'make check' option for Sphinx documentation to check for errors

Developer-oriented changes: Packaging Changes
---------------------------------------------
* reorganized files to better support packaging of Chapel
* began differentiating runtime launcher paths based on CHPL_COMM
* no longer specialize runtime library directories on CHPL_NETWORK_ATOMICS

Developer-oriented changes: Module improvements
-----------------------------------------------
* made use of 'local' on-clauses within internal modules targeting 'numa'
* changed a "c for loop" in DefaultRectangular into a direct range iterator
* refactored generation of unbounded range values
* changed some uses of c_calloc() to c_malloc()
* improved the extern declarations of the locale model chpl_mem* routines
* retired the ChapelLocale_forDocs.chpl workaround for documentation

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler Flags
------------------------------------------
* added --break-on-codegen-id to stop when a specific ID is code generated

Developer-oriented changes: Compiler improvements/changes
---------------------------------------------------------
* introduced a new 'UseStmt' AST node for representing 'use' statements
* made all non-'flat' locale models outline on-clauses and use wide pointers
* removed the pragma form of 'export'
* added support for operator overloads on the bitVec type
* reworked how argument bundles are managed for begin- and on-functions
* changed wide_get_address mechanisms to return a 64-bit uint
* refactored duplicate code in buildForLoopExpr
* made addArgCoercion() sensitive to errors
* improve the compiler's handling of PRIM_ASSIGN
* improved the compiler's handling of POD types
* improved the compiler's handling of declared return types
* made the compiler remove casts from 'ref T' to 'T'
* unified the handling of 'by' and 'align' in the parser
* improved the handling of string varargs with default intent
* improved the normalization of initialization expressions
* added support for tracking the causes of wide pointers
* refactored the implementation of some reductions to use reduce intents
* removed the FLAG_FUNCTION_PROTOTYPE flag as not being interesting or useful

Developer-oriented changes: Generated code improvements
-------------------------------------------------------
* improved the representation of unions in the generated code

Developer-oriented changes: Runtime improvements
------------------------------------------------
* moved the Qthreads tasking shim into the Chapel runtime/ directory
* changed the communication interface to take sizes rather than elemsize+length
* fixed problems with GETs to unregistered remote memory
* simplified the interfaces for creating structured parallelism within Chapel
* removed deprecated code supporting Tilera processors
* extensively reworked debug support in 'ugni'

Developer-oriented changes: Third-party improvements
----------------------------------------------------
* disabled OpenCL support in hwloc for the time being
* disabled libnuma in hwloc builds

Developer-oriented changes: Testing system improvements
-------------------------------------------------------
* added a script to help maintain .dat files when perfkeys change
   (see util/devel/updateDatFiles.py)
* renamed 'grepgoods' to 'greptestoutputs' and had it span .good and .bad files

[Chapel-education] Chapel version 1.13 is now available!

a Productive Parallel Programming Language

[Chapel-education] Chapel version 1.13 is now available!