Announcing Chapel version 1.17!

[Brad C. <br...@cr...>]

Hi Chapel community --

Cray Inc. and the Chapel open-source community are proud to announce
the release of Chapel version 1.17!  This release includes the
following highlights:

* support for multiple repositories, including local registries,
   within 'mason', Chapel's package manager

* tab completion for 'chpl' compiler options for bash users and
   compiler suggestions for incorrect flags for all users

* significant improvements to Chapel's support for initializers, the
   replacement for constructors — we now recommend that developers
   writing new classes and records use initializers whenever possible

* new support for uninterpreted / multi-line strings defined using
   triple quotes

* significant usability improvements for 'Owned' and 'Shared' types

* improved coercion behavior for enumerated and numeric types,
   particularly when computing with real(32) values

* new library features, including:
   - improvements to the 'LinearAlgebra' package, including 1-based
     indexing by default, and routines for Kronecker products, Cholesky
     factorization, and eigenvalue/eigenvector solvers
   - joinPath(), isAbsPath(), and commonPath() routines in the 'Path' module
   - Bessel functions in the 'Math' module
   - new channel routines for efficient I/O: advancePastByte(), mark(),
     commit(), and revert()
   - increased use of error-handling in library routines

* significant performance and scalability improvements when executing
   using 'ugni' communication over Cray Aries or Gemini networks

* improved navigation through Chapel's online documentation by jumping
   between versions and color-coding the version number for outdated or
   future versions

And of course, Chapel 1.17 contains a very large number of other
feature enhancements, bug fixes, and documentation improvements.  To
see a far more complete list of its changes, refer to CHANGES.md
within the release or online:

   https://github.com/chapel-lang/chapel/blob/release/1.17/CHANGES.md

To download and install the release, see:

   https://chapel-lang.org/download.html

For a list of those who contributed to the release, refer to:

   https://github.com/chapel-lang/chapel/blob/release/1.17/CONTRIBUTORS.md

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

On behalf of the Chapel development team,
-Brad Chamberlain


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For further information about Chapel
------------------------------------

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