[X10-announce] X10 2.6.1 released

[David P G. <gr...@us...>]

We are happy to announce the release of X10 and X10DT 2.6.1. The focus of
the X10 2.6.1 release is improvements to Resilient X10. The release is
available for download at http://x10-lang.org/releases/x10-release-261

The X10 2.6.1 Release Notes are appended.

X10 Release 2.6.1

HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS RELEASE

The focus of the X10 2.6.1 release is improvements to Resilient X10.
Some highlights include:
  - Significant improvements to the performance of resilient finish
  - A new resilient store implemented in X10
  - Improved standard library APIs for elasticity and
    non-shrinking recovery.
  - Enhancements to the x10.util.resilient.iterative package to
    exploit elasticity to support non-shrinking recovery.
  - Updating of all Resilient X10 sample programs and applications
    to showcase the improvements in Resilient X10.

LIMITATIONS OF THIS RELEASE

The size and index of arrays must be less than 2^31 with Managed X10.
An attempt to allocate a longer array causes IllegalArgumentException.

The following features described in the 2.6 language manual do not
currently work and may be fixed in the subsequent releases:
  - Non-static type definitions as class or interface members
    (static type defs do work)

The constraint solver used by X10 typechecker is known to be incomplete
for situations in which a constraint implies an infinite number of
distinct constraints.

Additionally, the following features described in the language
manual do not currently work with Native X10.
  - Non-final generic instance methods
  - Exception stack traces on Cygwin

The generated C++ code requires g++ 4.2 or better to be compiled;
we do almost all of our testing against g++ 4.4.
  + On Power/Linux and BG/Q, you may either use g++ 4.2 or better
    or xlC 11.1 or better.

SUMMARY OF ISSUES RESOLVED IN THIS RELEASE

Below is a summary of JIRA issues addressed for the X10 2.6.1

** New Feature
    * [XTENLANG-3553] - Add method x10.lang.String.contains(String)
    * [XTENLANG-3554] - New method x10.Random.nextGaussian
    * [XTENLANG-3555] - X10 Launcher fails with buffer overflow if
X10_HOSTFILE does not exist

** Bug
    * [XTENLANG-3498] - New place fails to connect to dead places
    * [XTENLANG-3552] - X10 reading from a file not as expected
    * [XTENLANG-3556] - x10rt_sockets: blocking_probe doesn't block after a
Place is killed


For the details of JIRA issues fixed in this release, see

https://xtenlang.atlassian.net/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?version=10600&projectId=10005

Please use the X10 JIRA to report bugs, after ensuring the problem is
not already reported:
  https://xtenlang.atlassian.net/projects/XTENLANG/issues