1.8 release announcement

Author: steveklabnik

_posts/2016-04-14-Rust-1.8.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Announcing Rust 1.8"
+author: The Rust Core Team
+---
+
+The Rust team is happy to announce the latest version of Rust, 1.8. Rust is a
+systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.
+
+As always, you can [install Rust 1.8][install] from the appropriate page on our
+website, and check out the [detailed release notes for 1.8][notes] on GitHub.
+About 1400 patches were landed in this release.
+
+[install]: https://www.rust-lang.org/install.html
+[notes]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/stable/RELEASES.md#version-180-2016-04-14
+
+### What's in 1.8 stable
+
+There are two new features in Rust 1.8, as well as good news for Windows users!
+Additionally, work is underway to replace our `make`-based build system with
+one based on Cargo.
+
+The first feature is that the various “operator equals” operators, such as `+=`
+and `-=`, are now overloadable via various traits. This change was accepted in
+[RFC 953], and looks like this:
+
+```rust
+use std::ops:: AddAssign;
+
+#[derive(Debug)]
+struct Count { 
+    value: i32,
+}
+    
+impl AddAssign for Count {
+    fn add_assign(&mut self, other: Count) {
+        self.value += other.value;
+    }
+}   
+
+fn main() {
+    let mut c1 = Count { value: 1 };
+    let c2 = Count { value: 5 };
+
+    c1 += c2;
+
+    println!("{:?}", c1);
+}
+```
+
+[RFC 953]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/0953-op-assign.md
+
+This will print out `Count { value: 6 }`. Like the other operator traits, an
+associated type allows you to use different types on each side of the operator,
+as well. See the RFC for more details.
+
+The second feature is very small, and comes from [RFC 218]. Before Rust 1.8, a
+`struct` with no fields did not have curly braces:
+
+```rust
+struct Foo; // works
+struct Bar { }; // error
+```
+
+[RFC 218]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/0218-empty-struct-with-braces.md
+
+The second form is no longer an error, and is equivalent to the first. This was
+originally disallowed for consistency with other empty declarations, as well as
+a parsing ambiguity. However, that ambiguity is non-existent in post-1.0 Rust,
+and macro authors saw additional complexity due to needing a special-case. Also,
+users who do active development would sometimes switch between empty and
+non-empty versions of a struct, and the extra work and diffs involved was less
+than ideal. Allowing both forms is slightly less consistent, but the ergonomics
+of these two cases was deemed worth it.
+
+On the Windows front, 32-bit MSVC builds [now implement unwinding]. This moves
+`i686-pc-windows-msvc` to a Tier 1 platform.
+
+[now implement unwinding]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/30448
+
+Finally, we have used `make` to build Rust for a very long time. However,
+we already have a wonderful tool for building Rust programs: Cargo. In Rust
+1.8, [initial support landed] for a new build system that’s written in Rust,
+and based on Cargo. It is not yet the default, and there is much more work to
+do. We will talk about this in release notes more once it’s completely done,
+for now, please read the GitHub issue for more details.
+
+[initial support landed]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/30448
+
+#### Library stabilizations
+
+About 20 library functions and methods are now stable in 1.8. There are three
+major groups of changes: UTF-16 related string methods, various APIs related to
+time, and the various traits needed for operator overloading mentioned in the
+language section.
+
+Other notable improvements include:
+
+* `<[T]>::clone_from_slice()`, an efficient way to copy the data from one slice
+  and put it into another slice.
+* Various convenience methods on `Ipv4Addr` and `Ipv6Addr`, such as `is_loopback()`,
+  which returns `true` or `false` if the address is a loopback address according to
+  RFC 6890.
+* Various improvements to `CString`, used for FFI.
+* checked, saturated, and overflowing operations for various numeric types.
+  These aren’t counted in that ‘40’ number above, because there are a _lot_ of
+  them, but they all do the same thing.
+
+See the [detailed release notes][notes] for more.
+
+#### Cargo features
+
+There were a few small updates to Cargo:
+
+* [`cargo init`](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/2081) can be used to
+  start a Cargo project in your current working directory, rather than making a
+  new subdirectory like `cargo new`.
+* `Cargo.toml` now has [keys for `-v` and `--color`](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/2397)
+
+See the release notes for the full list of changes.
+
+### Contributors to 1.7
+
+We had 126 individuals contribute to 1.7. Thank you so much!
+
+* Aaron Turon
+* Abhishek Chanda
+* Adolfo Ochagavía
+* Aidan Hobson Sayers
+* Alan Somers
+* Alejandro Wainzinger
+* Aleksey Kladov
+* Alex Burka
+* Alex Crichton
+* Amanieu d'Antras
+* Andrea Canciani
+* Andreas Linz
+* Andrew Cantino
+* Andrew Horton
+* Andrew Paseltiner
+* Andrey Cherkashin
+* Angus Lees
+* arcnmx
+* Ariel Ben-Yehuda
+* ashleysommer
+* Benjamin Herr
+* Валерий Лашманов
+* Björn Steinbrink
+* bors
+* Brian Anderson
+* Brian Bowman
+* Christian Wesselhoeft
+* Christopher Serr
+* Corey Farwell
+* Craig M. Brandenburg
+* Cyryl Płotnicki-Chudyk
+* Daniel J Rollins
+* Dave Huseby
+* David AO Lozano
+* David Henningsson
+* Devon Hollowood
+* Dirk Gadsden
+* Doug Goldstein
+* Eduard Burtescu
+* Eduard-Mihai Burtescu
+* Eli Friedman
+* Emanuel Czirai
+* Erick Tryzelaar
+* Evan
+* Felix S. Klock II
+* Florian Berger
+* Geoff Catlin
+* ggomez
+* gohyda
+* Gökhan Karabulut
+* Guillaume Gomez
+* ituxbag
+* James Miller
+* Jeffrey Seyfried
+* John Talling
+* Jonas Schievink
+* Jonathan S
+* Jorge Aparicio
+* Joshua Holmer
+* JP Sugarbroad
+* Kai Noda
+* Kamal Marhubi
+* Katze
+* Kevin Brothaler
+* Kevin Butler
+* Manish Goregaokar
+* Markus Westerlind
+* Marvin Löbel
+* Masood Malekghassemi
+* Matt Brubeck
+* Michael Huynh
+* Michael Neumann
+* Michael Woerister
+* mitaa
+* Ms2ger
+* Nathan Kleyn
+* nicholasf
+* Nick Cameron
+* Niko Matsakis
+* Noah
+* NODA, Kai
+* Novotnik, Petr
+* Oliver Middleton
+* Oliver Schneider
+* petevine
+* Philipp Oppermann
+* pierzchalski
+* Piotr Czarnecki
+* pravic
+* Pyfisch
+* Richo Healey
+* Ruud van Asseldonk
+* Scott Olson
+* Sean McArthur
+* Sebastian Wicki
+* Sébastien Marie
+* Seo Sanghyeon
+* Simonas Kazlauskas
+* Simon Sapin
+* srinivasreddy
+* Steve Klabnik
+* Steven Allen
+* Steven Fackler
+* Stu Black
+* Tang Chenglong
+* Ted Horst
+* Ticki
+* tiehuis
+* Tim Montague
+* Tim Neumann
+* Timon Van Overveldt
+* Tobias Bucher
+* Tobias Müller
+* Todd Lucas
+* Tom Tromey
+* Tshepang Lekhonkhobe
+* ubsan
+* Ulrik Sverdrup
+* Vadim Petrochenkov
+* vagrant
+* Valentin Lorentz
+* Varun Vats
+* vegai
+* vlastachu
+* Wangshan Lu
+* York Xiang