Dune 2.8.0

dune rules accepts aliases and other non-path rules (#4063, @mrmr1993)

Action (diff reference test_result) now accept reference to be absent and in that case consider that the reference is empty. Then running dune promote will create the reference file. (#3795, @bobot)

Ignore special files (BLK, CHR, FIFO, SOCKET), (#3570, fixes #3124, #3546, @ejgallego)

Experimental: Simplify loading of additional files (data or code) at runtime in programs by introducing specific installation sites. In particular it allow to define plugins to be installed in these sites. (#3104, #3794, fixes #1185, @bobot)

Move all temporary files created by dune to run actions to a single directory and make sure that actions executed by dune also use this directory by setting TMPDIR (or TEMP on Windows). (#3691, fixes #3422, @rgrinberg)

Fix bootstrap script with custom configuration. (#3757, fixes #3774, @marsam)

Add the executable field to inline_tests to customize the compilation flags of the test runner executable (#3747, fixes #3679, @lubegasimon)

Add (enabled_if ...) to (copy_files ...) (#3756, @nojb)

Make sure Dune cleans up the status line before exiting (#3767, fixes #3737, @alan-j-hu)

Add {gitlab,bitbucket} as options for defining project sources with source stanza (source (<host> user/repo)) in the dune-project file. (#3813, @rgrinberg)

Fix generation of META and dune-package files when some targets (byte, native, dynlink) are disabled. Previously, dune would generate all archives for regardless of settings. (#3829, #4041, @rgrinberg)

Do not run ocamldep to for single module executables & libraries. The dependency graph for such artifacts is trivial (#3847, @rgrinberg)

Fix cram tests inside vendored directories not being interpreted correctly. (#3860, fixes #3843, @rgrinberg)

Add package field to private libraries. This allows such libraries to be installed and to be usable by other public libraries in the same project (#3655, fixes #1017, @rgrinberg)

Fix the %{make} variable on Windows by only checking for a gmake binary on UNIX-like systems as a unrelated gmake binary might exist on Windows. (#3853, @kit-ty-kate)

Fix $ dune install modifying the build directory. This made the build directory unusable when $ sudo dune install modified permissions. (fix #3857, @rgrinberg)

Fix handling of aliases given on the command line (using the @ and @@ syntax) so as to correctly handle relative paths. (#3874, fixes #3850, @nojb)

Allow link time code generation to be used in preprocessing executable. This makes it possible to use the build info module inside the preprocessor. (#3848, fix #3848, @rgrinberg)

Correctly call git ls-tree so unicode files are not quoted, this fixes problems with dune subst in the presence of unicode files. Fixes #3219 (#3879, @ejgallego)

dune subst now accepts common command-line arguments such as --debug-backtraces (#3878, @ejgallego)

dune describe now also includes information about executables in addition to that of libraries. (#3892, #3895, @nojb)

instrumentation backends can now receive arguments via (instrumentation (backend <name> <args>)). (#3906, #3932, @nojb)

Tweak auto-formatting of dune files to improve readability. (#3928, @nojb)

Add a switch argument to opam when context is not default. (#3951, @tmattio)

Avoid pager when running $ git diff (#3912, @AltGr)

Add (root_module ..) field to libraries & executables. This makes it possible to use library dependencies shadowed by local modules (#3825, @rgrinberg)

Allow (formatting ...) field in (env ...) stanza to set per-directory formatting specification. (#3942, @nojb)

[coq] In coq.theory, :standard for the flags field now uses the flags set in env profile flags (#3931 , @ejgallego @rgrinberg)

[coq] Add -q flag to :standard coqc flags , fixes #3924, (#3931 , @ejgallego)

Add support for Coq's native compute compilation mode (@ejgallego, #3210)

Add a SUFFIX directive in .merlin files for each dialect with no preprocessing, to let merlin know of additional file extensions (#3977, @vouillon)

Stop promoting .merlin files. Write per-stanza Merlin configurations in binary form. Add a new subcommand dune ocaml-merlin that Merlin can use to query the configuration files. The allow_approximate_merlin option is now useless and deprecated. Dune now conflicts with merlin < 3.4.0 and ocaml-lsp-server < 1.3.0 (#3554, @voodoos)

Configurator: fix a bug introduced in 2.6.0 where the configurator V1 API doesn't work at all when used outside of dune. (#4046, @aalekseyev)

Fix libexec and libexec-private variables. In cross-compilation settings, they now point to the file in the host context. (#4058, fixes #4057, @TheLortex)

When running $ dune subst, use project metadata as a fallback when package metadata is missing. We also generate a warning when (name ..) is missing in dune-project files to avoid failures in production builds.

Remove support for passing -nodynlink for executables. It was bypassed in most cases and not correct in other cases in particular on arm32. (#4085, fixes #4069, fixes #2527, @emillon)

Generate archive rules compatible with 4.12. Dune longer attempt to generate an archive file if it's unnecessary (#3973, fixes #3766, @rgrinberg)

Fix generated Merlin configurations when multiple preprocessors are defined for different modules in the same folder. (#4092, fixes #2596, #1212 and #3409, @voodoos)

Add the option use_standard_c_and_cxx_flags to dune-project that 1. disables the unconditional use of the ocamlc_cflags and ocamlc_cppflags from ocamlc -config in C compiler calls, these flags will be present in the :standard set instead; and 2. enables the detection of the C compiler family and populates the :standard set of flags with common default values when building CXX stubs. (#3875, #3802, fix #3718 and #3528, @voodoos)