package elpi

v3.0.0 (July 2025)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Language:

  • A functional predicate is a predicate that does not leave choice points for any of its calls. A functional predicate can have preconditions, eg map is functional if the higher order argument also is. Functional predicates (with preconditions) can be miscalled, in that case they behave as relations.
  • The matching operator used for input arguments is now also available as a builtin predicate named pattern_match.

• API:

  • New Utils.ground_check and Utils.cmp_term (already available as builtins)
  • Change Constants.declare_global_symbol takes an optional variant argument.

• Parser:

  • The fprop keyword is akin to prop but signals the predicate is functional
  • The :functional attribute flags predicates as functional (equivalent to func ...).
  • Dedicated syntax for functional signatures: func name(comma_sep(types_of_inputs)* [-> comma_sep(types_of_outputs*)]. Example: The signature of map is func map list A, (func A -> B) -> list B
  • New [external] symbol name : type [= "variant"] is a synonim of type and can be used to ascribe a type to a symbol. External symbols must be matched by a declaration in OCaml, and when the symbol is overloaded the variant label is used for the matching (additionally to the name).

• Compiler:

  • The type checker is in charge of resolving all symbols, overloaded or not, to a Symbol.t datatype that gathers the Loc.t where it is defined (and it can be defined at multiple places, e.g. OCaml + Elpi, or twice in Elpi). This data can be used to implement jump-to-def and the like in modern UIs.
  • The determinacy_checker statically analyzes whether a predicate labeled as functional adheres to its signature.
  • The elaboration of {spilling} has been moved to a dedicated file.
  • CHR rules are typechecked (finally)
  • Macros are typechecked. This paves the way to make them live in name spaces and possibly globally available, but it is not implemented yet.

• Runtime:

  • Builtin predicates now have a dedicated node when they are part of the Elpi language, i.e. Cut, And, Impl, RImpl, Pi, Sigma, Eq, Match, Findall, Delay.
  • Symbols part of the Elpi language (other than the builtins) also have a dedicated status, i.e. As, Uv, ECons, ENil although As and Uv do not have a dedicated node in the AST, while ENil and ECons do have it.

v2.0.7 (January 2025)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Parser:

  • New elpi:if version <name> <op> <ma>.<mi>.<p>

• API:

  • New Setup.init takes a ?versions dictionary to declare versions of external components
  • New Utils.parse_version

v2.0.6 (December 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Compiler:

  • Store timing info only optionally to restore build reproducibility
  • Fix collision between kinds and types in namespace handling

v2.0.5 (December 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Parser:

  • Fix loc issues involving quotations

v2.0.4 (November 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Type Checker:

  • Fix caching issue, units are now type checked every time they are processed

v2.0.3 (November 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Parser:

  • Fix parsing of infix ==> so that A,B ==> C,D means A, (B => (C,D)) as it is intended to be.

v2.0.2 (November 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Really fix tests on 32 bits systems

v2.0.1 (November 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Fix tests on 32 bits systems

v2.0.0 (November 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.13 or above.

• Compiler:

  • Change the pipeline completely to make unit relocation unnecessary. Current phases are (roughly):

    1. Ast.program —[RecoverStructure]—> Ast.Structured.program
    2. Ast.Structured.program —[Scope,Quotation,Macro]—> Scoped.program (aka API.Compile.scoped_program)
    3. Scoped.program —[Flatten]—> Flat.program
    4. Flat.program —[Check]—> CheckedFlat.program (aka API.Compile.compilation_unit)
    5. CheckedFlat.program —[Spill,ToDbl]—> Assembled.program

    Steps 4 and 5 operate on a base, that is an Assembled.program being extended. ToDbl is in charge of allocating constants (numbers) for global names and takes place when the unit is assembled on the base. These constants don't need to be relocated as in the previous backend that would allocate these constants much earlier.

  • Change compilation units can declare new builtin predicates
  • Fix macros are hygienic
  • New type checker written in OCaml. The new type checker is faster, reports error messages with a precise location and performs checking incrementally when the API for separate compilation is used. The new type checker is a bit less permissive since the old one would merged together all types declaration before type checking the entire program, while the new one type checks each unit using the types declared inside the unit or declared in the base it extends, but not the types declared in units that (will) follow it.
  • Remove the need of typeabbrv string (ctype "string") and similar
  • New type check types and kinds (used to be ignored).

• API:

  • Change quotations generate Ast.Term.t and not RawData.t. The data type Ast.Term.t contains locations (for locating type errors) and has named (bound) variables and type annotations in Ast.Type.t.
  • New Compile.extend_signature and Compile.signature to extend a program with the signature (the types, not the code) of a unit
  • New Ast.Loc.t carries a opaque payload defined by the host application
  • Remove Query, only RawQuery is available (or Compile.query)

• Parser:

  • Remove legacy parser
  • New % elpi:if version op A.B.C and % elpi:endif lexing directives
  • New warning for A => B, C to be disabled by putting parentheses around A => B.

• Language:

  • New infix ==> standing for application but with "the right precedence™", i.e. A ==> B, C means A => (B, C).
  • New pred is allowed in anonymous predicates, eg: pred map i:list A, i:(pred i:A, o:B), o:list B declares that the first argument of map is a predicate whose first argument is in input and the second in output. Currently the mode checker is still in development, annotations for higher order arguments are ignored.
  • New attribute :functional can be passed to predicates (but not types). For example, :functional pred map i:list A, i:(:functional pred i:A, o:B), o:list B declares map to be a functional predicate iff its higher order argument is functional. Currently the determinacy checker is still in development, these annotations are ignored.
  • New func keyword standing for :functional pred. The declaration above can be shortened to func map i:list A, i:(func i:A, o:B), o:list B.
  • New type annotations on variables quantified by pi as in pi x : term \ ...
  • New type casts on terms, as in f (x : term)
  • New attribute :untyped to skip the type checking of a rule.

• Stdlib:

  • New std.list.init N E L builds a list L = [E, ..., E] with length N
  • New std.list.make N F L builds the list L = [F 0, F 1, ..., F (N-1)]
  • New triple data type with constructor triple and projections triple_1...

• Builtins:

  • Remove string_to_term, read, readterm, quote_syntax

• REPL:

  • Remove -no-tc, -legacy-parser, -legacy-parser-available
  • New -document-infix-syntax

v1.20.0 (September 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

• Language:

  • attribute :remove to remove a clause from the program

• Compiler:

  • Build the index at assembly time, rather than optimization time. This makes compilation slower, but startup faster.
  • Adding clauses before the type/mode declaration of a predicate is now forbidden, since they are immediately inserted in the index and the type/mode declaration can change the index type

v1.19.6 (August 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

• Runtime:

  • Fix bug in unification code for "automatic intro" (as in the intro tactic) of UVar arguments

v1.19.5 (July 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

• Compiler:

  • Improve performance of separate compilation

• CHR:

  • Syntax extension for constraint declaration.
  • This aims to avoid the overlapping clique error
  • Example: constraint c t x ?- p1 p2 { rule (Ctx ?- ...) <=> (Ctx => ...) }
  • c, t and x are the symbols which should be loaded in the rule of the constraint and should be considered as symbols composing the context (Ctx) under which p1 and p2 are used.

v1.19.4 (July 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

• Stdlib:

  • Add once predicate

• Build:

  • New make tests PROMOTE=true

• Parser:

  • Change purge _build/xxx from paths once files are resolved in order to have locs point to the sources and not their copy in _build

v1.19.3 (June 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

• Linter:

  • Fix regex for linearity check, Foo_Bar was silently ignored for linearity purpose

• Parser:

  • Fix error message for named quotation

• Runtime:

  • Fix missing restriction

v1.19.2 (June 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

• Builtins:

  • Add choose, min, max, fold and partition methods to OCaml sets
  • Add fold method to OCaml maps

• Stdlib:

  • Fix first argument of std.rev is in input

• Runtime:

  • Fix discrimination tree retrieval

v1.19.1 (June 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

Language:

• New :index (<arg-spec>) "index-type" where the index type can be Map, Hash or DTree

Runtime:

• Fix performance regression due to the fix to relocation in unification introduced in 1.19.0
• New list flattening in DTree index, that is term app [t1,t2,t3] is indexed using the same DTree space/depth of term app t1 t2 t3

v1.19.0 (May 2024)

Language:

• Change CHR syntax now accepts any term in eigen variables position E in sequent E : _ ?- _. Meaningful terms are lists or unification variables
• Change CHR eigen variables are a list of names (used to be an integer)

Runtime:

• Fix CHR relocation/scope-checking for new goals
• Fix relocation error in unification on non-linear patterns with locally bound variables

v1.18.2 (January 2024)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

Language:

• Change indexing for multiple arguments is now based on discrimination trees
• Change :index acecpts an optional string to force "Hash" based indexing

API:

• Change clause_of_term accepts a `Replace grafting directive

v1.18.1 (December 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above.

Parser:

• Remove legacy parsing engine based on Camlp5

API:

• New RawQuery.compile_ast, lets one set up the initial state in which the query is run, even if the query is given as an ast.
• New solution.relocate_assignment_to_runtime to pass a query result to another query
• New BuiltInPredicate.FullHO for higher order external predicates
• New BuiltInPredicate.HOAdaptors for map and filter like HO predicates
• New Calc.register to register operators for calc (aka infix is)

Library:

• New std.fold-right

Runtime:

• New clause retrieval through discrimination tree. This new index is enabled whenever the :index directive selects only one argument with a depth > 1.

v1.18.0 (October 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

API:

• Change Setup.init takes a ?state, ?quotations and ?hooks descriptors so that each elpi handle is completely independent.
• Change State.declare is deprecated in favor of State.declare_component
• New State.declare_component like State.declare but takes a ~descriptor
• New State.new_state_descriptor
• Change Quotations.register_named_quotation now takes a ?descriptor
• Change Quotations.set_default_quotation now takes a ?descriptor
• Change Quotations.declare_backtick now takes a ?descriptor
• Change Quotations.declare_singlequote now takes a ?descriptor
• New Quotations.new_quotations_descriptor
• Change RawData.set_extra_goals_postprocessing now takes a ?descriptor
• New RawData.new_hoas_descriptor

v1.17.4 (October 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

Parser:

• Fix location handling (used to ignore the char count of the initial loc)

v1.17.3 (September 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

Builtins:

• Change unix.process really disabled on OCaml 4.12

v1.17.2 (September 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

Builtins:

• Change unix.process disabled on OCaml 4.12

v1.17.1 (September 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

Builtins:

• New unix.process datatype and unix.process.open/close APIs

v1.17.0 (July 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

Compiler:

• Improve performance of separate compilation, in particular extending a program with more clauses. This change may break existing code which accumulates units containing the spilling of a predicate before the unit declaring the predicate signature.

Parser:

• Fix error message on unexpected keyword (was wrongly assuming the keyword was ) misleading the user)

Builtins:

• Change type of declare_constraint to any -> any -> variadic any prop making it explicitly take at least two arguments

Trace browser:

• Fix elaboration of CHR rule with no condition

v1.16.10 (May 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Elpi:

  • New attribute :replace which replaces a named clause by an unnamed one

Trace browser:

• Fix display of rule applied after failures

v1.16.9 (March 2023)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Trace browser:

  • Fix CHR trace elaboration in case no rule applies

v1.16.8 (November 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Dependencies:

  • yojson 2.x, hence atd 2.10

v1.16.7 (October 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Tests:

  • Fix trace elaboration reference files

v1.16.6 (October 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• API:

  • Fix FlexData.Elpi.make when called with a name after compilation is over
  • Fix RawQuery.mk_Arg can only be called at compile time
  • Fix anomaly in Query.compile

• Trace:

  • Fix printing of clauses

• Doc:

  • New setup based on Sphinx (still no extra contents)

v1.16.5 (July 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Apis in the Builtin module:

  • New string_set, int_set and loc_set conversions
  • New ocaml_set_conv giving both the declarations and the conversion for the provided OCaml Set module

v1.16.4 (July 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Tace Elaborator:

  • Fix generation and elaboration of incomplete traces

• Trace:

  • New command line syntax file:// and tcp:// to disambiguate host:port on windows (old syntax still supported)

v1.16.3 (June 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Fix compilation on OCaml 5.0.0

v1.16.2 (June 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Trace Elaborator:

  • Fix json encoding of utf8 characters
  • Fix runtime_id does not necessarily start at 0

v1.16.1 (June 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Tests:

  • Fix temp file creation for trace testing

v1.16.0 (June 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.08 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

• Parser:

  • Change the character count in the locations is now referring to the beginning of the text, and not the end

• Printer:

  • Fix regression not putting parentheses correctly around some applications

• Doc:

  • Clarify InOut and ioarg doc in the API file

• Trace:

  • New src/trace.atd data type description for traces
  • New src/trace_atd.ts read/write the trace in TypeScript
  • New elpi-trace-elaborator tool to turn raw traces into cards to be displayed by a GUI. Work is in progress on the elpi-lang VS Code extension.
  • Change the raw trace as output by the runtime is way more regular w.r.t. what is printed when a rule, or a built in rule/predicate is run, also the runtime_id attribute is now correctly set in all trace objects
  • Fix the trace file is generated only once the trace is complete, so that tools can watch for the file creation reliably

v1.15.2 (April 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.07 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

warning: The parser used by default is not backward compatible with 1.14.x

• Parser:

  • Change pred foo i:A o:B is valid, pred foo i:A o :B is not. This change restores backward compatibility of existing code.

v1.15.1 (April 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.07 or above. Camlp5 8.0 or above is optional.

warning: The parser used by default is not backward compatible with 1.14.x

• Build:

  • Change legacy parser not built by default
  • New make config LEGACY_PARSER=1 to enable it
  • New opam package elpi-option-legacy-parser to install elpi with the legacy parser enabled

• Parser:

  • Fix missing infix & (synonym of ,)
  • New comma separator is optional in pred declarations, eg pred i:A o:B. is valid syntax

v1.15.0 (April 2022)

Requires Menhir 20211230 and OCaml 4.07 or above. Camlp5 is now optional.

warning: The parser used by default is not backward compatible

• Parser:

  • New parser based on Menhir

    • The grammar is not extensible anymore; token families are used to provide open ended infix symbols, see the documentation
    • Custom error messages suggesting examples with a valid syntax
    • Faster on large files

  • Old parser available via -legacy-parser

    • Only compiled when camlp5 is available
    • Supports infix and similar mixfix directives

• API:

  • Parse.goal_from_stream -> Parse.goal_from
  • Parse.program_from_stream -> Parse.program_from
  • Parse.resolve_file now takes an ~elpi argument
  • Setup.init resolver argument takes a ~unit instead of ~file
  • Setup.init takes ?legacy_parser
  • Setup.legacy_parser_avaiable
  • Pp.query -> Pp.program and Pp.goal

• REPL:

  • New -parse-term
  • New -legacy-parser
  • New -legacy-parser-available
  • Removed -print-accumulated-files

v1.14.3 (March 2022)

• Tests:

  • test.exe understands --skip-cat
  • make tests understands SKIP for the categories to skip

v1.14.2 (March 2022)

• Dependencies:

  • bump camlp5 to >= 8.0

v1.14.1 (February 2022)

• Runtime:

  • Fix unification dealing with a deep AppArg (regression in 1.14.0)

v1.14.0 (February 2022)

• Runtime/FFI:

  • Fix handling of eta expanded unification variables. Many thanks to Nathan Guermond for testing this tricky case.
  • Change Rawdata.Constants.eqc to a builtin
  • Fix Rawdata.Constants.cutc has always been a builtin
  • Fix compatibility with OCaml multicore, no more PtrMap

• API:

  • New FlexibleData.WeakMap to link unification variables with host data based on OCaml's Ephemeron
  • Change Conversion.extra_goals is now an extensible data type with one standard constructor Conversion.Unify taking two terms
  • New RawData.set_extra_goals_postprocessing can be used to post process the extra goals generated by an FFI call. One has to translate extensions to the extra_goals datatype to RawData.RawGoal (or Conversion.Unify), but can also take global actions like cancelling out useless or duplicate goals
  • Change Setup.init to take in input a ~file_resolver rather than a list of ~paths and a ~basedir. A custom file resolver can use some logic from the host application to find files, rather than an hardcoded one
  • New Parse.std_resolver building a standard resolver (based on paths)
  • Change signature of Parse.resolve_file making ?cwd explicit

• Library:

  • Better error messages in std.nth
  • declare_constraint is now variadic any prop, so that one can pass variables of different types as keys for the constraint. A list of variables (of the same type) is still supported.

v1.13.8 (November 2021)

• Build:

  • link camlp5.gramlib as part of elpi.cmxs so that the plugin can be loaded via findlib.

v1.13.7 (July 2021)

• Compiler:

  • Fix bug in spilling when the spilled expression generates more than one argument.

v1.13.6 (June 2021)

• API:

  • Fix std.findall is now calling a builtin which is able to produce solutions which contain eigenvariables and uvars as well.
  • loc is now printed using / as a path separator also on Windows
  • loc.fields to project a loc into the file, line, etc...

v1.13.5 (May 2021)

• API:

  • New prune which can be used to prune a unification variable
  • New distinct_names which checks if a list of arguments is in the pattern fragment

v1.13.4 (May 2021)

• FFI: new ioargC_flex which considers flexible terms as Data

v1.13.3 (May 2021)

• Bugifx: keep the state component while_compiling even when execution is over, since the API to allocate a new Elpi uvar needs it and Coq-Elpi may call this API while translating the solution to Coq

v1.13.2 (May 2021)

• Build:

  • drop ppxfindcache
  • relax dependency on ocaml-migrate-parsetree

v1.13.1 (April 2021)

• API:

  • New gc.get and gc.set for reading and writing GC settings
  • New gc.minor
  • New gc.major
  • New gc.full
  • New gc.compact
  • New gc.stat
  • New gc.quick-stat
  • New min and max operators for the is builtin, they work on int and float
  • Rename rex_match -> rex.match
  • Rename rex_replace -> rex.replace
  • Rename rex_split -> rex.split
  • Rename counter -> trace.counter

• FFI:

  • New Builtin.unspec type to express optional input

v1.13.0 (Feb 2021)

• API:

  • Fix open_append was messing up file permissions
  • New Parse.resolve_file to find where the parser would find (or not) an accumulated file
  • Change signature of Compile.unit, Compile.assemble and Compile.extend and improve their implementation. Units are now smaller and link/relocate faster (making ~follows not worth it)

• CI:

  • Switch to Github actions and avsm/setup-ocaml. Now testing on Linux, MacOS and Windows. Artifacts produce binaries for all platforms and a benchmarks plot.

• Library:

  • New if2
  • New std.map-ok
  • New std.fold-map
  • New std.intersperse
  • New std.omap
  • New std.take-last
  • New std.string.concat

v1.12.0 (Nov 2020)

• FFI:

  • RawOpaqueData.cin now returns a term and takes constants into account. Whenever a value is represented with a named constant, the API grants that:

    • the value is embedded using that constant
    • that constant is read back to the original value

• API:

  • New Compile.extend to (quickly) add clauses to a program
  • New argument ?follows:program to Compile.unit to have the unit be compiled using the very same symbol table (no new symbols can be declared by the unit in this case)

• Library:

  • rename map2_filter -> map2-filter
  • new map-filter

• Build:

  • use md5 (OCaml's digest) instead of sha1 (external utility)

v1.11.4 (Aug 2020)

• do not rely on /bin/bash in Makefile (helps on nix and freebsd)

v1.11.3 (Aug 2020)

• ppxfindcache: use shasum instead of sha1sum
• Parser: print file names in a VScode friendly way
• Fix opam package dependency on camlp5 and ppxlib
• Fix output of -print* options to the elpi command line utility
• New builtin rex_split (like OCaml's Str.split)

v1.11.2 (May 2020)

• Nicer error message when compiling an applied spilling expression
• Fix opam package
• Trace: print locations in VScode friendly way

v1.11.1 (May 2020)

• Fix to the opam file, ppxlib is required to be >= 0.12.0 and ocaml-migrate-parsetree >= 1.6.0. Moreover we disable tests on Alpine linux
• Print locations in such a way that VScode can understand then, and click jump to type errors

v1.11.0 (May 2020)

• Builtin:

  • var now accepts 3 arguments, as constant and name.

• Trace:

  • output facilities: json and tty on both files and network sockets
  • trace messages to link goals to their subgoals
  • spy points categorized into user and dev
  • all trace points were revised and improved
  • port to ppxlib

• Build system:

  • minimal build dependencies are now: camlp5 ocamlfind dune re
  • cache ppx output in .ml format in src/.ppcache that Elpi can be buildt without ppx_deriving.std and elpi.trace.ppx using a new tool in ppxfindcache/
  • vendor a copy of ppx_deriving_runtime (suffix _proxy) to be used when ppx_deriving is not installed
  • generate custom merlinppx.exe for src/ and and patch .merlin file so that one can have decent merlin support
  • make target test-noppx to compile on an alternative opam switch

v1.10.2 (February 2020)

• Builtin:

  • occurs now accepts arguments of different types

• API:

  • expose beta reduction on raw terms

v1.10.1 (February 2020)

• make API.Builtin_checker module public so that third parties can reuse the source

v1.10.0 (February 2020)

• Compiler:

  • large refactoring to separate the table of global (statically initialized) symbols, the table of symbols of a program being compiled and the table of symbols used at runtime.
  • API for separate compilation.

• API:

  • Setup.init now returns a handle to an elpi instance to be passed to many other APIs.
  • New APIs Compile.unit and Compile.assemble for separate compilation.
  • Constants.from_stringc and Constants.mk*S API removed in favor for Constants.declare_global_symbol (to be used in module initialization code).

v1.9.1 (January 2020)

• Tests:

  • Fix testing framework on runners pre 1.9.0.

• Parser:

  • Line numbers after quotations were wrong, since \n inside quotations were not taken into account.

• Typing:

  • Name alias abbreviations are not refolded in error messages. Eg. typeabbrev x int does not take over int, while typeabbrev x (list int) does over list int.
  • Fix type abbreviation refolding, was not working on some cases.

• Stdlib:

  • Fix is function int_of_string to do what it says
  • New is function rhc : string -> int computes the inverse of chr

v1.9.0 (January 2020)

• Typing:

  • typeabbrev declarations are now taken into account and unfolded by the compiler. The type checker refolds abbreviations when printing error messages with the following caveat: when two type abbreviations can be refolded the last declared one wins.

• Compiler:

  • @macro are no more accepted in types, since typeabbrev provides the same functionality.
  • fix clash between builtin names and type names
  • accumulate is idempotent: accumulating the same file a second time has no effect.

• FFI:

  • built in predicate are allowed to not assign (not produce a value) for output and input-output arguments.
  • input-output arguments are forced to be Conversion.t of type 'a ioarg, and recommended to wrap any nested type not able to represent variables in ioarg. Eg int option should be int ioarg option ioarg. In this way one can safely call these builtins with non-ground terms, such as some _, for example to assert the result is not none but without providing a ground term such as some 3.
  • MLData declarations for OpaqueData are no more named using a macro but rather using a type abbreviation. This can break user code. The fix is to substitute @myopaquetype with myopaquetype everywhere.

• Stdlib:

  • diagnostic data type to be used as an ioarg for builtins that can fail with a relevant error message. On the ML side one can used Elpi.Builtin.mkOK and Elpi.Builtin.mkERROR "msg" to build its values.
  • std.assert-ok!, std.forall-ok, std.do-ok!, std.lift-ok and std.while-ok-do! commodity predicates.
  • All operators for calc (infix _ is _) now come with a type declaration.

v1.8.0 (October 2019)

• Bugfix:

  • shorten foo.{ bar }. when foo.bar is a builtin used to be miscompiled.
  • elpi-typechecker.elpi now correclty stops printing warnings after it printed 10 (used to stop after he processed 10, that may not be the same thing, since some warnings are suppressed).

• Parser:

  • Interpret -2 (with no space) as the negative 2 not as the constant -2. This way X is 3 - 2 and Y is 3 + -2 are both valid.

• FFI:

  • OpaqueData now requires a ternary comparison, not just equality.

• Stdlib:

  • new data type cmp for ternary comparison.
  • std.set and std.map now based on ternary comparison.

• Builtin:

  • cmp_term giving an order on ground terms.
  • ground_term to check if a term is ground.

v1.7.0 (September 2019)

• Parser:

  • Tolerate trailing , in lists, eg [1,2,3,] is now parsed as [1,2,3].
  • Error if the input of Parse.goal_from_string contains extra tokens
  • Binary conjunction & is now turned on the fly into the nary one ,.

• Bugfix:

  • Nasty bug in pruning during higher order unification, see #36.
  • Discard is now considered a stack term, and is turned into an unification variable on heapification.
  • API.RawData.look now expands UVar correctly

• Stdlib:

  • set and map for arbitrary terms equipped with an order relation. Based on the code of OCaml's Map and Set library.
  • New API map.remove for maps on builtin data.

• FFI:

  • New ContextualConversion module and ctx_readback type. In an FFI call one can specify a readback for the hypothetical context that is run once and its output is give to the ML code instead of the "raw" constraints and hyp list.

• API:

  • Commodity functions in Elpi.Builtin to export as built-in OCaml's Set.S and Map.S interfaces (the output of Set.Make and Map.Make). All data is limited to be a closed term.
  • Constants.andc2 was removed
  • FlexibleData.Elpi.make takes no ~lvl argument (it is always 0)
  • RawData.view no more contains Discard since it is not an heap term

• Misc:

  • Pretty printer for unification variable made re-entrant w.r.t. calls to the CHR engine (used to lose the mapping between heap cells and names)
  • Pretty printer for solution abstracted over a context (part of the solution). In this way the result can be printed correctly even if the runtime has been destroyed.
  • Default paths for finding .elpi files fixed after the switch to dune
  • A few more tests regarding unification, data structures and performance

v1.6.0 (July 2019)

• Builtin:

  • same_term (infix ==) for Prolog's non-logical comparison (without instantiation).
  • set and map A (A only allowed to be a closed term) on string, int and loc keys.

• Compiler:

  • provide line number on error about duplicate mode declaration
  • elpi-checker is faster and bails out after 10 seconds

• FFI:

  • allow AlgebraicData declarations to mix M and MS constructors
  • Conversion.t for closed terms (no unification variable and no variables bound by the program)

• Tests:

  • typecheck all tests and measure type checking time

v1.5.2 (July 2019)

• Test suite: ship elpi-quoted_syntax.elpi

v1.5.1 (July 2019)

• Test suite: print the log of the first failure to ease debugging on third party CI.

v1.5.0 (July 2019)

Elpi 1.5 requires OCaml 4.04 or newer

• REPL:

  • type errors are considered fatal, pass -no-tc to skip type checking.
  • use dune subst in order to implement -version flag to the command line utility.

• Runtime:

  • reset unification variables names map at each execution. This makes the names of variable printed in a reproducible way across executions.

• FFI:

  • readback is now as powerful as embed and can generate extra goals. The two types are now dual.

v1.4 (June 2019)

Elpi 1.4 requires OCaml 4.04 or newer

• Sources and build: Switch to dune, with a little make base wrapper. As a result of dune wrapping the library all sources are renamed from elpi_x.ml to x.ml, and each module Elpi_X is now available as Elpi.X. In particular clients must now use Elpi.API and Elpi.Builtin.

• FFI:

  • Conversion.TypeErr now carries the depth at which the error is found, so that the term payload can be correctly printed.
  • Built in predicates are allowed to raise TypeErr in their body
  • BuiltInPredicate.Full now returns a list of extra_goals, exactly as Conversion.embed does making conversion code easy to call in the body of a predicate.

v1.3 (June 2019)

Elpi 1.3 requires OCaml 4.04 or newer

• API: Major reorganization: The Extend module has gone; the module structure is flat and ordered by complexity. Most modules are named after the kind of data they let one represent. Eg AlgebraicData, OpaqueData, FlexibleData or for low level access RawOpaqueData or RawData for naked terms.

• FFI:

  • RawData.mkAppL and RawData.mkAppSL handy constructors
  • custom_state renamed state
  • No more solution in the type of builtin predicates but rather constraints and state explicitly
  • Only one type of extensible state to that the same code can be used to generate the query at compile time and convert data at run time
  • Unify MLCData and MLADT into MLData

  • AlgebraicData.t supports C for containers, so that one can model

    type t = A | B of list t

    as

          K("a", N, ..
    K("b",(C ((fun x -> list x),N)), ..

  • new FlexibleTerm.Elpi.t and FlexibleTerm.Map to represent Elpi's unification variables and keep a bijective map between them and any host application data.
  • RawData.term contains no more UVar, AppUVar, Arg and AppArg but only UnifVar of FlexibleTerm.Elpi.t * term list.
  • Simple GADT for describing a query. When a query is built that way, the solution contains an output field holding data of the type described by the query.

• Library:

  • replace mode (std.mem i i) with (std.mem i o): member can be assigned
  • separate std.mem! and std.mem

v1.2 (April 2019)

Fix:

• equality up-to eta on rigid terms (used to work only on flexible terms)
• expand_* in charge of putting unification variables in canonical form was sometimes omitting some lambdas in one of its outputs

Language:

• shorten directive to give short names to symbols that live in namespaces, e.g. shorten std.{ rev } lets one write rev instead of std.rev
• spilling understands implication and conjunction, e.g. g { h => (a, f) } becomes (h => (a, f X)), g X
• syntax of .. as X to bind subterms in the head of a clause changed precedence. In particular lam x\ B as X binds lam x\ B to X (instead of just B, as it was the case in previous versions)
• :index(...) attribute for predicates to select which argument(s) should be indexed and at which depth. Multi-argument indexing and deep-indexing are based on unification hashes, see ELPI.md for more details

Library:

• predefined types:

  • bool with tt and ff
  • option A with none and some A
  • pair A B with pr A B, fst and snd

• predefined control structure:

  • if C T E

• standard library (taken from coq-elpi) in the std namespace.

  Conventions:

  • all errors are signalled using one of the following two symbols that can be overridden by grafting clauses to hide them, namely fatal-error and fatal-error-w-data
  • the ! suffix is for (variants) of predicates that generate only the first solution
  • all predicates have mode declarations that follow their functional interpretation; variants keeping the relational interpretation are named using the R suffix

  Symbols: debug-print, ignore-failure!, assert!, spy, spy!, unsafe-cast, length, rev, last, append, appendR, take, drop, drop-last, split-at, fold, fold2, map, map-i, map2, map2_filter, nth, lookup, lookup!, mem, exists, exists2, forall, forall2, filter, zip, unzip, flatten, null, iota, flip, time, do!, spy-do!, any->string, random.init, random.self_init, random.int

  While the predicates in the library are reasonably tested, their names and name spaces may change in the future, e.g. a specific name space for list related code may be created (as well for strings, debug, etc).

Builtin:

• name is now typed as any -> variadic any prop to support the following two use cases:

  • name T succeeds if T is an eigenvariable (even if it is applied)
  • name T HD ARGS relates T (an applied eigenvariable) to its head and arguments (as a list): pi f x y\ name (f x y) f [x,y]
• new builtin constant working as name but for non-eigenvariables
• halt now accepts any term, not just strings
• getenv is now typed as string -> option string and never fails. The old semantics can be obtained by just writing getenv Name (some Value)

API:

• new data type of locations in the source file: Ast.Loc.t
• exception ParseError(loc, message) systematically used in the parsing API (no more leak of exceptions or data types from the internal parsing engine, i.e. no more NotInProlog or Stream.Error exceptions)
• type of quotations handlers changed: they now receive in input the location of the quoted text in order to be able to locate their own parsing errors

• simplified term constructors:

  • mkConst split into mkGlobal and mkBound
  • variants with trailing S taking a string rather than a global constant, e.g. mkAppS, mkGlobalS, mkBuiltinS
  • mkBuiltinName removed (replace by mkBuiltinS)
  • constant spillc exported: one can not build a term such as f {g a} by writing mkAppS "f" (mkApp spillc (mkAppS "g" (mkGlobalS "a") []) []

• FFI:

  • to_term and of_term renamed to embed and readback and made stateful. They can access the state, the hypothetical context and the constraint store (exactly as Full ffi builtins do) and can return an updated state. Moreover embed can generate new goals (eg declaration of constraints) so that data that requires companion constraints fits the capabilities of the FFI (no need to simulate that by using a Full predicate with arguments of type any, as coq-elpi was doing)

  • Arguments to builtin predicates now distinguish between

    • In ML code must receive the data, type error is the data cannot be represented in ML
    • Out ML code received Keep or Discard so that it can avoid generating data the caller is not binding back
    • InOut ML code receives Data of 'a or NoData. The latter case is when the caller passed _, while the former contains the actual data
  • In the declaration of a data type for the FFI, the ty field is no more a string but an AST, so that containers (eg val list : 'a data -> 'a list data) can more easily generate the composite type
  • New GADT to describe simple ADTs (with no binders)

Compiler:

• handling of locations for quotations
• better error reporting: many errors now come with a location

REPL:

• more structure in the output of --help including hints for the tracing options
• new option -print-passes to debug the compiler

Test Suite:

• rewritten using more OCaml & Dune and less bash & make. Requires dune, cmdliner and ANSITerminal in order to build

v1.1.1 (October 2018)

Fix:

• beta was not calling deref_* in all cases, possibly terminating reduction too early (and raising an anomaly)

v1.1 (September 2018)

Language:

• CHR semantics conformed to the "revised operational semantics", that is roughly the following:

  • 1 for each active constraint (just declared via declare_constraint)

    • 2 for each rule

      • 3 for each position j of the active constraint (from 0 to n)

        • 4 for each permutation of constraints having the active at j

          • 5 try apply the rule

            • 6 remove constraints to be removed from the current set of permutations and the set of active or passive constraints

  In Elpi 1.0 loops 3 and 2 were swapped (by mistake)

• CHR keys refined. In declare_constraints C KEYS:

  • KEYS must be a list of variables (no more special case KEYS = Var)
  • KEYS = [_,...] labels the constraint with the unique variable _. In other words _ is a master key one can use to label constraints that share no other variable and that have to be combined together. The master key will never be assigned, hence it does not count for resumption
  • KEYS = [] is accepted with the following meaning: constraints with no key are never resumed automatically and are never combined with other constraints

Builtin:

• halt is now typed as variadic string prop and the strings passed are printed when the interpreter halts

Aesthetic:

• bound variables are now printed as c0, c1, ... instead of x0, x1, ... to avoid ambiguity with X0, X1, ... on small/far-away screens

API changes:

• rename:

  • custom_constraints -> state (record field)
  • syntactic_constraints -> constraints (type)
  • CustomConstraint -> CustomState (module)

• add:

  • StrMap and StrSet: expose pp and show

• alias:

  • Data.Extend.solution ~ Data.solution (cast: Data.Extend.of_solution)

Compilation:

• require re >= 1.7.2 (the version introducing Re_str -> Re.str)

Misc:

• improved some error messages, minor fixes to elpi-checker

v1.0 (April 2018)

Second public release, developed in tandem with coq-elpi and matita-elpi.

The programming language features syntactic constraints (suspended goals) and a meta language (inspired by CHR) to manipulate the constrain store.

There is an API for clients letting one drive the interpreter and extend the set of built-in predicates, register quotations and anti-quotations, etc.

The software is now built using findlib into a library. The standalone interpreter is just a regular client of the API.

LPAR 2015 (Jul 12, 2015)

First public release accompanying the paper ELPI: fast, Embeddable, λProlog Interpreter