LDC 1.29.0

(Changes since 1.29.0-beta1 are marked with (new).)

Big news

• Frontend, druntime and Phobos are at version 2.099.1. (#3917, #3893, #3937, #3953) (new)
• Support for LLVM 13 and 14. The prebuilt packages use v13.0.1. (#3842, #3951) (new)
• On Linux, LDC doesn't default to the ld.gold linker anymore. The combination of LLVM 13+ and older gold linkers can apparently cause problems. We recommend using LLD, e.g., via -linker=lld or by setting your default /usr/bin/ld symlink; it's significantly faster too.
• -linkonce-templates is less aggressive by default now and IMHO production-ready. (#3924)
• When linking manually (not via LDC) against shared druntime, it is now required to link the bundled lib/ldc_rt.dso.o[bj] object file into each binary. It replaces the previously Windows-specific dso_windows.obj. (#3850)
• Breaking extern(D) ABI change for all targets: formal parameters of non-variadic functions aren't reversed anymore, in line with the spec. For 32-bit x86, the first parameter is accordingly now potentially passed in EAX, not the last one. So non-variadic extern(D) functions with multiple explicit parameters will break if expecting parameters in specific registers or stack slots, e.g., naked DMD-style inline assembly. (#3873, ldc-developers/phobos@3d725fc)

Platform support

• Supports LLVM 6.0 - 14.0. (new)
• Basic compiler support for Newlib targets, i.e., triples like arm-none-newlibeabi. (#3946) (new)

Bug fixes

• Linux: Make LTO work with LLD. (#3786, #3850)
• Windows: Fix most undefined symbols with -dllimport=all without -linkonce-templates. (#3916, #3923, #3926, #3927, #3928, #3931, #3932)
• Capture NRVO variable by ref for stack closures. (#3883, #3902)
• -ftime-trace: JSON-escape filenames. (#3947, #3948) (new)
• RISC-V: Use 128-bit quadruple real. (#3892)

Known issues

• When building LDC, old LDC 0.17.*/ltsmaster host compilers miscompile LDC ≥ 1.21, leading to potential segfaults of the built LDC. Ltsmaster can still be used to bootstrap a first compiler and then let that compiler compile itself. (#3354)