1.4.0

• Completed phase-out of function-level protected execution.
  • For software embedding Lus and only making use of the front-facing C APIs like lua_pcall, this should not impact you as the functions have been retrofit with compatibility layers interfacing with the new catch system.
• Added --standalone to generate standalone binaries.
• Added local groups for grouping stack-allocated variables.
• Added vector type and library for buffers.
• Added slices for strings, tables, and vectors.
• Added table.clone(t, deep?) to create copies of tables.
• Added catch[handler] expr syntax to allow expression-level xpcall-like functionality.
• from deconstruction can now be done in if/while assignments.
• Refactored actions workflow.
• Various runtime optimizations:
  • Constant-time O(1) string hashing using sparse ARX algorithm.
  • Aligned string comparison for faster ordering.
  • Alias-aware table loops for improved compiler optimization.
  • O(1) catch handler lookup via activeCatch pointer.
  • Cold path extraction for trap handling and catch error recovery.
  • Arena-aware allocations where performance can be reliably improved.
  • Moved slice logic out of the VM and into its own luaV_slice function.
• Fixed our Windows builder, meaning Windows support has finally returned.
• Fixed race condition in worker.receive that could cause lost wakeups.
• Fixed attribute usage in if-assignments and while-assignments.
• Fixed deeply nested JSON encoding/decoding crashing.