The Windows Release

In terms of new features this is a huge release. The three main themes of this release are majorly improved Windows (cross) development support and the compiler has been improved greatly with Objective-C to C transpilation and support for mulle-objc language extensions.

0.28 is a major release. The compiler is no longer compatible with runtime version 0.27 due to a bump in the load version to 19.

What’s new ?

• Full windows support - Everything compiles AND all test pass on WIN32/64 now!
• Cross compile on linux with mulle-clang-mingw and test using wine
• Finally! Compiler support for @protocolclass
• New @method_implementation Objective-C language feature for method aliasing
• New __attribute__(( mulle_confined_loop)) to support scoped resources in C
• Experimental mulle-objc to C transpiler support produces platform dependent and independent C code from Objective-C with --mulle-objc-emit-c
• A tree-sitter grammar for mulle-objc
• MulleScion now has proper operator precedence
• Better dependency checking and error messages in the debug runtime
• MetaABI change! Small structs are passed by value, but floating point is always passed by reference
• MetaABI arguments are now copied by the compiler to local variables for easier debugging
• MulleObjCLoader renamed to MulleObjCDeps for less AI confusion
• Improved mulle-gdb debugger step in and step through
• Revised mulle-sde tooling for cross-platform testing (linux->windows->wine)
• Lots of fixes

How to update

Follow the instructions in foundation-developer to install a new development environment.

To update an existing project of yours, you should clean the (global) archive and mirror cache.

mulle-sde -f clean cache

Then upgrade each of your project and rebuild:

mulle-sde upgrade
mulle-sde recraft

mulle-c — Improvements and Changes

mulle-allocator 8.0.0

• Export mulle_allocator_is_stdlib_allocator probe so code can reliably detect the stdlib allocator
• Alloca-family macros rationalised to use MULLE_C_TYPE_OF, confined return/loop helpers, and mulle_calloca_do_extract alias for consistent semantics

mulle-buffer 5.1.0

• New mulle_buffer_add_chars() convenience API for appending char arrays
• Buffer/flushablebuffer macros confined for safer macro scoping

mulle-utf 5.2.0

• Expose mulle_char5_lookup_table as a public symbol for direct table-driven encoding/decoding
• Add mulle_utf32_as_utf16 helpers including surrogate-pair handling

mulle-regex 0.1.0

• Export UTF32 regex API symbols with proper visibility macros so the surface links cleanly

mulle-core — Improvements and Changes

mulle-mmap 1.0.0 is a major milestone: add ability to map existing shared-memory regions with optional fixed address mapping (preserves allocator/pointer layouts), clear POSIX FD_CLOEXEC on shm_open fds so shared-memory fds survive exec() across glibc versions, and Windows now supports inheritable shared page allocations with documented fork/CreateProcess semantics. Breaking: on Windows, include order now requires mulle-c11-bool.h before <windows.h>.

mulle-mmapallocator 0.2.0 adds attach API so an allocator maps onto existing shared-memory handles, records platform shared handles and frees them on cleanup, enables spin-lock locking for shared mspaces, and provides a hex-dump helper for debugging mspace allocation patterns. Breaking: struct layout changed (added shared_handle).

mulle-sprintf 4.0.0 standardises %c/%C and %s/%S UTF conversion across platforms: %C and %lC consistently use UTF-32, %S and %lS consistently use UTF-32; %c and %s default to char/UTF-8 with modifiers selecting variants. Fixes Windows quirks (printf %p/%ls/%f formatting). Breaking: %S now takes utf32_t * by default and %lS takes wchar_t * on most platforms.

Other mulle-core updates

mulle-concurrent — Improvements and Changes

mulle-concurrent 3.1.0

• Include macro MULLE__CONCURRENT_GLOBAL now defined when MULLE__CORE_BUILD is set for correct symbol visibility

mulle-objc: Runtime & Core Language

mulle-objc-runtime 0.28.0 enforces category +dependencies: the runtime now validates that categories overriding existing methods declare +dependencies and list the overridden category; missing or incorrect declarations produce clear errors and mark the universe inconsistent. Adds public mulle-metaabi-call.h for meta-ABI call helpers and extensive compiler/runtime tests. Bumps MULLE_OBJC_RUNTIME_LOAD_VERSION to 19 (requires mulle-clang 21.1.8.7+). Windows runtime gained lazy sibling-DLL loading for missing class/method lookups and callbacks for tagged-pointer class resolution via DLL loader. Breaking: callback wiring changed and cache field renamed from thread to thread_id.

MulleObjC 0.28.0 exports new runtime helpers to create property accessor methods dynamically, enabling on-the-fly accessor generation. Replaces MulleObjCLoader with MulleObjCDeps for declaring +load dependencies (breaking). Exports memory/ivar describe helpers for external introspection tooling. DEBUG builds now abort early with a clear error if %@ is used without a loaded string class. Thread-affine objects now compare thread IDs for TAO access checks.

MulleFoundation — Improvements and Changes

The Foundation ecosystem standardised on centralised dependency declarations via MulleObjCDeps categories, replacing the scattered MulleObjCLoader pattern.

MulleObjCContainerFoundation 0.25.0

• Add concise ‘:’ and zero-cost selector aliases mapping to -objectAtIndex: (NSArray) and -objectForKey: (NSDictionary) with the new @method_implementation directive
• Expose container class globals via MULLE_OBJC_CONTAINER_FOUNDATION_GLOBAL_VAR

MulleFoundation 0.23.0

• Rename loader category to MulleObjCDeps+MulleFoundation (breaking — callers must update)
• Remove standalone entrypoint and centralise dependency generation

MulleInvocationQueue 0.2.0

• Export MulleObjCDeps+MulleInvocationQueue for dependency discovery
• Include generated objc-deps.inc for reflection loader integration

MulleWeb — Improvements and Changes

The web stack aligned on the centralised MulleObjCDeps dependency pattern, with all libraries now publishing explicit load-time dependency declarations.

MulleWebServer 0.1.0

• Export MulleObjCDeps+MulleWebServer so dependent libraries declare load-time deps
• Include generated objc-deps.inc and update reflection to use new dependency model

MulleHoedown 0.5.0

• Add public MulleObjCDeps category for load-time dependency discovery
• Register NSData/NSString ObjC dependency pairs via generated objc-deps.inc

MulleObjCHTTPFoundation 0.19.0

• Register selectors via MulleObjCDeps for improved reflection-based dependency resolution

mulle-sde — Improvements and Changes

The developer toolchain suite got a focused round of quality work. Most updates are pragmatic improvements to existing commands rather than large feature additions.

mulle-bashfunctions 6.8.0

Added a toc command to generate table-of-contents for AI coding support. Improved flag handling with a new flags command to show extended flag help. Added log_vibe for conditional info/verbose output and etc_copy_from_share for flexible etc setup.

Introduced r_concat_unique to replace r_concat_if_missing. Enhanced reflow_file with special line prefix support (‘|’ and ‘:’) and improved usage output that reflows paragraphs based on terminal width.