Julia v1.12 Release Notes · The Julia Language
Description: Documentation for The Julia Language.

# Julia v1.12 Release Notes

## New language features

- New experimental option `--trim` that creates smaller binaries by removing code not proven to be reachable from entry points. Entry points can be marked using `Base.Experimental.entrypoint` (#55047). Not all code is expected to work with this option, and since it is experimental you may encounter problems.
- Redefinition of constants is now well defined and follows world age semantics (#57253). Additional redefinitions (e.g. of types) are now allowed. See the new manual chapter on world age.
- A new keyword argument `usings::Bool` has been added to `names`, returning all names visible via `using` (#54609).
- The `@atomic` macro family now supports reference assignment syntax, e.g. `@atomic :monotonic v[3] += 4`, which modifies `v[3]` atomically with monotonic ordering semantics (#54707). The supported syntax allows
  - atomic fetch (`x = @atomic v[3]`),
  - atomic set (`@atomic v[3] = 4`),
  - atomic modify (`@atomic v[3] += 2`),
  - atomic set once (`@atomiconce v[3] = 2`),
  - atomic swap (`x = @atomicswap v[3] = 2`), and
  - atomic replace (`x = @atomicreplace v[3] 2=>5`).
- New option `--task-metrics=yes` to enable the collection of per-task timing information, which can also be enabled/disabled at runtime with `Base.Experimental.task_metrics(::Bool)` (#56320). The available metrics are:
  - actual running time for the task (`Base.Experimental.task_running_time_ns`), and
  - wall-time for the task (`Base.Experimental.task_wall_time_ns`).
- Support for Unicode 16 (#56925).
- `Threads.@spawn` now takes a `:samepool` argument to specify the same threadpool as the caller. `Threads.@spawn :samepool foo()` which is shorthand for `Threads.@spawn Threads.threadpool() foo()` (#57109).
- The `@ccall` macro can now take a `gc_safe` argument, that if set to true allows the runtime to run garbage collection concurrently to the `ccall` (#49933).
- A single method covering multiple functions is now allowed in more cases. See issue #54620. (#58131).
- The character U+1F8B2 🢲 (RIGHTWARDS ARROW WITH LOWER HOOK), newly added by Unicode 16, is now a valid operator with arrow precedence, accessible as `\hookunderrightarrow` at the REPL. ([JuliaLang/JuliaSyntax.jl#525], #57143).

## Language changes

- When a method is replaced with an exactly equivalent one, the old method is not deleted. Instead, the new method takes priority and becomes more specific than the old method. Thus if the new method is deleted later, the old method will resume operating. This can be useful in mocking frameworks (as in SparseArrays, Pluto, and Mocking, among others), as they do not need to explicitly restore the old method. At this time, inference and compilation must be repeated in this situation, but we may eventually be able to re-use the old results (#53415).
- Macro expansion will no longer eagerly recurse into `Expr(:toplevel)` expressions returned from macros. Instead, macro expansion of `:toplevel` expressions will be delayed until evaluation time. This allows a later expression within a given `:toplevel` expression to make use of macros defined earlier in the same `:toplevel` expression (#53515).
- Trivial infinite loops (like `while true; end`) are no longer undefined behavior. Infinite loops that do things (e.g. have side effects or sleep) were never and are still not undefined behavior (#52999).
- It is now an error to mark a binding as both `public` and `export`ed (#53664).
- Errors during `getfield` now raise a new `FieldError` exception type instead of the generic `ErrorException` (#54504).
- Macros in function-signature-position no longer require parentheses. E.g. `function @main(args) ... end` is now permitted, whereas `function (@main)(args) ... end` was required in prior Julia versions.
- Calling `using` on a package name inside of that package of that name (especially relevant for a submodule) now explicitly uses that package without examining the Manifest and environment, which is identical to the behavior of `..Name`. This appears to better match how users expect this to behave in the wild (#57727).

## Compiler/Runtime improvements

- Generated LLVM IR now uses pointer types instead of passing pointers as integers. This affects `llvmcall`: Inline LLVM IR should be updated to use `i8*` or `ptr` instead of `i32` or `i64`, and remove unneeded `ptrtoint`/`inttoptr` conversions. For compatibility, IR with integer pointers is still supported, but generates a deprecation warning (#53687).

## Command-line option changes

- The `-m/--module` flag can be passed to run the `main` function inside a package with a set of arguments. This `main` function should be declared using `@main` to indicate that it is an entry point (#52103).
- Enabling or disabling color text in Julia can now be controlled with the `NO_COLOR` or `FORCE_COLOR` environment variables. These variables are also honored by Julia's build system (#53742, #56346).
- `--project=@temp` starts Julia with a temporary environment (#51149).
- New `--trace-compile-timing` option to report how long each method reported by `--trace-compile` took to compile, in ms (#54662).
- `--trace-compile` now prints recompiled methods in yellow or with a trailing comment if color is not supported (#55763).
- New `--trace-dispatch` option to report methods that are dynamically dispatched (#55848).

## Multi-threading changes

- Julia now defaults to 1 "interactive" thread, in addition to the 1 default "worker" thread. i.e. `-t1,1`. This means in default configuration the main task and repl (when in interactive mode), which both run on thread 1, now run within the `interactive` threadpool. The libuv IO loop also runs on thread 1, helping efficient utilization of the worker threadpool used by `Threads.@spawn`. Asking for specifically 1 thread (`-t1`/`JULIA_NUM_THREADS=1`) or `0` interactive threads will disable the interactive thread i.e. `-t1,0` or `JULIA_NUM_THREADS=1,0` , or `-tauto,0` etc. Asking for more than 1 thread will enable the interactive thread so `-t2` will set the equivalent of `-t2,1`. As a reminder, buffers should not be managed based on `threadid()` (#57087).
- New types are defined to handle the pattern of code that must run once per process, called a `OncePerProcess{T}` type, which allows defining a function that should be run exactly once the first time it is called, and then always return the same result value of type `T` every subsequent time afterwards. There are also `OncePerThread{T}` and `OncePerTask{T}` types for similar usage with threads or tasks (#55793).

## Build system changes

- There are new `Makefile`s to build Julia and LLVM using the Binary Optimization and Layout Tool (BOLT). See `contrib/bolt` and `contrib/pgo-lto-bolt` (#54107).

## New library functions

- `logrange(start, stop; length)` makes a range of constant ratio, instead of constant step (#39071).
- The new `isfull(c::Channel)` function can be used to check if `put!(c, some_value)` will block (#53159).
- `waitany(tasks; throw=false)` and `waitall(tasks; failfast=false, throw=false)` which wait for multiple tasks at once (#53341).
- `uuid7()` creates an RFC 9562 compliant UUID with version 7 (#54834).
- `insertdims(array; dims)` inserts singleton dimensions into an array –- the inverse operation of `dropdims` (#45793).
- A new `Fix` type generalizes `Fix1/Fix2` for fixing a single argument (#54653).
- `Sys.detectwsl()` tests whether Julia is running inside WSL at runtime (#57069).

## New library features

- `escape_string` takes additional keyword arguments `ascii=true` (to escape all non-ASCII characters) and `fullhex=true` (to require full 4/8-digit hex numbers for u/U escapes, e.g. for C compatibility) (#55099).
- `tempname` can now take a suffix string to allow the file name to include a suffix and include that suffix in the uniquing checking (#53474).
- `RegexMatch` objects can now be used to construct `NamedTuple`s and `Dict`s (#50988).
- `Lockable` is now exported (#54595).
- `Base.require_one_based_indexing` and `Base.has_offset_axes` are now public (#56196).
- New `ltruncate`, `rtruncate` and `ctruncate` functions for truncating strings to text width, accounting for char widths (#55351).
- `isless` (and thus `cmp`, sorting, etc.) is now supported for zero-dimensional `AbstractArray`s (#55772).
- `invoke` now supports passing a `Method` instead of a type signature (#56692).
- `invoke` now supports passing a `CodeInstance` instead of a type, which can enable certain compiler plugin workflows (#56660).
- `Timer(f, ...)` will now match the stickiness of the parent task when creating timer tasks, which can be overridden by the new `spawn` keyword argument. This avoids the issue where sticky tasks (i.e. `@async`) make their parent sticky (#56745).
- `Timer` now has readable `timeout` and `interval` properties, and a more descriptive `show` method (#57081).
- `sort` now supports `NTuple`s (#54494).
- `map!(f, A)` now stores the results in `A`, like `map!(f, A, A)` or `A .= f.(A)` (#40632).
- `setprecision` with a function argument (typically a `do` block) is now thread safe. Other forms should be avoided, and types should switch to an implementation using `ScopedValue` (#51362).

## Standard library changes

- `gcdx(0, 0)` now returns `(0, 0, 0)` instead of `(0, 1, 0)` (#40989).
- `fd` returns a `RawFD` instead of an `Int` (#55080).

#### JuliaSyntaxHighlighting

- A new standard library for applying syntax highlighting to Julia code, this uses `JuliaSyntax` and `StyledStrings` to implement a `highlight` function that creates an `AnnotatedString` with syntax highlighting applied (#51810).

#### LinearAlgebra

- `rank` can now take a `QRPivoted` matrix to allow rank estimation via QR factorization (#54283).
- Added keyword argument `alg` to `eigen`, `eigen!`, `eigvals` and `eigvals!` for self-adjoint matrix types (i.e., the type union `RealHermSymComplexHerm`) that allows one to switch between different eigendecomposition algorithms (#49355).
- Added a generic version of the (unblocked) pivoted Cholesky decomposition (callable via `cholesky[!](A, RowMaximum())`) (#54619).
- The number of default BLAS threads now respects process affinity, instead of using the total number of logical threads available on the system (#55574).
- A new function `zeroslike` is added that generates the zero elements for matrix-valued banded matrices. Custom array types may specialize this function to return an appropriate result (#55252).
- The matrix multiplication `A * B` calls `matprod_dest(A, B, T::Type)` to generate the destination. This function is now public (#55537).
- The function `haszero(T::Type)` is used to check if a type `T` has a unique zero element defined as `zero(T)`. This is now public (#56223).
- A new function `diagview` is added that returns a view into a specific band of an `AbstractMatrix` (#56175).

#### Profile

- `Profile.take_heap_snapshot` takes a new keyword argument, `redact_data::Bool`, which is `true` by default. When set, the contents of Julia objects are not emitted in the heap snapshot. This currently only applies to strings (#55326).
- `Profile.print()` now colors Base/Core/Package modules similarly to how they are in stacktraces. Also paths, even if truncated, are now clickable in terminals that support URI links to take you to the specified `JULIA_EDITOR` for the given file & line number (#55335).

#### REPL

- Using the new `usings=true` feature of the `names()` function, REPL completions can now complete names visible via `using` (#54610).
- REPL completions can now complete input lines like `[import|using] Mod: xxx|` e.g. complete `using Base.Experimental: @op` to `using Base.Experimental: @opaque` (#54719).
- The REPL will now warn if it detects a name is being accessed via a module which does not define it (nor has a submodule which defines it), and for which the name is not public in that module. For example, `map` is defined in Base, and executing `LinearAlgebra.map` in the REPL will now issue a warning the first time it occurs (#54872).
- When the result of a REPL input is printed, the output is now truncated to 20 KiB. This does not affect manual calls to `show`, `print`, etc. (#53959).
- Backslash completions now print the respective glyph or emoji next to each matching backslash shortcode (#54800).

#### Test

- A failing `DefaultTestSet` now prints to screen the random number generator (RNG) of the failed test, to help reproducing a stochastic failure which only depends on the state of the RNG. It is also possible seed a test set by passing the `rng` keyword argument to `@testset`:

      using Test, Random
      @testset rng=Xoshiro(0x2e026445595ed28e, 0x07bb81ac4c54926d, 0x83d7d70843e8bad6, 0xdbef927d150af80b, 0xdbf91ddf2534f850) begin
          @test rand() == 0.559472630416976
      end

#### InteractiveUtils

- New macros `@trace_compile` and `@trace_dispatch` for running an expression with `--trace-compile=stderr --trace-compile-timing` and `--trace-dispatch=stderr` respectively enabled (#55915).

## External dependencies

- The terminal info database, `terminfo`, is now vendored by default, providing a better REPL user experience when `terminfo` is not available on the system. Julia can be built without vendoring the database using the Makefile option `WITH_TERMINFO=0` (#55411).

## Tooling Improvements

- A wall-time profiler is now available for users who need a sampling profiler that captures tasks regardless of their scheduling or running state. This type of profiler enables profiling of I/O-heavy tasks and helps detect areas of heavy contention in the system (#55889).

Theme

This document was generated with Documenter.jl version 1.17.0 on Thursday 9 April 2026. Using Julia version 1.12.6.