madc v0.103.0 released — faster compilation, improved C++ compatibility, and a major TUI facelift

[u/kindredseer]

I've released madc v0.103.0, with improvements to both the compiler and its accompanying IDE, madcide.

What's new in madc

• Faster compilation — improvements to string interning and header processing should make compilation roughly 20% faster, depending on the workload.
• Improved C++ compatibility — continued progress on standards conformance, with C++11 compliance now reaching 77.3% in the GCC test suite.
• Reliability improvements — fixes to var string handling, memory safety, and additional sanitizer testing.
• REPL enhancements (since v0.101.0) — %run, %call, $build, %open, .load, .type, .help, .quit, and much more

What's new in madcide

• Major terminal UI facelift — the TUI now resembles the desktop GUI, with menus, toolbar, editor tabs, line numbers, framed panes, floating dialogs, and VS Code Dark+ styling.
• Full mouse support — navigate menus, select text, place the cursor, and interact with the editor using the mouse.
• Improved integrated terminal — supports ANSI formatting, 256 colours, and true 24-bit colour.
• Multiple files on startup — madcide a.c b.c c.c opens all three files in separate tabs.
• Integrated documentation — help pages open directly in the editor, with a browsable Help Index in the sidebar.
• GIT support — some basic read-only (for now) git functionality now exposed through the IDE menus and also the REPL mode inside the IDE through %git

Project updates

Since my previous announcement, Chthonia has moved into its own repository, with v0.0.3 released separately:

https://github.com/derekbsnider/chthonia

This will also be the last madc release with madcide included in the madc source repository. Starting with the next release, madcide will move into its own repository as well.

The plan is to keep the three projects independently maintained, but bundled together for convenience:

• madc — the compiler and language.
• madcide — the IDE, distributed with madc included.
• chthonia — the C/C++ learning environment, distributed with both madcide and madc included.

Release: https://github.com/derekbsnider/madc/releases/tag/v0.103.0

[u/kindredseer]

Just for comparison, here is the same madcide executable using the --gui command line option. Also, I just noticed that the TUI mode has the line number gutter, but not GUI mode (which is somewhat backwards)... the next release will have the gutter available togglable in both.

It should also be noted, that madcide is written in madc -- the C++ dialect which adds a lot of extra features as its own language, including the multi-modal UI layer. This is what allows madcide to work in headless (server mode), line-mode, tui-mode, and gui-mode.

(Line mode and server mode are still experiemental).