Release Notes

Stopify 0.7.1

  • Breaking change: Stopify is now published as @stopify/stopify. The other associated packages are also part of the @stopify namespace.
  • Breaking change: The --hof flag to Stopify has been removed. However, the new package @stopify/higher-order-functions provides the same feature. See that package for details.
  • New package: The package @stopify/normalize-js implements a semantics-preserving transformation for JavaScript that is inspired by A Normal Form. The code for this package was extracted from Stopify.
  • New package: The package @stopify/continuations implements first-class continuations for JavaScript. The code for this package was extracted from Stopify.
  • Known issue: The “deep stacks” feature of Stopify is broken (and has been for some time).

Stopify 0.6.0

  • Breaking change: Global variables must now be initialized onto the g field of the Stopify runner object. This removes the externals API from the AsyncRun interface. See the examples for how to update code to this new interface.

  • Breaking change: The continueImmediate function requires a Result. In previous releases, it would receive an ordinary value. This change allows external functions that pause stopified programs to resume with an exception.

    To upgrade old code, replace continueImmediate(x) with continueImmediate({ type: 'normal', value: x }).

  • Breaking change: The stopify-continuations package now only provides the runtime components for continuation support. The Babel continuation compiler backend now exists in a new package, stopify-continuations-compiler.

    Code that only depends upon the stopify package directly does not need to be updated.

  • Added the catch transform to the compiler. From experiments, catch often outperforms lazy and other transforms.

  • Added the eval2 compiler flag. This new mode supports evaluating new code in the same global environment as the main program.

  • Estimator implementations have been migrated to a separate stopify-estimators package.

  • Along with the stopify-estimators package, a new interrupt estimator is introduced for Node.js programs, using a C++ extension to Node.js to initialize a timer.

  • Fixed several issues with breakpoints. See https://github.com/plasma-umass/Stopify/issues/424.

Stopify 0.5.0

  • Breaking change: The onDone callback passed to AsyncRun.run always receives a Result. In previous releases, it would receive an optional error argument.
  • Stopify now reports a stack trace when an an exception occurs in stopified code. However, stack traces only work with captureMethod: lazy (the default capture method).
  • Setting the debug flag would crash the online compiler. This is now fixed.

Stopify 0.4.0

  • Added an optional error argument to the onDone callback of AsyncRun. When the argument is present, it indicates that the stopified program threw an exception with the given error.

Stopify 0.3.0

  • Cleanup and documented Stopify’s Node API.

  • Stopify can now execute blocking operations at the top-level. For example, the following program now works:

    function sleep(duration) {
      asyncRun.pauseImmediate(() => {
        window.setTimeout(() => asyncRun.continueImmediate(undefined), duration);
      });
    }
    
    const asyncRun = stopify.stopifyLocally(`sleep(1000)`,
      { externals: [ 'sleep' ] }));
    asyncRun.run(() => { });
    

    In previous versions of Stopify, this program would have raised an error.

    You could effective run this program by wrapping the blocking operation in a thunk, i.e., function() { sleep(1000); }(). However, this wrapping is now unnecessary.

  • Potentially breaking change: Top-level variables declared within Stopify no longer leak into the global scope of the page. In previous versions of Stopify, top-level variables would leak as follows:

    const asyncRun = stopify.stopifyLocally(`var x = 100;`);
    asyncRun.run(() => {
      console.log(x); // prints 100
    });
    

    This is no longer the case. However, this may break programs that relied on this behavior.

Stopify 0.2.1

  • Fixed a bug introduced in release 0.2.0, where stopifyLocally would fail if run more than once.

Stopify 0.2.0

  • Exposed the velocity estimator and set it as the default instead of reservoir. In our experiments, velocity performs better and has negligible overhead.
  • Added the .stackSize and .restoreFrames runtime options, which allow Stopify to simulate an arbitrarily deep stack.
  • Fixed a bug where programs that used return or throw in the default: case of a switch statement would not resume correctly.
  • Added the processEvent function to the Stopify API.

Stopify 0.1.0

  • Initial release