# -*- rdoc -*-

= NEWS for Ruby 2.6.0

This document is a list of user visible feature changes made between
releases except for bug fixes.

Note that each entry is kept so brief that no reason behind or
reference information is supplied with.  For a full list of changes
with all sufficient information, see the ChangeLog file or Redmine
(e.g. <tt>https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/$FEATURE_OR_BUG_NUMBER</tt>)

== Changes since the 2.5.0 release

=== Language changes

* $SAFE is a process global state and we can set 0 again. [Feature #14250]

* refinements take place at block passing.  [Feature #14223]

=== Core classes updates (outstanding ones only)

* Binding

  * New methods:

    * added Binding#source_location.  [Feature #14230]

      This method returns the source location of binding, a 2-element
      array of `__FILE__` and `__LINE__`.  Traditionally, the same
      information could be retrieved by `eval("[__FILE__, __LINE__]",
      binding)`, but we are planning to change this behavior so that
      `Kernel#eval` ignores binding's source location [Bug #4352].
      So, users should use this newly-introduced method instead of
      `Kernel#eval`.

* Dir

  * New methods:

    * added Dir#each_child and Dir#children instance methods. [Feature #13969]

* Kernel

  * Kernel.#system takes :exception option to raise an exception on
    failure. [Feature #14386]

* KeyError

  * KeyError#initialize accepts :receiver and :key options to set receiver and key in Ruby code. [Feature #14313]

* NameError

  * NameError#initialize accepts :receiver option to set receiver in Ruby code. [Feature #14313]

* NoMethodError

  * NoMethodError#initialize accepts :receiver option to set receiver in Ruby code. [Feature #14313]

* Proc

  * Proc#call doesn't change $SAFE any more. [Feature #14250]

* Random

  * New methods:

    * added Random.bytes. [Feature #4938]

=== Stdlib updates (outstanding ones only)

* ERB

  * 2nd, 3rd and 4th arguments of ERB.new are deprecated. 2nd argument (safe_level) will be dropped in the future
    and some of those arguments (trim_mode, eoutvar) are changed to keyword arguments. [Feature #14256]

* Matrix

  * New method:

    * Matrix#antisymmetric?

=== Compatibility issues (excluding feature bug fixes)

=== Stdlib compatibility issues (excluding feature bug fixes)

=== C API updates

=== Supported platform changes

=== Implementation improvements

* Speedup `Proc#call` because we don't need to care about `$SAFE` any more. [Feature #14318]
  With `lc_fizzbuzz` benchmark which uses so many `Proc#call` we can measure
  x1.4 improvements [Bug #10212].

* Speedup `block.call` where `block` is passed block parameter. [Feature #14330]
  Ruby 2.5 improves block passing performance. [Feature #14045]
  Additionally, Ruby 2.6 improves the performance of passed block calling.

* Introduce an initial implementation of JIT (Just-in-time) compiler. [Feature #14235] [experimental]
  * `--jit` option is added to enable JIT. `--jit-verbose=1` is good for inspection. See `ruby --help` for others.
  * This JIT relies on C compiler used to build Ruby, on runtime. Only gcc and clang are supported for the JIT
    for now, and MinGW support has some issues.
  * As of 2.6.0-preview1, we're just preparing infrastructure for JIT and very few optimizations are implemented.
    So it's not ready for benchmarking Ruby's JIT performance yet. It's known that current JIT enablement makes
    Rails application slower for now.

* VM generator script renewal; makes the generated VM more optimized. [GH-1779]

=== Miscellaneous changes
