What's New

Platform

Migration to LLVM 10 compiler toolchain

As a result of this LLVM migration, virtual machine performance increased up to 10% across the board (with both the JIT and the interpreter)!

Asynchronous call-ins

It's now possible to bi-directionally communicate with other application threads both efficiently, and of course, safely too. This opens up new options for future features with a new class of technology bindings.

SELinux Support

Security Enhanced architecture now supported by VAST 32 and 64-bit (As of 10.0.1)

Core Libraries

Cross-Platform OsProcess framework

Enables object-oriented systems programming, pipelining, chaining, and new options for CPU concurrency.

OsProcess code example using Ruby, Dart, Python, and Smalltalk

Futures/Promises Asynchronous Framework

A true asynchronous program experience with futures/promises is now possible. Programming complex, task-centric behaviors has never been easier or more succinct. (A+ spec)

High-resolution Timer

Take advantage of a far more accurate timer that's using native OS capability, instead of the interrupt-driven default timer (Delay).

High resolution time code racing timers example

Secure RNG Stream

Maximize unpredictability. A cryptographically strong random number generator using native OS capability is now available that has higher entropy than EsRandom.

Swapper Performance Increase

The conversion of objects to serialized bytes in memory, to files on disk, or across a network has never been faster. In some cases, it's up to 10 times faster!

Enhanced Walkback Generator

Get more detailed information with a walkback that has been updated to help the debugging experience and make support requests to Instantiations even more efficient.

Communications

IBM MQ Series SSL/TLS Support and 64-bit Updates

Adding security and 64-bit support for the popular messaging and middleware standard.

Improved SMTP Handling

Send mail successfully across a larger variety of different server configurations.

Socket Fixes and Enhancements

Fundamental communication framework functionality continues to be improved and expanded.

Version Control

Git/Tonel Tooling

Augment ENVY version control and use public/private repositories for code management with Git-friendly integrated tooling. It's easy to use projects from our GitHub and the open source VAST Community Hub too.

GitHub support with Tonel, view of GitHub

Development Tools

Brace Array Syntax

Simplified and concise syntax for arrays is now available with full integration into other VAST tools, like code completion and type analysis.

Method Type Annotations

See improved code safety — along with our type inferencing, code completion, and refactoring tools — that will save you time and keep your code running correctly.

Look and Feel

Hi-DPI Fixes and Enhancements

More updates to ensure that widgets and fonts are crisp, clear, and scale beautifully on high pixel density screens in Windows.

Product Branding and Other Visual Updates

VAST has new branding and visuals to update the look-and-feel of the program icons and development environment.

Visual updates to branding of VAST shown

Documentation

Lightweight/mobile-friendly documentation

Our FAQ and documentation for VAST 2021 are using a new documentation generation tool with faster loading speeds and improved usage on smaller screens.

See what's coming in the next version of VAST

product roadmap