Pact 4.7.0

4.7.0

This marks the 4.7.0 version of the Pact smart contract language.

Eval

• Improve advice implementation (#1187)
• Fix inconsistent trace output (#1153)
• Fix coverage, restore defun advice (#1151)
• Create persistence dirs if missing (#1148)
• Differentiate between errors on-chain and off-chain (#1185)
• Don't display function documentation in non-repl context (#1185)
• Runtime type checking on return types now enforced (#1209)

Natives

• Allow native function versioning in eval (#1195)
• Add new native dec for integer to decimal conversion (#1150)
• Implement shift in terms of other natives for better gas costing (#1208)
• Intialize body of env-data to an empty object instead of Null (#1188)

• read-* functions are now recoverable if the key doesn't exist. That is, a call such as (read-string 'key) is recoverable if 'key does not exist in the data payload by surrounding it with try. As an example, (try "string if key isn't present" (read-string "key")). This applies to
  read-integer, read-string, read-decimal, read-keyset and read-msg (as long as read-msg has a key supplied as an argument - #1223 )

Typechecking

• Fix Typechecker treatment of special binding forms (#1212)

Formal Verification

• Enable warnings during symbolic eval (#1175)
• Remove emit-event shim (#1168)
• Remove hash shims (#1158)
• Remove enumerate shim (#1155)
• Remove distinct shim (#1154)
• Remove describe-namespace shim (#1156)
• Remove is-principal, typeof-principal, create-principal, and validate-principal shims (#1160)
• Remove format shim (#1159)

Documentation

• Remove mention of private defpacts from the reference manual (#1207)
• Add documentation for enumerate (#1176)

Misc

• New PR and Issue templates introduced.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions, especially @CryptoPascal31 for his wonderful feedback and commentary, and welcome to our newest Pact team member, @ak3n!.