Version 3.8 is out! For this long-delayed release (the release date we had set was June 2016!), we spent a lot of time focusing on platform stability and consistency, so this version is light on new features and heavy on bugfixes. We expect a similar situation for 3.9, since we still didn’t attend to everything we wanted in time for release.

If you’re already using 3.7.x, an upgrade is strongly recommended – there’s only a handful of API changes in 3.8 and most of them are unlikely to affect users.

SuperCollider still has 486 open issues and counting, so we need all the help we can get!

Here’s a selection of notable changes in this release:

General

• Improved support for building sclang without Qt.
• scvim is back in active development.
• The -v command-line option displays the commit. #2243
• Improved support for building on Raspberry Pi and similar systems. #2065

scsynth and supernova

• A new command-line option for scsynth, -B, allows binding to a specific address. #2095
• VOsc supports an audio-rate phasein argument. #2140
• TGrains supports numChannels set to 1. #2136
• The order of audio ports can be manually set using the JACK metadata API. #1951
• Rare explosions in Gendy1, Gendy2, and Gendy3 have been fixed. #2331
• DemandEnvGen overshooting problems have been fixed. #2164
• PartConv no longer duplicates the first section of its impulse response. #2015

Language, class library, and help files

• New methods: TreeView:addChild, TreeView:insertChild, and TreeView:childAt. #2260
• New method: NodeProxy:trace, for debugging. #2020
• New methods: Function:plotAudio, Bus:plotAudio. #1846
• It is now easier to insert custom views, in particular subclasses of SCViewHolder, into layouts. #2188
• The main help file is now titled with “SuperCollider [version]” rather than “Help.” #1928
• A Float:asStringPrec crash has been fixed. #2168
• NetAddr.matchLangIP has been reimplemented to fix several bugs. #1972
• The second argument of String:replace now defaults to an empty string. #2433
• The “Writing UGens” documentation has been expanded. #1997
• Error handling has been improved in Server:record. #1580
• TChoose.ar now works correctly for audio-rate inputs. #1979
• A crash has been fixed when using a class name as a selector. #2166

IDE

• The middle mouse button now closes tabs. #2083
• A new menu entry, Language > Quarks, launches Quarks.gui. #1867

API changes

• The default number of audio bus has been increased from 128 to 1024. #2239
• TGrains, GrainBuf, GrainSin, GrainFM, and GrainIn now have unified panning behavior when numChannels is 2 and the pan exceeds the range [-1, 1]. #2136
• Several old methods have been deprecated from PathName: *fromOS9, foldersWithoutCVS, isCVS, foldersWithoutSVN, isSVN, filesDoNoCVS, filesDoNoSVN, streamTreeNoCVS. #1909
• The argument “startframe” has been renamed to “startFrame” and “aSoundFile” to “soundFile” in the following methods of SoundFileView: loadFile, setData, readFile, read, readFileWithTask, readWithTask. #1684