[release-1.10] 1.10 backports

[IanButterworth]

Backported PRs:

• [x] #3704
• [x] #3733
• [x] #3740 <!-- respect --color=no in Pkg.precompile -->
• [x] #3760
• [x] #3751
• [x] #3764

Manual backports:

• [x] #3734 (not the SparseArrays part)