Return to NEWS CVS log

Up to [gforth] / gforth

Makefile: undid change requiring gforth-fast to build first
  other changes for packaging
  added POST_INSTALL etc. tags
Updated NEWS files to 2006-05-07
minor documentation changes

    1: 
    2: 
    3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2006-05-07):
    4: 
    5: Installation:
    6:   support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
    7:   report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"  
    8: Bug fixes
    9:   Among others: now works with address-space randomization.
   10:   The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
   11: Ports:
   12:   AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
   13:   Gforth EC: R8C port
   14: Forth 200x:
   15:   extension queries (produce true for all implemented extensions)
   16:   REQUIRED etc. (not new)
   17:   [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED]
   18:   PARSE-NAME (new name)
   19:   deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF)
   20: Unicode support (incomplete):
   21:   added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
   22:   provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
   23: Number prefixes:
   24:   0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
   25:   # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
   26:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
   27:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
   28: The disassembler (DISCODE, SEE <primitive>) can now use gdb to disassemble code
   29: Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
   30: New words:
   31:   16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SK@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
   32:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
   33:   NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
   34: Newly documented words:
   35:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
   36:   EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
   37:     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12
   38:     S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12
   39:   CLEARSTACKS
   40: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
   41: C interface:
   42:   exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
   43:   support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) and
   44:   a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
   45: Libraries:
   46:   depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
   47:   fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
   48:   regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
   49:   complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
   50:   fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
   51:   wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
   52:   httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
   53:   status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
   54:   profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
   55:  compat library:
   56:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
   57: Speed improvements:
   58:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
   59:   fast mixed-precision division words on i386 and AMD64
   60:   support for int128 types on AMD64
   61:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
   62: 
   63: 
   64: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
   65: 
   66: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
   67: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
   68: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
   69:   on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
   70:   one, but still not documented).  To use it, the ffcall libraries
   71:   have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
   72: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
   73:   speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
   74:   from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
   75:   controlling the static superinstruction generation.
   76: 
   77: 
   78: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
   79: 
   80: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
   81: 
   82: 
   83: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
   84: 
   85: Changes in behaviour:
   86: 
   87: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
   88: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
   89:   the header format).
   90: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
   91:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
   92:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
   93:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
   94:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
   95:   in the manual).
   96: 
   97: Operating environment:
   98: 
   99: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
  100: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
  101:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
  102: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
  103: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
  104: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
  105: New image file format.
  106: 
  107: New words:
  108: 
  109: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
  110: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
  111: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
  112: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
  113: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
  114: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
  115: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
  116: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
  117: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
  118: 
  119: Miscellaneous:
  120: 
  121: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
  122:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
  123:   stack and instruction stream).
  124: 
  125: 
  126: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
  127: 
  128: Changes in behaviour:
  129: 
  130: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
  131:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
  132:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
  133:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
  134: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
  135:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
  136:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
  137: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
  138:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
  139:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
  140: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
  141:   disassembler is available).
  142: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
  143: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
  144:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
  145: 
  146: Operating environment:
  147: 
  148: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
  149: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
  150:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
  151:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
  152: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
  153:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
  154: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
  155:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
  156:   through gforth -i).
  157: 
  158: Ports:
  159: 
  160: AIX.
  161: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
  162: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
  163: 
  164: New words:
  165: 
  166: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
  167: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
  168: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
  169: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
  170: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
  171: Nested number output: <<# #>>
  172: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
  173: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
  174: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
  175: 
  176: Miscellaneous:
  177: 
  178: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
  179:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
  180: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
  181:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
  182:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
  183:   architectures are welcome.
  184: 
  185: 
  186: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
  187: 
  188: Operating environment:
  189: 
  190: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
  191:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
  192:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
  193:   now has "." in front.
  194: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
  195:   command-line options).
  196: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
  197: Errors are now directed to stderr.
  198: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
  199: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
  200: 
  201: Ports:
  202: 
  203: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
  204: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
  205: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
  206: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
  207:   non-OS systems).
  208: 
  209: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
  210: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
  211: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
  212: 
  213: New, changed, and removed words:
  214: 
  215: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
  216:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
  217: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
  218:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
  219: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
  220: Added EXCEPTION.
  221: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
  222: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
  223:   changed names.
  224: 
  225: Miscellaneous:
  226: 
  227: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
  228: Documentation improvements.
  229: Wordlist structure changed.
  230: Added mini-oof.
  231: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
  232:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
  233:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
  234: Bug fixes.
  235: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
  236: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
  237: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
  238: (for PSC1000).
  239: More files in the compat library.
  240: 
  241: 
  242: 
  243: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
  244: 
  245: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
  246: 	(allocation with mmap).
  247: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
  248: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
  249: added primitives K and UNDER+.
  250: Win32 support.
  251: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
  252: some bug fixes.
  253: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
  254: 
  255: 
  256: 
  257: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  258: 
  259: Bug fixes
  260: 
  261: 
  262: 
  263: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  264: 
  265: Portability and Installation:
  266: 
  267: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  268: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  269: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
  270: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
  271: propagated by save-system.
  272: 
  273: Tools:
  274: 
  275: Improved etags support.
  276: more.fs allows output paging.
  277: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
  278: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
  279: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
  280: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
  281: 
  282: New words:
  283: 
  284: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
  285: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
  286: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
  287: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
  288: added POSTPONE,.
  289: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
  290: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
  291: rewritten to use that mechanism.
  292: 
  293: Changes to existing words:
  294: 
  295: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
  296: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  297: reveals into that wordlist.
  298: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  299: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  300: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  301: 
  302: -----
  303: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  304: 
  305: This file is part of Gforth.
  306: 
  307: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  308: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  309: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
  310: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  311: 
  312: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  313: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  314: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
  315: GNU General Public License for more details.
  316: 
  317: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  318: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  319: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
  320: 
  321: 
  322: % Local Variables:
  323: % fill-prefix: "  "