1:
2:
3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-09-12):
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: Now works with address-space randomization.
10: The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
11: Many others.
12: Ports:
13: AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
14: PPC: disassembler and assembler (32-bit)
15: Gforth EC: R8C, Lego NXT (complete?)
16: Invocation:
17: New flags --ignore-async-signals, --vm-commit (default overcommit)
18: Forth 200x:
19: extension queries (produce true for all implemented extensions)
20: REQUIRED etc. (not new)
21: [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED]
22: PARSE-NAME (new name)
23: deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF)
24: X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
25: X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK
26: Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date):
27: added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
28: provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
29: Number prefixes:
30: 0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
31: # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
32: Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
33: ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted,
34: 'a' now produces (decimal) 97
35: New words:
36: \C C-FUNCTION (C interface)
37: OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
38: 16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
39: NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
40: NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
41: FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
42: SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
43: Improvements/changes of existing words:
44: S\" now supports \l, \m, \z, and limits hex and octal character specs.
45: OPEN-FILE with W/O no longer creates or truncates files (compat file missing)
46: TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
47: The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
48: Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
49: Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
50: Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
51: on all platforms.
52: Newly documented words:
53: S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
54: EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
55: K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12
56: S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12
57: CLEARSTACKS
58: FORM
59: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
60: C interface:
61: exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
62: support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) (undocumented) and
63: a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
64: Libraries:
65: depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
66: ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
67: fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
68: regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
69: complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
70: fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
71: wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
72: httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
73: status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
74: profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
75: endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
76: test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
77: test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
78: compat library:
79: compat/execute-parsing.fs
80: Speed improvements:
81: static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
82: mixed-precision division is now faster
83: support for int128 types on AMD64
84: workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
85: branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
86:
87:
88: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
89:
90: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
91: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
92: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
93: on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
94: one, but still not documented). To use it, the ffcall libraries
95: have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
96: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
97: speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
98: from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
99: controlling the static superinstruction generation.
100:
101:
102: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
103:
104: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
105:
106:
107: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
108:
109: Changes in behaviour:
110:
111: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
112: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
113: the header format).
114: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
115: following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
116: with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
117: 2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
118: backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
119: in the manual).
120:
121: Operating environment:
122:
123: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
124: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
125: than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
126: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
127: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
128: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
129: New image file format.
130:
131: New words:
132:
133: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
134: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
135: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
136: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
137: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
138: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
139: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
140: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
141: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
142:
143: Miscellaneous:
144:
145: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
146: new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
147: stack and instruction stream).
148:
149:
150: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
151:
152: Changes in behaviour:
153:
154: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
155: as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
156: supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
157: access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
158: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
159: you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
160: do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
161: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
162: READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
163: output are in the OSs favourite format.
164: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
165: disassembler is available).
166: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
167: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
168: parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
169:
170: Operating environment:
171:
172: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
173: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
174: precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
175: underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
176: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
177: uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
178: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
179: processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
180: through gforth -i).
181:
182: Ports:
183:
184: AIX.
185: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
186: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
187:
188: New words:
189:
190: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
191: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
192: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
193: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
194: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
195: Nested number output: <<# #>>
196: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
197: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
198: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
199:
200: Miscellaneous:
201:
202: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
203: other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
204: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
205: contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
206: Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
207: architectures are welcome.
208:
209:
210: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
211:
212: Operating environment:
213:
214: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
215: the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
216: directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
217: now has "." in front.
218: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
219: command-line options).
220: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
221: Errors are now directed to stderr.
222: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
223: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
224:
225: Ports:
226:
227: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
228: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
229: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
230: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
231: non-OS systems).
232:
233: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
234: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
235: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
236:
237: New, changed, and removed words:
238:
239: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
240: SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
241: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
242: NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
243: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
244: Added EXCEPTION.
245: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
246: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
247: changed names.
248:
249: Miscellaneous:
250:
251: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
252: Documentation improvements.
253: Wordlist structure changed.
254: Added mini-oof.
255: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
256: them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
257: systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
258: Bug fixes.
259: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
260: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
261: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
262: (for PSC1000).
263: More files in the compat library.
264:
265:
266:
267: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
268:
269: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
270: (allocation with mmap).
271: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
272: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
273: added primitives K and UNDER+.
274: Win32 support.
275: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
276: some bug fixes.
277: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
278:
279:
280:
281: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
282:
283: Bug fixes
284:
285:
286:
287: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
288:
289: Portability and Installation:
290:
291: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
292: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
293: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
294: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
295: propagated by save-system.
296:
297: Tools:
298:
299: Improved etags support.
300: more.fs allows output paging.
301: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
302: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
303: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
304: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
305:
306: New words:
307:
308: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
309: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
310: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
311: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
312: added POSTPONE,.
313: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
314: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
315: rewritten to use that mechanism.
316:
317: Changes to existing words:
318:
319: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
320: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
321: reveals into that wordlist.
322: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
323: $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
324: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
325:
326: -----
327: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
328:
329: This file is part of Gforth.
330:
331: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
332: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
333: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
334: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
335:
336: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
337: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
338: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
339: GNU General Public License for more details.
340:
341: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
342: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
343: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
344:
345:
346: % Local Variables:
347: % fill-prefix: " "
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