[gforth] / gforth / NEWS  

gforth: gforth/NEWS


1 : anton 1.18 User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
2 :    
3 :     bugfixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
4 :    
5 :    
6 : anton 1.16 User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
7 :    
8 :     Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
9 :    
10 :    
11 : anton 1.9 User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
12 :    
13 : anton 1.14 Changes in behaviour:
14 : anton 1.10
15 : anton 1.14 S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
16 :     Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
17 :     the header format).
18 :     New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
19 :     following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
20 :     with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
21 :     2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
22 : anton 1.16 backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
23 :     in the manual).
24 : anton 1.14
25 :     Operating environment:
26 :    
27 :     Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
28 : anton 1.10 Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
29 :     than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
30 : anton 1.15 Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
31 : anton 1.10 vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
32 : anton 1.14 gforth.el mostly rewritten.
33 :     New image file format.
34 : anton 1.10
35 : anton 1.14 New words:
36 : anton 1.10
37 : anton 1.14 Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
38 :     File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
39 :     Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
40 :     Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
41 : anton 1.17 Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
42 : anton 1.14 Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
43 :     String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
44 :     String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
45 :     Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
46 : anton 1.9
47 : anton 1.14 Miscellaneous:
48 : anton 1.9
49 :     Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
50 :     new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
51 :     stack and instruction stream).
52 : anton 1.10
53 : anton 1.9
54 : anton 1.8 User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
55 :    
56 :     Changes in behaviour:
57 :    
58 :     There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
59 :     as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
60 :     supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
61 :     access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
62 :     Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
63 :     you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
64 :     do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
65 :     Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
66 :     READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
67 :     output are in the OSs favourite format.
68 :     SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
69 :     disassembler is available).
70 :     >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
71 :     Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
72 :     parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
73 :    
74 :     Operating environment:
75 :    
76 :     Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
77 :     On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
78 :     precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
79 :     underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
80 :     Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
81 :     uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
82 :     You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
83 :     processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
84 :     through gforth -i).
85 :    
86 :     Ports:
87 :    
88 :     AIX.
89 :     20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
90 :     19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
91 :    
92 :     New words:
93 :    
94 :     Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
95 :     Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
96 :     Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
97 :     FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
98 :     Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
99 :     Nested number output: <<# #>>
100 :     Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
101 :     Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
102 :     Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
103 :    
104 :     Miscellaneous:
105 :    
106 :     Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
107 :     other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
108 :     Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
109 :     contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
110 :     Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
111 :     architectures are welcome.
112 :    
113 :    
114 : anton 1.6 User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
115 :    
116 :     Operating environment:
117 :    
118 :     Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
119 :     the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
120 :     directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
121 :     now has "." in front.
122 :     gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
123 :     command-line options).
124 :     New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
125 :     Errors are now directed to stderr.
126 :     Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
127 :     User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
128 :    
129 :     Ports:
130 :    
131 :     Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
132 :     Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
133 :     Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
134 :     It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
135 :     non-OS systems).
136 : pazsan 1.7
137 :     Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
138 :     small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
139 :     4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
140 : anton 1.6
141 :     New, changed, and removed words:
142 :    
143 :     Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
144 :     SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
145 :     Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
146 :     NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
147 :     Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
148 :     Added EXCEPTION.
149 :     S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
150 :     Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
151 :     changed names.
152 :    
153 :     Miscellaneous:
154 :    
155 :     Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
156 :     Documentation improvements.
157 :     Wordlist structure changed.
158 :     Added mini-oof.
159 :     Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
160 :     them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
161 :     systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
162 :     Bug fixes.
163 :     Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
164 : pazsan 1.7 Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
165 :     referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
166 :     (for PSC1000).
167 : anton 1.6 More files in the compat library.
168 :    
169 :    
170 :    
171 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
172 :    
173 :     Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
174 :     (allocation with mmap).
175 :     gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
176 :     fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
177 :     added primitives K and UNDER+.
178 :     Win32 support.
179 :     Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
180 :     some bug fixes.
181 :     added concept index; other documentation improvements.
182 :    
183 : anton 1.6
184 :    
185 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
186 : anton 1.4
187 :     Bug fixes
188 :    
189 : anton 1.6
190 :    
191 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
192 : anton 1.1
193 : anton 1.3 Portability and Installation:
194 :    
195 : anton 1.1 Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
196 : anton 1.3 Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
197 : anton 1.1 Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
198 :     saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
199 :     propagated by save-system.
200 : anton 1.3
201 :     Tools:
202 :    
203 :     Improved etags support.
204 :     more.fs allows output paging.
205 :     Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
206 :     Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
207 :     Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
208 :     Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
209 :    
210 :     New words:
211 :    
212 :     Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
213 :     Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
214 :     added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
215 :     Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
216 :     added POSTPONE,.
217 :     Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
218 :     semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
219 :     rewritten to use that mechanism.
220 :    
221 :     Changes to existing words:
222 :    
223 :     EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
224 : anton 1.1 HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
225 :     reveals into that wordlist.
226 : anton 1.3 changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
227 :     $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
228 : anton 1.1 ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
229 : anton 1.3
230 : anton 1.12 -----
231 : anton 1.13 Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
232 : anton 1.12
233 :     This file is part of Gforth.
234 :    
235 :     Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
236 :     modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
237 :     as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
238 :     of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
239 :    
240 :     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
241 :     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
242 :     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
243 :     GNU General Public License for more details.
244 :    
245 :     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
246 :     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
247 :     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
248 :    
249 : anton 1.6
250 :     % Local Variables:
251 :     % fill-prefix: " "

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