[gforth] / gforth / NEWS  

gforth: gforth/NEWS


1 : anton 1.18 User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
2 :    
3 : anton 1.19 Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
4 :     New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
5 :     Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
6 :     on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
7 :     one, but still not documented). To use it, the ffcall libraries
8 :     have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
9 :     Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
10 :     speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
11 :     from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
12 :     controlling the static superinstruction generation.
13 : anton 1.18
14 :    
15 : anton 1.16 User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
16 :    
17 :     Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
18 :    
19 :    
20 : anton 1.9 User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
21 :    
22 : anton 1.14 Changes in behaviour:
23 : anton 1.10
24 : anton 1.14 S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
25 :     Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
26 :     the header format).
27 :     New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
28 :     following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
29 :     with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
30 :     2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
31 : anton 1.16 backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
32 :     in the manual).
33 : anton 1.14
34 :     Operating environment:
35 :    
36 :     Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
37 : anton 1.10 Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
38 :     than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
39 : anton 1.15 Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
40 : anton 1.10 vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
41 : anton 1.14 gforth.el mostly rewritten.
42 :     New image file format.
43 : anton 1.10
44 : anton 1.14 New words:
45 : anton 1.10
46 : anton 1.14 Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
47 :     File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
48 :     Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
49 :     Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
50 : anton 1.17 Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
51 : anton 1.14 Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
52 :     String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
53 :     String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
54 :     Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
55 : anton 1.9
56 : anton 1.14 Miscellaneous:
57 : anton 1.9
58 :     Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
59 :     new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
60 :     stack and instruction stream).
61 : anton 1.10
62 : anton 1.9
63 : anton 1.8 User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
64 :    
65 :     Changes in behaviour:
66 :    
67 :     There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
68 :     as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
69 :     supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
70 :     access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
71 :     Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
72 :     you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
73 :     do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
74 :     Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
75 :     READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
76 :     output are in the OSs favourite format.
77 :     SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
78 :     disassembler is available).
79 :     >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
80 :     Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
81 :     parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
82 :    
83 :     Operating environment:
84 :    
85 :     Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
86 :     On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
87 :     precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
88 :     underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
89 :     Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
90 :     uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
91 :     You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
92 :     processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
93 :     through gforth -i).
94 :    
95 :     Ports:
96 :    
97 :     AIX.
98 :     20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
99 :     19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
100 :    
101 :     New words:
102 :    
103 :     Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
104 :     Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
105 :     Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
106 :     FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
107 :     Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
108 :     Nested number output: <<# #>>
109 :     Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
110 :     Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
111 :     Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
112 :    
113 :     Miscellaneous:
114 :    
115 :     Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
116 :     other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
117 :     Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
118 :     contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
119 :     Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
120 :     architectures are welcome.
121 :    
122 :    
123 : anton 1.6 User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
124 :    
125 :     Operating environment:
126 :    
127 :     Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
128 :     the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
129 :     directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
130 :     now has "." in front.
131 :     gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
132 :     command-line options).
133 :     New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
134 :     Errors are now directed to stderr.
135 :     Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
136 :     User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
137 :    
138 :     Ports:
139 :    
140 :     Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
141 :     Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
142 :     Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
143 :     It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
144 :     non-OS systems).
145 : pazsan 1.7
146 :     Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
147 :     small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
148 :     4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
149 : anton 1.6
150 :     New, changed, and removed words:
151 :    
152 :     Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
153 :     SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
154 :     Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
155 :     NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
156 :     Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
157 :     Added EXCEPTION.
158 :     S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
159 :     Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
160 :     changed names.
161 :    
162 :     Miscellaneous:
163 :    
164 :     Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
165 :     Documentation improvements.
166 :     Wordlist structure changed.
167 :     Added mini-oof.
168 :     Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
169 :     them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
170 :     systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
171 :     Bug fixes.
172 :     Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
173 : pazsan 1.7 Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
174 :     referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
175 :     (for PSC1000).
176 : anton 1.6 More files in the compat library.
177 :    
178 :    
179 :    
180 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
181 :    
182 :     Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
183 :     (allocation with mmap).
184 :     gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
185 :     fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
186 :     added primitives K and UNDER+.
187 :     Win32 support.
188 :     Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
189 :     some bug fixes.
190 :     added concept index; other documentation improvements.
191 :    
192 : anton 1.6
193 :    
194 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
195 : anton 1.4
196 :     Bug fixes
197 :    
198 : anton 1.6
199 :    
200 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
201 : anton 1.1
202 : anton 1.3 Portability and Installation:
203 :    
204 : anton 1.1 Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
205 : anton 1.3 Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
206 : anton 1.1 Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
207 :     saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
208 :     propagated by save-system.
209 : anton 1.3
210 :     Tools:
211 :    
212 :     Improved etags support.
213 :     more.fs allows output paging.
214 :     Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
215 :     Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
216 :     Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
217 :     Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
218 :    
219 :     New words:
220 :    
221 :     Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
222 :     Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
223 :     added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
224 :     Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
225 :     added POSTPONE,.
226 :     Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
227 :     semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
228 :     rewritten to use that mechanism.
229 :    
230 :     Changes to existing words:
231 :    
232 :     EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
233 : anton 1.1 HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
234 :     reveals into that wordlist.
235 : anton 1.3 changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
236 :     $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
237 : anton 1.1 ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
238 : anton 1.3
239 : anton 1.12 -----
240 : anton 1.13 Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
241 : anton 1.12
242 :     This file is part of Gforth.
243 :    
244 :     Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
245 :     modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
246 :     as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
247 :     of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
248 :    
249 :     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
250 :     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
251 :     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
252 :     GNU General Public License for more details.
253 :    
254 :     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
255 :     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
256 :     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
257 :    
258 : anton 1.6
259 :     % Local Variables:
260 :     % fill-prefix: " "

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