[gforth] / gforth / NEWS  

gforth: gforth/NEWS


1 : anton 1.20
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 : anton 1.18 User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
65 :    
66 : anton 1.19 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 : anton 1.18
77 :    
78 : anton 1.16 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 : anton 1.9 User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
84 :    
85 : anton 1.14 Changes in behaviour:
86 : anton 1.10
87 : anton 1.14 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 : anton 1.16 backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
95 :     in the manual).
96 : anton 1.14
97 :     Operating environment:
98 :    
99 :     Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
100 : anton 1.10 Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
101 :     than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
102 : anton 1.15 Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
103 : anton 1.10 vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
104 : anton 1.14 gforth.el mostly rewritten.
105 :     New image file format.
106 : anton 1.10
107 : anton 1.14 New words:
108 : anton 1.10
109 : anton 1.14 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 : anton 1.17 Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
114 : anton 1.14 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 : anton 1.9
119 : anton 1.14 Miscellaneous:
120 : anton 1.9
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 : anton 1.10
125 : anton 1.9
126 : anton 1.8 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 : anton 1.6 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 : pazsan 1.7
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 : anton 1.6
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 : pazsan 1.7 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 : anton 1.6 More files in the compat library.
240 :    
241 :    
242 :    
243 : anton 1.5 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 : anton 1.6
256 :    
257 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
258 : anton 1.4
259 :     Bug fixes
260 :    
261 : anton 1.6
262 :    
263 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
264 : anton 1.1
265 : anton 1.3 Portability and Installation:
266 :    
267 : anton 1.1 Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
268 : anton 1.3 Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
269 : anton 1.1 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 : anton 1.3
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 : anton 1.1 HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
297 :     reveals into that wordlist.
298 : anton 1.3 changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
299 :     $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
300 : anton 1.1 ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
301 : anton 1.3
302 : anton 1.12 -----
303 : anton 1.13 Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
304 : anton 1.12
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 : anton 1.6
322 :     % Local Variables:
323 :     % fill-prefix: " "

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