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gforth: gforth/NEWS


1 : anton 1.20
2 :    
3 : anton 1.23 User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-06-01):
4 : anton 1.20
5 :     Installation:
6 :     support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
7 :     report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"
8 :     Bug fixes
9 : anton 1.22 Now works with address-space randomization.
10 : anton 1.20 The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
11 : anton 1.22 Many others.
12 : anton 1.20 Ports:
13 :     AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
14 : anton 1.22 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 : anton 1.20 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 : anton 1.23 Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date):
25 : anton 1.20 added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
26 :     provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
27 :     Number prefixes:
28 :     0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
29 :     # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
30 :     ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted,
31 :     'a' now produces (decimal) 97
32 :     New words:
33 : anton 1.22 \C C-FUNCTION (C interface)
34 :     OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
35 :     16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
36 :     NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
37 :     NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
38 : anton 1.20 FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
39 : anton 1.22 Improvements/changes of existing words:
40 :     TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
41 :     The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
42 :     Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
43 :     Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
44 :     Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
45 :     on all platforms.
46 : anton 1.20 Newly documented words:
47 :     S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
48 :     EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
49 :     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12
50 :     S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12
51 :     CLEARSTACKS
52 : anton 1.22 FORM
53 : anton 1.20 Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
54 :     C interface:
55 :     exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
56 :     support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) and
57 :     a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
58 :     Libraries:
59 :     depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
60 : anton 1.22 ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
61 : anton 1.20 fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
62 :     regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
63 :     complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
64 :     fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
65 :     wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
66 :     httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
67 :     status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
68 :     profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
69 : anton 1.22 endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
70 : anton 1.20 compat library:
71 :     compat/execute-parsing.fs
72 :     Speed improvements:
73 :     static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
74 : anton 1.22 mixed-precision division is now faster
75 : anton 1.20 support for int128 types on AMD64
76 :     workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
77 :    
78 :    
79 : anton 1.18 User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
80 :    
81 : anton 1.19 Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
82 :     New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
83 :     Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
84 :     on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
85 :     one, but still not documented). To use it, the ffcall libraries
86 :     have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
87 :     Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
88 :     speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
89 :     from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
90 :     controlling the static superinstruction generation.
91 : anton 1.18
92 :    
93 : anton 1.16 User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
94 :    
95 :     Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
96 :    
97 :    
98 : anton 1.9 User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
99 :    
100 : anton 1.14 Changes in behaviour:
101 : anton 1.10
102 : anton 1.14 S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
103 :     Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
104 :     the header format).
105 :     New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
106 :     following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
107 :     with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
108 :     2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
109 : anton 1.16 backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
110 :     in the manual).
111 : anton 1.14
112 :     Operating environment:
113 :    
114 :     Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
115 : anton 1.10 Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
116 :     than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
117 : anton 1.15 Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
118 : anton 1.10 vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
119 : anton 1.14 gforth.el mostly rewritten.
120 :     New image file format.
121 : anton 1.10
122 : anton 1.14 New words:
123 : anton 1.10
124 : anton 1.14 Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
125 :     File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
126 :     Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
127 :     Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
128 : anton 1.17 Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
129 : anton 1.14 Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
130 :     String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
131 :     String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
132 :     Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
133 : anton 1.9
134 : anton 1.14 Miscellaneous:
135 : anton 1.9
136 :     Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
137 :     new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
138 :     stack and instruction stream).
139 : anton 1.10
140 : anton 1.9
141 : anton 1.8 User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
142 :    
143 :     Changes in behaviour:
144 :    
145 :     There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
146 :     as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
147 :     supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
148 :     access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
149 :     Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
150 :     you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
151 :     do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
152 :     Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
153 :     READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
154 :     output are in the OSs favourite format.
155 :     SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
156 :     disassembler is available).
157 :     >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
158 :     Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
159 :     parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
160 :    
161 :     Operating environment:
162 :    
163 :     Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
164 :     On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
165 :     precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
166 :     underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
167 :     Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
168 :     uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
169 :     You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
170 :     processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
171 :     through gforth -i).
172 :    
173 :     Ports:
174 :    
175 :     AIX.
176 :     20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
177 :     19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
178 :    
179 :     New words:
180 :    
181 :     Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
182 :     Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
183 :     Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
184 :     FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
185 :     Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
186 :     Nested number output: <<# #>>
187 :     Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
188 :     Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
189 :     Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
190 :    
191 :     Miscellaneous:
192 :    
193 :     Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
194 :     other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
195 :     Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
196 :     contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
197 :     Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
198 :     architectures are welcome.
199 :    
200 :    
201 : anton 1.6 User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
202 :    
203 :     Operating environment:
204 :    
205 :     Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
206 :     the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
207 :     directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
208 :     now has "." in front.
209 :     gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
210 :     command-line options).
211 :     New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
212 :     Errors are now directed to stderr.
213 :     Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
214 :     User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
215 :    
216 :     Ports:
217 :    
218 :     Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
219 :     Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
220 :     Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
221 :     It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
222 :     non-OS systems).
223 : pazsan 1.7
224 :     Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
225 :     small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
226 :     4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
227 : anton 1.6
228 :     New, changed, and removed words:
229 :    
230 :     Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
231 :     SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
232 :     Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
233 :     NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
234 :     Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
235 :     Added EXCEPTION.
236 :     S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
237 :     Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
238 :     changed names.
239 :    
240 :     Miscellaneous:
241 :    
242 :     Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
243 :     Documentation improvements.
244 :     Wordlist structure changed.
245 :     Added mini-oof.
246 :     Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
247 :     them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
248 :     systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
249 :     Bug fixes.
250 :     Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
251 : pazsan 1.7 Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
252 :     referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
253 :     (for PSC1000).
254 : anton 1.6 More files in the compat library.
255 :    
256 :    
257 :    
258 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
259 :    
260 :     Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
261 :     (allocation with mmap).
262 :     gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
263 :     fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
264 :     added primitives K and UNDER+.
265 :     Win32 support.
266 :     Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
267 :     some bug fixes.
268 :     added concept index; other documentation improvements.
269 :    
270 : anton 1.6
271 :    
272 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
273 : anton 1.4
274 :     Bug fixes
275 :    
276 : anton 1.6
277 :    
278 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
279 : anton 1.1
280 : anton 1.3 Portability and Installation:
281 :    
282 : anton 1.1 Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
283 : anton 1.3 Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
284 : anton 1.1 Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
285 :     saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
286 :     propagated by save-system.
287 : anton 1.3
288 :     Tools:
289 :    
290 :     Improved etags support.
291 :     more.fs allows output paging.
292 :     Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
293 :     Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
294 :     Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
295 :     Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
296 :    
297 :     New words:
298 :    
299 :     Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
300 :     Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
301 :     added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
302 :     Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
303 :     added POSTPONE,.
304 :     Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
305 :     semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
306 :     rewritten to use that mechanism.
307 :    
308 :     Changes to existing words:
309 :    
310 :     EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
311 : anton 1.1 HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
312 :     reveals into that wordlist.
313 : anton 1.3 changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
314 :     $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
315 : anton 1.1 ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
316 : anton 1.3
317 : anton 1.12 -----
318 : anton 1.21 Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
319 : anton 1.12
320 :     This file is part of Gforth.
321 :    
322 :     Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
323 :     modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
324 :     as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
325 :     of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
326 :    
327 :     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
328 :     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
329 :     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
330 :     GNU General Public License for more details.
331 :    
332 :     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
333 :     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
334 :     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
335 :    
336 : anton 1.6
337 :     % Local Variables:
338 :     % fill-prefix: " "

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