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gforth: gforth/NEWS


1 : anton 1.20
2 :    
3 : anton 1.29 User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2008-07-16):
4 : anton 1.20
5 : anton 1.28 Requirements:
6 : anton 1.31 At run-time requires libtool and gcc (for the libcc C interface) and
7 :     gdb (for the disassembler (SEE)) on some platforms.
8 : anton 1.20 Installation:
9 :     support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
10 : anton 1.28 automatic performance tuning on building (--enable-force-reg unnecessary)
11 :     report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"
12 :     autogen.sh now exists
13 :     License:
14 :     Changed to GPLv3
15 : anton 1.20 Bug fixes
16 : anton 1.22 Now works with address-space randomization.
17 : anton 1.20 The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
18 : anton 1.22 Many others.
19 : anton 1.20 Ports:
20 :     AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
21 : anton 1.31 PPC, PPC64: disassembler and assembler
22 :     Gforth EC: R8C, 4stack, misc, 8086 work
23 : anton 1.28 MacOS X: better support
24 : anton 1.22 Invocation:
25 :     New flags --ignore-async-signals, --vm-commit (default overcommit)
26 : anton 1.28 --print-sequences
27 : anton 1.20 Forth 200x:
28 : anton 1.31 X:extension-query: produce true for all implemented extensions
29 :     X:required REQUIRED etc. (not new)
30 :     X:defined: [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED]
31 :     X:parse-name: PARSE-NAME (new name)
32 :     X:deferred: deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF)
33 : anton 1.24 X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
34 : anton 1.25 X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK K-F1...K-F12
35 : anton 1.31 X:fp-stack (not new)
36 :     X:number-prefixes (partially new, see below)
37 : anton 1.20 Number prefixes:
38 :     0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
39 :     # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
40 : anton 1.24 Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
41 : anton 1.20 ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted,
42 :     'a' now produces (decimal) 97
43 : anton 1.31 Unicode support (currently supports only uniform encoding):
44 :     added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
45 :     provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
46 : anton 1.20 New words:
47 : anton 1.28 \C C-FUNCTION C-LIBRARY END-C-LIBRARY C-LIBRARY-NAME (libcc C interface)
48 :     LIB-ERROR (complements OPEN-LIB)
49 : anton 1.22 OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
50 :     16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
51 :     NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
52 :     NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
53 : anton 1.20 FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
54 : anton 1.24 SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
55 : anton 1.22 Improvements/changes of existing words:
56 : anton 1.25 S\", .\" now support \l, \m, \z, and limits hex and octal character specs.
57 :     OPEN-FILE with W/O no longer creates or truncates files (no compat. file)
58 : anton 1.28 OPEN-LIB now understands ~ at the start, like OPEN-FILE.
59 : anton 1.22 TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
60 :     The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
61 :     Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
62 :     Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
63 :     Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
64 :     on all platforms.
65 : anton 1.20 Newly documented words:
66 :     S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
67 : anton 1.25 EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
68 :     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE
69 : anton 1.20 CLEARSTACKS
70 : anton 1.22 FORM
71 : anton 1.20 Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
72 :     C interface:
73 :     exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
74 : anton 1.28 libcc C function call interface (requires libtool and gcc at run-time)
75 :     alternative: undocumented libffi-based interface
76 : anton 1.20 Libraries:
77 :     depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
78 : anton 1.22 ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
79 : anton 1.20 fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
80 :     regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
81 :     complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
82 :     fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
83 :     wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
84 :     httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
85 :     status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
86 :     profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
87 : anton 1.22 endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
88 : anton 1.24 test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
89 :     test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
90 : anton 1.20 compat library:
91 :     compat/execute-parsing.fs
92 :     Speed improvements:
93 : anton 1.28 automatic performance tuning on building
94 : anton 1.20 static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
95 : anton 1.22 mixed-precision division is now faster
96 : anton 1.20 support for int128 types on AMD64
97 :     workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
98 : anton 1.24 branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
99 : anton 1.20
100 :    
101 : anton 1.18 User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
102 :    
103 : anton 1.19 Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
104 :     New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
105 :     Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
106 :     on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
107 :     one, but still not documented). To use it, the ffcall libraries
108 :     have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
109 :     Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
110 :     speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
111 :     from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
112 :     controlling the static superinstruction generation.
113 : anton 1.18
114 :    
115 : anton 1.16 User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
116 :    
117 :     Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
118 :    
119 :    
120 : anton 1.9 User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
121 :    
122 : anton 1.14 Changes in behaviour:
123 : anton 1.10
124 : anton 1.14 S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
125 :     Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
126 :     the header format).
127 :     New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
128 :     following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
129 :     with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
130 :     2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
131 : anton 1.16 backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
132 :     in the manual).
133 : anton 1.14
134 :     Operating environment:
135 :    
136 :     Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
137 : anton 1.10 Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
138 :     than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
139 : anton 1.15 Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
140 : anton 1.10 vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
141 : anton 1.14 gforth.el mostly rewritten.
142 :     New image file format.
143 : anton 1.10
144 : anton 1.14 New words:
145 : anton 1.10
146 : anton 1.14 Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
147 :     File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
148 :     Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
149 :     Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
150 : anton 1.17 Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
151 : anton 1.14 Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
152 :     String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
153 :     String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
154 :     Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
155 : anton 1.9
156 : anton 1.14 Miscellaneous:
157 : anton 1.9
158 :     Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
159 :     new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
160 :     stack and instruction stream).
161 : anton 1.10
162 : anton 1.9
163 : anton 1.8 User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
164 :    
165 :     Changes in behaviour:
166 :    
167 :     There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
168 :     as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
169 :     supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
170 :     access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
171 :     Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
172 :     you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
173 :     do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
174 :     Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
175 :     READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
176 :     output are in the OSs favourite format.
177 :     SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
178 :     disassembler is available).
179 :     >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
180 :     Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
181 :     parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
182 :    
183 :     Operating environment:
184 :    
185 :     Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
186 :     On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
187 :     precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
188 :     underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
189 :     Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
190 :     uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
191 :     You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
192 :     processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
193 :     through gforth -i).
194 :    
195 :     Ports:
196 :    
197 :     AIX.
198 :     20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
199 :     19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
200 :    
201 :     New words:
202 :    
203 :     Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
204 :     Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
205 :     Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
206 :     FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
207 :     Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
208 :     Nested number output: <<# #>>
209 :     Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
210 :     Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
211 :     Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
212 :    
213 :     Miscellaneous:
214 :    
215 :     Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
216 :     other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
217 :     Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
218 :     contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
219 :     Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
220 :     architectures are welcome.
221 :    
222 :    
223 : anton 1.6 User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
224 :    
225 :     Operating environment:
226 :    
227 :     Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
228 :     the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
229 :     directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
230 :     now has "." in front.
231 :     gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
232 :     command-line options).
233 :     New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
234 :     Errors are now directed to stderr.
235 :     Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
236 :     User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
237 :    
238 :     Ports:
239 :    
240 :     Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
241 :     Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
242 :     Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
243 :     It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
244 :     non-OS systems).
245 : pazsan 1.7
246 :     Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
247 :     small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
248 :     4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
249 : anton 1.6
250 :     New, changed, and removed words:
251 :    
252 :     Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
253 :     SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
254 :     Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
255 :     NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
256 :     Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
257 :     Added EXCEPTION.
258 :     S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
259 :     Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
260 :     changed names.
261 :    
262 :     Miscellaneous:
263 :    
264 :     Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
265 :     Documentation improvements.
266 :     Wordlist structure changed.
267 :     Added mini-oof.
268 :     Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
269 :     them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
270 :     systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
271 :     Bug fixes.
272 :     Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
273 : pazsan 1.7 Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
274 :     referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
275 :     (for PSC1000).
276 : anton 1.6 More files in the compat library.
277 :    
278 :    
279 :    
280 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
281 :    
282 :     Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
283 :     (allocation with mmap).
284 :     gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
285 :     fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
286 :     added primitives K and UNDER+.
287 :     Win32 support.
288 :     Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
289 :     some bug fixes.
290 :     added concept index; other documentation improvements.
291 :    
292 : anton 1.6
293 :    
294 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
295 : anton 1.4
296 :     Bug fixes
297 :    
298 : anton 1.6
299 :    
300 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
301 : anton 1.1
302 : anton 1.3 Portability and Installation:
303 :    
304 : anton 1.1 Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
305 : anton 1.3 Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
306 : anton 1.1 Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
307 :     saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
308 :     propagated by save-system.
309 : anton 1.3
310 :     Tools:
311 :    
312 :     Improved etags support.
313 :     more.fs allows output paging.
314 :     Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
315 :     Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
316 :     Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
317 :     Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
318 :    
319 :     New words:
320 :    
321 :     Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
322 :     Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
323 :     added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
324 :     Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
325 :     added POSTPONE,.
326 :     Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
327 :     semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
328 :     rewritten to use that mechanism.
329 :    
330 :     Changes to existing words:
331 :    
332 :     EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
333 : anton 1.1 HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
334 :     reveals into that wordlist.
335 : anton 1.3 changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
336 :     $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
337 : anton 1.1 ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
338 : anton 1.3
339 : anton 1.12 -----
340 : anton 1.30 Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006,2007,2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
341 : anton 1.12
342 :     This file is part of Gforth.
343 :    
344 :     Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
345 :     modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
346 : anton 1.27 as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3
347 : anton 1.12 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
348 :    
349 :     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
350 :     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
351 :     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
352 :     GNU General Public License for more details.
353 :    
354 :     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
355 : anton 1.27 along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
356 : anton 1.12
357 : anton 1.6
358 :     % Local Variables:
359 :     % fill-prefix: " "

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