--- gforth/NEWS 1996/10/02 09:48:54 1.2 +++ gforth/NEWS 2007/12/31 18:40:23 1.27 @@ -1,24 +1,345 @@ -User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0 -Improved etags support. -more.fs allows output paging. -Changed popen and pclose to open-pipe and close-pipe. -Added form, rows, and cols. -Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features. -added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR; EMIT and TYPE now work -through file words (and are redirectable). + +User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-09-12): + +Installation: + support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT + report performance and functionality problems at end of "make" +Bug fixes + Now works with address-space randomization. + The single-step debugger works again in some engines. + Many others. +Ports: + AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance + PPC: disassembler and assembler (32-bit) + Gforth EC: R8C, Lego NXT (complete?) +Invocation: + New flags --ignore-async-signals, --vm-commit (default overcommit) +Forth 200x: + extension queries (produce true for all implemented extensions) + REQUIRED etc. (not new) + [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED] + PARSE-NAME (new name) + deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF) + X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc. + X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK K-F1...K-F12 +Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date): + added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters + provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars +Number prefixes: + 0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255 + # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10 + Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50. + ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, + 'a' now produces (decimal) 97 +New words: + \C C-FUNCTION (libcc C interface) + OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state) + 16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L + NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing) + NOTHROW (for backtrace control) + FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented) + SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code) +Improvements/changes of existing words: + S\", .\" now support \l, \m, \z, and limits hex and octal character specs. + OPEN-FILE with W/O no longer creates or truncates files (no compat. file) + TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs). + The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code + Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed + Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv") + Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division + on all platforms. +Newly documented words: + S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER? + EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR + K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE + CLEARSTACKS + FORM +Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends) +C interface: + exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code) + support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) (undocumented) and + a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete). +Libraries: + depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation + ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions + fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented) + regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented) + complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented) + fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented) + wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented) + httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented) + status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented) + profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete) + endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition + test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented) + test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T). + compat library: + compat/execute-parsing.fs +Speed improvements: + static stack caching (good speedup on PPC) + mixed-precision division is now faster + support for int128 types on AMD64 + workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242) + branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha). + + +User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2: + +Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3) +New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated) +Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built + on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old + one, but still not documented). To use it, the ffcall libraries + have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL). +Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some + speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart + from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for + controlling the static superinstruction generation. + + +User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1: + +Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work) + + +User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0: + +Changes in behaviour: + +S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE). +Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to + the header format). +New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the + following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability), + with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor + 2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential + backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?" + in the manual). + +Operating environment: + +Default dictionary size is now 4MB. +Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more + than 2GB on 32-bit machines). +Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations. +vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs). +gforth.el mostly rewritten. +New image file format. + +New words: + +Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE +File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID +Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE +Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED] +Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]] +Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE +String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX? +String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE +Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP + +Miscellaneous: + +Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the + new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return + stack and instruction stream). + + +User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0: + +Changes in behaviour: + +There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least + as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth) + supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory + access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2. +Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If + you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or + do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour. +Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead, + READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on + output are in the OSs favourite format. +SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no + disassembler is available). +>HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure. +Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by + parentheses, tabs are insignificant. + +Operating environment: + +Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception. +On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more + precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack + underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address"). +Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an + uncaught THROW) in batch processing. +You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that + processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of + through gforth -i). + +Ports: + +AIX. +20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu, +19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95. + +New words: + +Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR +Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME +Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY +FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL +Deferred words: [IS] +Nested number output: <<# #>> +Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY +Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH +Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER + +Miscellaneous: + +Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among + other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook. +Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to + contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian + Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other + architectures are welcome. + + +User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0: + +Operating environment: + +Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory + the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working + directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path + now has "." in front. +gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt + command-line options). +New command-line-option: --die-on-signal +Errors are now directed to stderr. +Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty. +User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible. + +Ports: + +Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d). +Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e). +Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda). +It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for + non-OS systems). + +Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and +small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's +4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR. + +New, changed, and removed words: + +Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases + SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0. +Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of + NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008) +Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble). +Added EXCEPTION. +S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string. +Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly + changed names. + +Miscellaneous: + +Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt. +Documentation improvements. +Wordlist structure changed. +Added mini-oof. +Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into + them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken + systems (but there are again some files that won't work there). +Bug fixes. +Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches. +Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward +referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation +(for PSC1000). +More files in the compat library. + + + +User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0: + +Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems + (allocation with mmap). +gforth.fi is now fully relocatable. +fully relocatable images are now easier to create. +added primitives K and UNDER+. +Win32 support. +Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments. +some bug fixes. +added concept index; other documentation improvements. + + + +User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1: + +Bug fixes + + + +User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0: + +Portability and Installation: + Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf). -Added tiny multitasker. +Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems. Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is propagated by save-system. -Added tables (case-sensitive wordlists) + +Tools: + +Improved etags support. +more.fs allows output paging. +Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features. +Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs). +Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs. +Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset). + +New words: + +Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE. +Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS. +added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR. +Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists). +added POSTPONE,. +Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation +semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally +rewritten to use that mechanism. + +Changes to existing words: + +EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable). HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL reveals into that wordlist. -changed bahviour of system (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in -$?) added (system) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ). -Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation -semantics; state-smart words were generally rewritten to use that -mechanism. +changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in +$?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ). ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words. -added POSTPONE,. \ No newline at end of file + +----- +Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006,2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. + +This file is part of Gforth. + +Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or +modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License +as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 +of the License, or (at your option) any later version. + +This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, +but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of +MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the +GNU General Public License for more details. + +You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License +along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. + + +% Local Variables: +% fill-prefix: " "