--- gforth/NEWS 1998/11/27 21:30:22 1.7 +++ gforth/NEWS 2007/06/04 18:13:26 1.23 @@ -1,3 +1,203 @@ + + +User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-06-01): + +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) +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 + ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, + 'a' now produces (decimal) 97 +New words: + \C C-FUNCTION (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) +Improvements/changes of existing words: + 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 K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12 + S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12 + 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) 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 + 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) + + +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: @@ -114,6 +314,25 @@ changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer r $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ). ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words. +----- +Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 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 2 +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, write to the Free Software +Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA. + % Local Variables: % fill-prefix: " "