Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.20
1.20 ! anton 1:
! 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:
1.18 anton 64: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
65:
1.19 anton 66: 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.
1.18 anton 76:
77:
1.16 anton 78: 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:
1.9 anton 83: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
84:
1.14 anton 85: Changes in behaviour:
1.10 anton 86:
1.14 anton 87: 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
1.16 anton 94: backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
95: in the manual).
1.14 anton 96:
97: Operating environment:
98:
99: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10 anton 100: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
101: than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15 anton 102: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10 anton 103: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14 anton 104: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
105: New image file format.
1.10 anton 106:
1.14 anton 107: New words:
1.10 anton 108:
1.14 anton 109: 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]
1.17 anton 113: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
1.14 anton 114: 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
1.9 anton 118:
1.14 anton 119: Miscellaneous:
1.9 anton 120:
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).
1.10 anton 124:
1.9 anton 125:
1.8 anton 126: 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:
1.6 anton 186: 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).
1.7 pazsan 208:
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.
1.6 anton 212:
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.
1.7 pazsan 236: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
237: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
238: (for PSC1000).
1.6 anton 239: More files in the compat library.
240:
241:
242:
1.5 anton 243: 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:
1.6 anton 255:
256:
1.5 anton 257: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4 anton 258:
259: Bug fixes
260:
1.6 anton 261:
262:
1.5 anton 263: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1 anton 264:
1.3 anton 265: Portability and Installation:
266:
1.1 anton 267: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3 anton 268: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1 anton 269: 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.
1.3 anton 272:
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).
1.1 anton 296: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
297: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3 anton 298: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
299: $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1 anton 300: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3 anton 301:
1.12 anton 302: -----
1.13 anton 303: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12 anton 304:
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:
1.6 anton 321:
322: % Local Variables:
323: % fill-prefix: " "
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