Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.25
1.20 anton 1:
2:
1.24 anton 3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-09-12):
1.20 anton 4:
5: Installation:
6: support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
7: report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"
8: Bug fixes
1.22 anton 9: Now works with address-space randomization.
1.20 anton 10: The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
1.22 anton 11: Many others.
1.20 anton 12: Ports:
13: AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
1.22 anton 14: 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)
1.20 anton 18: 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)
1.24 anton 24: X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
1.25 ! anton 25: X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK K-F1...K-F12
1.23 anton 26: Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date):
1.20 anton 27: added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
28: provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
29: Number prefixes:
30: 0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
31: # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
1.24 anton 32: Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
1.20 anton 33: ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted,
34: 'a' now produces (decimal) 97
35: New words:
1.25 ! anton 36: \C C-FUNCTION (libcc C interface)
1.22 anton 37: OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
38: 16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
39: NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
40: NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
1.20 anton 41: FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
1.24 anton 42: SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
1.22 anton 43: Improvements/changes of existing words:
1.25 ! anton 44: S\", .\" now support \l, \m, \z, and limits hex and octal character specs.
! 45: OPEN-FILE with W/O no longer creates or truncates files (no compat. file)
1.22 anton 46: TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
47: The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
48: Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
49: Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
50: Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
51: on all platforms.
1.20 anton 52: Newly documented words:
53: S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
1.25 ! anton 54: EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
! 55: K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE
1.20 anton 56: CLEARSTACKS
1.22 anton 57: FORM
1.20 anton 58: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
59: C interface:
60: exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
1.24 anton 61: support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) (undocumented) and
1.20 anton 62: a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
63: Libraries:
64: depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
1.22 anton 65: ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
1.20 anton 66: fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
67: regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
68: complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
69: fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
70: wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
71: httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
72: status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
73: profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
1.22 anton 74: endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
1.24 anton 75: test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
76: test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
1.20 anton 77: compat library:
78: compat/execute-parsing.fs
79: Speed improvements:
80: static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
1.22 anton 81: mixed-precision division is now faster
1.20 anton 82: support for int128 types on AMD64
83: workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
1.24 anton 84: branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
1.20 anton 85:
86:
1.18 anton 87: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
88:
1.19 anton 89: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
90: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
91: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
92: on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
93: one, but still not documented). To use it, the ffcall libraries
94: have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
95: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
96: speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
97: from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
98: controlling the static superinstruction generation.
1.18 anton 99:
100:
1.16 anton 101: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
102:
103: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
104:
105:
1.9 anton 106: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
107:
1.14 anton 108: Changes in behaviour:
1.10 anton 109:
1.14 anton 110: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
111: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
112: the header format).
113: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
114: following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
115: with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
116: 2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
1.16 anton 117: backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
118: in the manual).
1.14 anton 119:
120: Operating environment:
121:
122: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10 anton 123: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
124: than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15 anton 125: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10 anton 126: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14 anton 127: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
128: New image file format.
1.10 anton 129:
1.14 anton 130: New words:
1.10 anton 131:
1.14 anton 132: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
133: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
134: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
135: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
1.17 anton 136: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
1.14 anton 137: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
138: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
139: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
140: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
1.9 anton 141:
1.14 anton 142: Miscellaneous:
1.9 anton 143:
144: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
145: new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
146: stack and instruction stream).
1.10 anton 147:
1.9 anton 148:
1.8 anton 149: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
150:
151: Changes in behaviour:
152:
153: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
154: as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
155: supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
156: access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
157: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
158: you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
159: do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
160: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
161: READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
162: output are in the OSs favourite format.
163: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
164: disassembler is available).
165: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
166: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
167: parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
168:
169: Operating environment:
170:
171: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
172: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
173: precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
174: underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
175: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
176: uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
177: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
178: processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
179: through gforth -i).
180:
181: Ports:
182:
183: AIX.
184: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
185: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
186:
187: New words:
188:
189: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
190: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
191: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
192: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
193: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
194: Nested number output: <<# #>>
195: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
196: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
197: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
198:
199: Miscellaneous:
200:
201: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
202: other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
203: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
204: contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
205: Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
206: architectures are welcome.
207:
208:
1.6 anton 209: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
210:
211: Operating environment:
212:
213: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
214: the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
215: directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
216: now has "." in front.
217: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
218: command-line options).
219: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
220: Errors are now directed to stderr.
221: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
222: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
223:
224: Ports:
225:
226: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
227: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
228: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
229: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
230: non-OS systems).
1.7 pazsan 231:
232: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
233: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
234: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6 anton 235:
236: New, changed, and removed words:
237:
238: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
239: SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
240: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
241: NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
242: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
243: Added EXCEPTION.
244: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
245: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
246: changed names.
247:
248: Miscellaneous:
249:
250: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
251: Documentation improvements.
252: Wordlist structure changed.
253: Added mini-oof.
254: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
255: them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
256: systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
257: Bug fixes.
258: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7 pazsan 259: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
260: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
261: (for PSC1000).
1.6 anton 262: More files in the compat library.
263:
264:
265:
1.5 anton 266: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
267:
268: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
269: (allocation with mmap).
270: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
271: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
272: added primitives K and UNDER+.
273: Win32 support.
274: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
275: some bug fixes.
276: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
277:
1.6 anton 278:
279:
1.5 anton 280: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4 anton 281:
282: Bug fixes
283:
1.6 anton 284:
285:
1.5 anton 286: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1 anton 287:
1.3 anton 288: Portability and Installation:
289:
1.1 anton 290: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3 anton 291: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1 anton 292: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
293: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
294: propagated by save-system.
1.3 anton 295:
296: Tools:
297:
298: Improved etags support.
299: more.fs allows output paging.
300: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
301: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
302: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
303: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
304:
305: New words:
306:
307: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
308: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
309: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
310: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
311: added POSTPONE,.
312: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
313: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
314: rewritten to use that mechanism.
315:
316: Changes to existing words:
317:
318: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1 anton 319: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
320: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3 anton 321: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
322: $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1 anton 323: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3 anton 324:
1.12 anton 325: -----
1.21 anton 326: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12 anton 327:
328: This file is part of Gforth.
329:
330: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
331: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
332: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
333: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
334:
335: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
336: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
337: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
338: GNU General Public License for more details.
339:
340: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
341: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
342: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
343:
1.6 anton 344:
345: % Local Variables:
346: % fill-prefix: " "
FreeBSD-CVSweb <freebsd-cvsweb@FreeBSD.org>