File:  [gforth] / gforth / NEWS
Revision 1.31: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Sun Nov 2 17:13:01 2008 UTC (15 years, 4 months ago) by anton
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD
added missing extension query answers
updated ChangeLog, NEWS

    1: 
    2: 
    3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2008-07-16):
    4: 
    5: Requirements:
    6:   At run-time requires libtool and gcc (for the libcc C interface) and
    7:                        gdb (for the disassembler (SEE)) on some platforms.
    8: Installation:
    9:   support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
   10:   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: Bug fixes
   16:   Now works with address-space randomization.
   17:   The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
   18:   Many others.
   19: Ports:
   20:   AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
   21:   PPC, PPC64: disassembler and assembler
   22:   Gforth EC: R8C, 4stack, misc, 8086 work
   23:   MacOS X: better support
   24: Invocation:
   25:   New flags --ignore-async-signals, --vm-commit (default overcommit)
   26:             --print-sequences
   27: Forth 200x:
   28:   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:   X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
   34:   X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK K-F1...K-F12
   35:   X:fp-stack (not new)
   36:   X:number-prefixes (partially new, see below)
   37: 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:   Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
   41:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
   42:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
   43: 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: New words:
   47:   \C C-FUNCTION C-LIBRARY END-C-LIBRARY C-LIBRARY-NAME (libcc C interface)
   48:   LIB-ERROR (complements OPEN-LIB)
   49:   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:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
   54:   SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
   55: Improvements/changes of existing words:
   56:   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:   OPEN-LIB now understands ~ at the start, like OPEN-FILE.
   59:   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: Newly documented words:
   66:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
   67:   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:   CLEARSTACKS
   70:   FORM
   71: 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:   libcc C function call interface (requires libtool and gcc at run-time)
   75:     alternative: undocumented libffi-based interface
   76: Libraries:
   77:   depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
   78:   ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
   79:   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:   endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
   88:   test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
   89:   test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
   90:  compat library:
   91:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
   92: Speed improvements:
   93:   automatic performance tuning on building
   94:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
   95:   mixed-precision division is now faster
   96:   support for int128 types on AMD64
   97:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
   98:   branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
   99: 
  100: 
  101: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
  102: 
  103: 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: 
  114: 
  115: 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: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
  121: 
  122: Changes in behaviour:
  123: 
  124: 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:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
  132:   in the manual).
  133: 
  134: Operating environment:
  135: 
  136: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
  137: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
  138:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
  139: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
  140: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
  141: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
  142: New image file format.
  143: 
  144: New words:
  145: 
  146: 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: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
  151: 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: 
  156: Miscellaneous:
  157: 
  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: 
  162: 
  163: 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: 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: 
  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: 
  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: 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: More files in the compat library.
  277: 
  278: 
  279: 
  280: 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: 
  293: 
  294: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  295: 
  296: Bug fixes
  297: 
  298: 
  299: 
  300: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  301: 
  302: Portability and Installation:
  303: 
  304: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  305: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  306: 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: 
  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: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  334: reveals into that wordlist.
  335: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  336: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  337: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  338: 
  339: -----
  340: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006,2007,2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  341: 
  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: as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3
  347: 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: along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
  356: 
  357: 
  358: % Local Variables:
  359: % fill-prefix: "  "

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