File:  [gforth] / gforth / NEWS
Revision 1.18: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Fri Aug 8 13:28:48 2003 UTC (20 years, 8 months ago) by anton
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD
minor fixes in testdist and testall
documentation changes

    1: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
    2: 
    3: bugfixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
    4: 
    5: 
    6: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
    7: 
    8: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
    9: 
   10: 
   11: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
   12: 
   13: Changes in behaviour:
   14: 
   15: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
   16: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
   17:   the header format).
   18: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
   19:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
   20:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
   21:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
   22:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
   23:   in the manual).
   24: 
   25: Operating environment:
   26: 
   27: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
   28: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
   29:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
   30: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
   31: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
   32: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
   33: New image file format.
   34: 
   35: New words:
   36: 
   37: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
   38: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
   39: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
   40: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
   41: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
   42: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
   43: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
   44: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
   45: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
   46: 
   47: Miscellaneous:
   48: 
   49: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
   50:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
   51:   stack and instruction stream).
   52: 
   53: 
   54: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
   55: 
   56: Changes in behaviour:
   57: 
   58: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
   59:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
   60:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
   61:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
   62: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
   63:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
   64:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
   65: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
   66:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
   67:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
   68: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
   69:   disassembler is available).
   70: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
   71: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
   72:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
   73: 
   74: Operating environment:
   75: 
   76: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
   77: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
   78:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
   79:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
   80: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
   81:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
   82: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
   83:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
   84:   through gforth -i).
   85: 
   86: Ports:
   87: 
   88: AIX.
   89: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
   90: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
   91: 
   92: New words:
   93: 
   94: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
   95: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
   96: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
   97: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
   98: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
   99: Nested number output: <<# #>>
  100: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
  101: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
  102: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
  103: 
  104: Miscellaneous:
  105: 
  106: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
  107:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
  108: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
  109:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
  110:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
  111:   architectures are welcome.
  112: 
  113: 
  114: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
  115: 
  116: Operating environment:
  117: 
  118: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
  119:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
  120:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
  121:   now has "." in front.
  122: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
  123:   command-line options).
  124: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
  125: Errors are now directed to stderr.
  126: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
  127: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
  128: 
  129: Ports:
  130: 
  131: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
  132: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
  133: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
  134: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
  135:   non-OS systems).
  136: 
  137: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
  138: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
  139: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
  140: 
  141: New, changed, and removed words:
  142: 
  143: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
  144:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
  145: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
  146:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
  147: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
  148: Added EXCEPTION.
  149: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
  150: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
  151:   changed names.
  152: 
  153: Miscellaneous:
  154: 
  155: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
  156: Documentation improvements.
  157: Wordlist structure changed.
  158: Added mini-oof.
  159: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
  160:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
  161:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
  162: Bug fixes.
  163: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
  164: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
  165: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
  166: (for PSC1000).
  167: More files in the compat library.
  168: 
  169: 
  170: 
  171: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
  172: 
  173: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
  174: 	(allocation with mmap).
  175: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
  176: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
  177: added primitives K and UNDER+.
  178: Win32 support.
  179: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
  180: some bug fixes.
  181: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
  182: 
  183: 
  184: 
  185: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  186: 
  187: Bug fixes
  188: 
  189: 
  190: 
  191: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  192: 
  193: Portability and Installation:
  194: 
  195: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  196: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  197: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
  198: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
  199: propagated by save-system.
  200: 
  201: Tools:
  202: 
  203: Improved etags support.
  204: more.fs allows output paging.
  205: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
  206: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
  207: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
  208: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
  209: 
  210: New words:
  211: 
  212: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
  213: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
  214: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
  215: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
  216: added POSTPONE,.
  217: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
  218: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
  219: rewritten to use that mechanism.
  220: 
  221: Changes to existing words:
  222: 
  223: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
  224: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  225: reveals into that wordlist.
  226: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  227: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  228: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  229: 
  230: -----
  231: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  232: 
  233: This file is part of Gforth.
  234: 
  235: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  236: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  237: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
  238: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  239: 
  240: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  241: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  242: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
  243: GNU General Public License for more details.
  244: 
  245: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  246: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  247: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
  248: 
  249: 
  250: % Local Variables:
  251: % fill-prefix: "  "

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