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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