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documentation changes
Updates in Makefile.in to reflect newer autoconf usage
Distribution and installation of libcc stuff
libcc header files are now found automatically
Disabled vmgen installation

    1: 
    2: 
    3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-06-01):
    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:   Now works with address-space randomization.
   10:   The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
   11:   Many others.
   12: Ports:
   13:   AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
   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)
   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)
   24: Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date):
   25:   added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
   26:   provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
   27: Number prefixes:
   28:   0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
   29:   # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
   30:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
   31:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
   32: New words:
   33:   \C C-FUNCTION (C interface)
   34:   OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
   35:   16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
   36:   NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
   37:   NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
   38:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
   39: Improvements/changes of existing words:
   40:   TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
   41:   The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
   42:   Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
   43:   Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
   44:   Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
   45:     on all platforms.
   46: Newly documented words:
   47:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
   48:   EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
   49:     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12
   50:     S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12
   51:   CLEARSTACKS
   52:   FORM
   53: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
   54: C interface:
   55:   exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
   56:   support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) and
   57:   a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
   58: Libraries:
   59:   depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
   60:   ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
   61:   fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
   62:   regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
   63:   complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
   64:   fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
   65:   wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
   66:   httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
   67:   status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
   68:   profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
   69:   endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
   70:  compat library:
   71:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
   72: Speed improvements:
   73:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
   74:   mixed-precision division is now faster
   75:   support for int128 types on AMD64
   76:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
   77: 
   78: 
   79: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
   80: 
   81: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
   82: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
   83: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
   84:   on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
   85:   one, but still not documented).  To use it, the ffcall libraries
   86:   have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
   87: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
   88:   speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
   89:   from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
   90:   controlling the static superinstruction generation.
   91: 
   92: 
   93: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
   94: 
   95: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
   96: 
   97: 
   98: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
   99: 
  100: Changes in behaviour:
  101: 
  102: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
  103: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
  104:   the header format).
  105: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
  106:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
  107:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
  108:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
  109:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
  110:   in the manual).
  111: 
  112: Operating environment:
  113: 
  114: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
  115: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
  116:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
  117: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
  118: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
  119: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
  120: New image file format.
  121: 
  122: New words:
  123: 
  124: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
  125: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
  126: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
  127: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
  128: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
  129: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
  130: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
  131: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
  132: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
  133: 
  134: Miscellaneous:
  135: 
  136: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
  137:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
  138:   stack and instruction stream).
  139: 
  140: 
  141: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
  142: 
  143: Changes in behaviour:
  144: 
  145: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
  146:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
  147:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
  148:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
  149: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
  150:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
  151:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
  152: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
  153:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
  154:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
  155: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
  156:   disassembler is available).
  157: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
  158: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
  159:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
  160: 
  161: Operating environment:
  162: 
  163: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
  164: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
  165:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
  166:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
  167: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
  168:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
  169: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
  170:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
  171:   through gforth -i).
  172: 
  173: Ports:
  174: 
  175: AIX.
  176: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
  177: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
  178: 
  179: New words:
  180: 
  181: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
  182: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
  183: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
  184: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
  185: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
  186: Nested number output: <<# #>>
  187: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
  188: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
  189: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
  190: 
  191: Miscellaneous:
  192: 
  193: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
  194:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
  195: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
  196:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
  197:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
  198:   architectures are welcome.
  199: 
  200: 
  201: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
  202: 
  203: Operating environment:
  204: 
  205: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
  206:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
  207:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
  208:   now has "." in front.
  209: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
  210:   command-line options).
  211: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
  212: Errors are now directed to stderr.
  213: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
  214: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
  215: 
  216: Ports:
  217: 
  218: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
  219: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
  220: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
  221: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
  222:   non-OS systems).
  223: 
  224: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
  225: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
  226: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
  227: 
  228: New, changed, and removed words:
  229: 
  230: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
  231:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
  232: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
  233:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
  234: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
  235: Added EXCEPTION.
  236: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
  237: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
  238:   changed names.
  239: 
  240: Miscellaneous:
  241: 
  242: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
  243: Documentation improvements.
  244: Wordlist structure changed.
  245: Added mini-oof.
  246: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
  247:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
  248:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
  249: Bug fixes.
  250: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
  251: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
  252: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
  253: (for PSC1000).
  254: More files in the compat library.
  255: 
  256: 
  257: 
  258: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
  259: 
  260: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
  261: 	(allocation with mmap).
  262: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
  263: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
  264: added primitives K and UNDER+.
  265: Win32 support.
  266: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
  267: some bug fixes.
  268: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
  269: 
  270: 
  271: 
  272: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  273: 
  274: Bug fixes
  275: 
  276: 
  277: 
  278: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  279: 
  280: Portability and Installation:
  281: 
  282: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  283: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  284: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
  285: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
  286: propagated by save-system.
  287: 
  288: Tools:
  289: 
  290: Improved etags support.
  291: more.fs allows output paging.
  292: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
  293: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
  294: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
  295: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
  296: 
  297: New words:
  298: 
  299: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
  300: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
  301: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
  302: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
  303: added POSTPONE,.
  304: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
  305: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
  306: rewritten to use that mechanism.
  307: 
  308: Changes to existing words:
  309: 
  310: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
  311: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  312: reveals into that wordlist.
  313: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  314: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  315: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  316: 
  317: -----
  318: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  319: 
  320: This file is part of Gforth.
  321: 
  322: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  323: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  324: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
  325: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  326: 
  327: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  328: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  329: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
  330: GNU General Public License for more details.
  331: 
  332: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  333: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  334: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
  335: 
  336: 
  337: % Local Variables:
  338: % fill-prefix: "  "