File:  [gforth] / gforth / NEWS
Revision 1.27: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Mon Dec 31 18:40:23 2007 UTC (16 years, 2 months ago) by anton
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD
updated copyright notices for GPL v3

    1: 
    2: 
    3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-09-12):
    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:   X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
   25:   X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK K-F1...K-F12
   26: Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date):
   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
   32:   Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
   33:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
   34:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
   35: New words:
   36:   \C C-FUNCTION (libcc C interface)
   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)
   41:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
   42:   SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
   43: Improvements/changes of existing words:
   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)
   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.
   52: Newly documented words:
   53:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
   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
   56:   CLEARSTACKS
   57:   FORM
   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)
   61:   support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) (undocumented) and
   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
   65:   ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
   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)
   74:   endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
   75:   test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
   76:   test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
   77:  compat library:
   78:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
   79: Speed improvements:
   80:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
   81:   mixed-precision division is now faster
   82:   support for int128 types on AMD64
   83:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
   84:   branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
   85: 
   86: 
   87: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
   88: 
   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.
   99: 
  100: 
  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: 
  106: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
  107: 
  108: Changes in behaviour:
  109: 
  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
  117:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
  118:   in the manual).
  119: 
  120: Operating environment:
  121: 
  122: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
  123: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
  124:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
  125: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
  126: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
  127: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
  128: New image file format.
  129: 
  130: New words:
  131: 
  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]
  136: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
  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
  141: 
  142: Miscellaneous:
  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).
  147: 
  148: 
  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: 
  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).
  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.
  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.
  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).
  262: More files in the compat library.
  263: 
  264: 
  265: 
  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: 
  278: 
  279: 
  280: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  281: 
  282: Bug fixes
  283: 
  284: 
  285: 
  286: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  287: 
  288: Portability and Installation:
  289: 
  290: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  291: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  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.
  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).
  319: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  320: reveals into that wordlist.
  321: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  322: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  323: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  324: 
  325: -----
  326: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006,2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  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 3
  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, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
  342: 
  343: 
  344: % Local Variables:
  345: % fill-prefix: "  "

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