Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
-Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end for copying conditions.
Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
"coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
-the GC. See the manual for details. [XXX - write this.]
+the GC.
The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
in which case "null" threads are used.
+See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
+"Blocking", and others.
+
+** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
+
+This is a milder form of deprecation.
+
+Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
+OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
+used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
+features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
+implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
+
+You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
+the '--disable-discouraged' option.
+
+** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
+
+(debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
+'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
+
** New module (ice-9 serialize):
(serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when
C code primitive), enabling the computations to run in parallel
while the scripting code runs single-threadedly.
-** New module (srfi srfi-26)
+** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple valuesm has
+ been added.
+
+This SRFI is always available.
+
+** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
+
+The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
+available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
+extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
+"srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
+13 14)).
-This is an implementation of SRFI-26.
+** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
+
+The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
+provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
+parameters without currying.
** New module (srfi srfi-31)
This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
`rec' for recursive evaluation.
-** The modules (srfi srfi-13) and (srfi srfi-14) have been merged with
- the core, making their functionality always available.
+** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
+ been merged with the core, making their functionality always
+ available.
The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
with a renaming import, for example.
-** Guile now includes its own version of libltdl.
+** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
-We now use a modified version of libltdl that allows us to make
-improvements to it without having to rely on libtool releases.
+The official version is good enough now.
** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
provided. Use 'make html'.
+** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
+
+Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
+in Guile.
+
* Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
** New command line option `-L'.
* Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
+** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
+
+Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
+particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
+they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
+
+They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
+
+The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
+longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
+
+** New function hashx-remove!
+
+This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
+
+** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
+ barriers and dynamic states.
+
+Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
+fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
+second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
+manual.
+
+To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
+control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
+Barriers" in the manual.
+
+The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
+installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
+
+** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
+
+Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
+happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
+manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
+variable %load-path.
+
+** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
+
+It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
+array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
+
+Some non-compatible changes have been made:
+ - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
+ - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform vectors.
+ - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
+ - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
+
+There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
+procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
+strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
+
+Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
+have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
+and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
+bitvectors.
+
** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
substrings and read-only strings.
guile> #: foo
#:foo
+** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
+ controlled.
+
+The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
+are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
+default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
+option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
+
+ guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
+ guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
+ guile> foo
+ :foo
+ guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
+ guile> foo
+ #{:foo}#
+ guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
+ guile> foo
+ :foo
+
** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
-** Fair mutexes and condition variables
-
-Fair mutexes and condition variables have been added. The fairness
-means that scheduling is arranged to give as equal time shares as
-possible and that threads are awakened in a first-in-first-out
-manner. This is not guaranteed with standard mutexes and condition
-variables.
-
-In addition, fair mutexes are recursive. Locking a fair mutex that
-you have already locked will succeed. Every call to lock-mutex must
-be matched with a call to unlock-mutex. Only the last call to
-unlock-mutex will actually unlock the mutex.
-
-A fair condition variable must be used together with a fair mutex,
-just as a standard condition variable must be used together with a
-standard mutex.
-
-*** New functions: make-fair-mutex, make-fair-condition-variable'
-
-Make a new fair mutex and a new fair condition variable respectively.
-
** New function 'try-mutex'.
This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
+When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
+for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
+be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
+example.
+
** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
without the soft port blocking.
-** New debugging feature: breakpoints.
-
-Guile now has breakpoints. For details see the `Debugging Features'
-chapter in the reference manual.
-
** Deprecated: undefine
There is no replacement for undefine.
-* The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
- have been discouraged.
+** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
+ have been discouraged.
They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
+** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
+
+Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
+they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
+continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
+by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
+desires.
+
+The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
+code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
+be removed in the next major Guile release.
+
+** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
+
+`Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
+expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
+enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
+an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
+do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
+cdr is the modified expression or return value.
* Changes to the C interface
-** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
+** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
+ take a 'delete' function argument.
-This is a milder form of deprecation.
+This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
+remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
-Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
-OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
-used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
-features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
-implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
+This is an incompatible change.
-You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
-the '--disable-discouraged' option.
+** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
+
+The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
+actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
+--disable-deprecated.
+
+See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
Scheme values has been added.
C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
a SCM to an int.
- - SCM scm_from_<type>) (<type> val, ...)
+ - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
scm_from_int for ints.
the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
+** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
+ been added.
+
+See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
+
+** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
+ unceremoniously removed.
+
+This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
+Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
+Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
+
+The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
+SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
+SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
+SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
+SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
+SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
+SCM_BITVEC_CLR.
+
+** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
+
+Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
+scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
+SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
+manual for more details.
+
+Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
+SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
+
+The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
+SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
+SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
+
+** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
+
+Migrate according to the following table:
+
+ scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
+ scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
+ scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
+ scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
+ scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
+ scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
+ scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
+
+ SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
+ SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
+ SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
+ SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
+ SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
+ SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
+ SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
+
** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
Thus the call to scm_frame_unwind_handler above could be replaced with
simply scm_frame_free (mem).
-** New way to block and unblock asyncs
+** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
+ scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
+
+Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
+
+** New functions scm_frame_block_asyncs and scm_frame_unblock_asyncs
In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
scm_frame_block_asyncs in a 'frame' (see above). Likewise for
scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_frame_unblock_asyncs.
+** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
+ SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
+
+They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
+delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
+SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a frame that locks a mutex,
+blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the manual.
+
+** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
+
+Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
+possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
+scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
+
** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
C code can now use scm_frame_current_<foo>_port in a 'frame' (see
This is an incompatible change.
-** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
-
-Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
-possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
-scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
-
-** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
- scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
-
-Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
-
** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
-** New macros SCM_VECTOR_REF and SCM_VECTOR_SET.
-
-Use these in preference to SCM_VELTS.
-
-** The SCM_VELTS macros now returns a read-only vector. For writing,
-use the new macros SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS or SCM_VECTOR_SET. The use of
-SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS is discouraged, though.
-
** Garbage collector rewrite.
The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
+For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
+gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
+objects for every type.
+
+
** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
+** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
+ scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
+
+Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
+
+** The GC can no longer be blocked.
+
+The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
+The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
+blocking it is not well defined.
+
** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
+* Changes to bundled modules
+
+** (ice-9 debug)
+
+Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
+to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
+debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
+hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
+code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
+
\f
Changes since Guile 1.4:
HCoop / bpt / guile.git / blobdiff