ANNOUNCE

   1 We are pleased to announce the release of Guile 1.8.0.  It can be
   2 found here:
   3
   4     ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-1.8.0.tar.gz
   5
   6 Its SHA1 checksum is
   7
   8     22462680feeda1e5400195c01dee666162503d66  guile-1.8.0.tar.gz
   9
  10 We already know about some issues with 1.8.0, please check the mailing
  11 lists:
  12
  13     http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/mail/mail.html
  14
  15 The NEWS file is quite long.  Here are the most interesting entries:
  16
  17   Changes since 1.6:
  18
  19   * Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
  20
  21   * The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
  22
  23   * We now use GNU MP for bignums.
  24
  25   * We now have exact rationals, such as 1/3.
  26
  27   * We now use native POSIX threads for real concurrent threads.
  28
  29   * There is a new way to initalize Guile that allows one to use Guile
  30     from threads that have not been created by Guile.
  31
  32   * Mutexes and condition variables are now always fair.  A recursive
  33     mutex must be requested explicitly.
  34
  35   * The low-level thread API has been removed.
  36
  37   * There is now support for copy-on-write substrings and
  38     mutation-sharing substrings.
  39
  40   * A new family of functions for converting between C values and
  41     Scheme values has been added that is future-proof and thread-safe.
  42
  43   * The INUM macros like SCM_MAKINUM have been deprecated.
  44
  45   * The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
  46     SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
  47
  48   * There is a new way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries in
  49     C code, which is nicer than scm_internal_dynamic_wind.
  50
  51   * There are new malloc-like functions that work better than
  52     scm_must_malloc, etc.
  53
  54   * There is a new way to access all kinds of vectors and arrays from
  55     C that is efficient and thread-safe.
  56
  57   * The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
  58     barriers and dynamic states.
  59
  60 See NEWS and the manual for more details.