(During the 1.9 series, we will keep an incremental NEWS for the latest
prerelease, and a full NEWS corresponding to 1.8 -> 2.0.)
-Changes in 1.9.2 (since the 1.9.1 prerelease):
+Changes in 1.9.5 (since the 1.9.4 prerelease):
-** VM speed improvements
+** Compiled procedures may now have more than one arity.
-Closures now copy the free variables that they need into a flat vector
-instead of capturing all heap-allocated variables. This speeds up access
-to free variables, avoids unnecessary garbage retention, and allows all
-variables to be allocated on the stack.
+This can be the case, for example, in case-lambda procedures. The
+arities of compiled procedures may be accessed via procedures from the
+`(system vm program)' module; see "Compiled Procedures", "Optional
+Arguments", and "Case-lambda" in the manual.
-Variables which are `set!' are now allocated on the stack, but in
-"boxes". This allows a more uniform local variable allocation
-discipline, and allows faster access to these variables.
+** `case-lambda' is now available in the default environment.
-The VM has new special-case operations, `add1' and `sub1'.
+The binding in the default environment is equivalent to the one from the
+`(srfi srfi-16)' module. Use the srfi-16 module explicitly if you wish
+to maintain compatibility with Guile 1.8 and earlier.
-** VM robustness improvements
+** VM calling convention change: callee-parsed arguments
-The maximum number of live local variables has been increased from 256
-to 65535.
+As an internal implementation detail, compiled procedures are now
+responsible for parsing their own arguments, which they receive on the
+stack.
-The default VM stack size is 64 kilo-words, up from 16 kilo-words. This
-allows more programs to execute in the default stack space. In the
-future we will probably implement extensible stacks via overflow
-handlers.
+** VM support for multiple-arity dispatch
-Some lingering cases in which the VM could perform unaligned accesses
-have been fixed.
+Calls to procedures with multiple arities, for example those made be
+`case-lambda', now dispatch via special opcodes, without the need to
+cons a rest list.
-The address range for relative jumps has been expanded from 16-bit
-addresses to 19-bit addresses via 8-byte alignment of jump targets. This
-will probably change to a 24-bit byte-addressable strategy before Guile
-2.0.
+** Intermediate language support for multiple-arity procedures.
-** Compiler optimizations
+In the intermediate language, tree-il, all procedures may have one or
+more arities. This allows all Guile languages to have multiple arities.
+It is, however, an incompatible change, and anyone maintaining a
+compiler out-of-tree would be advised to get it into Guile soon :)
-Procedures bound by `letrec' are no longer allocated on the heap,
-subject to a few constraints. In many cases, procedures bound by
-`letrec' and `let' can be rendered inline to their parent function, with
-loop detection for mutually tail-recursive procedures.
+** `lambda*' and `define*' are now available in the default environment
-Unreferenced variables are now optimized away.
+As with `case-lambda', `(ice-9 optargs)' continues to be supported, for
+compatibility purposes. No semantic change has been made (we hope).
+Optional and keyword arguments now dispatch via special VM operations,
+without the need to cons rest arguments, making them very fast.
-** Compiler robustness
+** Better support for Lisp `nil'.
-Guile may now warn about unused lexically-bound variables. Pass
-`-Wunused-variable' to `guile-tools compile', or `#:warnings
-(unused-variable)' within the #:opts argument to the `compile' procedure
-from `(system base compile)'.
+The bit representation of `nil' has been tweaked so that it is now very
+efficient to check e.g. if a value is equal to Scheme's end-of-list or
+Lisp's nil. Additionally there are a heap of new, specific predicates
+like scm_is_null_or_nil. Probably in the future we will #define
+scm_is_null to scm_is_null_or_nil.
-** Incomplete support for Unicode characters and strings
+** No future.
-Preliminary support for Unicode has landed. Characters may be entered in
-octal format via e.g. `#\454', or created via (integer->char 300). A hex
-external representation will probably be introduced at some point.
+Actually the future is still in the state that it was, is, and ever
+shall be, Amen, except that `futures.c' and `futures.h' are no longer a
+part of it. These files were experimental, never compiled, and would be
+better implemented in Scheme anyway. In the future, that is.
-Internally, strings are now represented either in the `latin-1'
-encoding, one byte per character, or in UTF-32, with four bytes per
-character. Strings manage their own allocation, switching if needed.
+** Support for static allocation of strings, symbols, and subrs.
-Currently no locale conversion is performed. Extended characters may be
-written in a string using the hexadecimal escapes `\xXX', `\uXXXX', or
-`\UXXXXXX', for 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit codepoints, respectively.
+Calls to snarfing CPP macros like SCM_DEFINE macro will now allocate
+much of their associated data as static variables, reducing Guile's
+memory footprint.
-This support is obviously incomplete. Many C functions have not yet been
-updated to deal with the new representations. Users are advised to wait
-for the next release for more serious use of Unicode strings.
+** Inline vector allocation
-** `defined?' may accept a module as its second argument
+Instead of having vectors point out into the heap for their data, their
+data is now allocated inline to the vector object itself. The same is
+true for bytevectors, by default, though there is an indirection
+available which should allow for making a bytevector from an existing
+memory region.
-Previously it only accepted internal structures from the evaluator.
+** New syntax: include-from-path.
-** `let-values' is now implemented with a hygienic macro
+`include-from-path' is like `include', except it looks for its file in
+the load path. It can be used to compile other files into a file.
-This could have implications discussed below in the NEWS entry titled,
-"Lexical bindings introduced by hygienic macros may not be referenced by
-nonhygienic macros".
+** New syntax: quasisyntax.
-** Global variables `scm_charnames' and `scm_charnums' are removed
+`quasisyntax' is to `syntax' as `quasiquote' is to `quote'. See the R6RS
+documentation for more information. Thanks to Andre van Tonder for the
+implementation.
-These variables contained the names of control characters and were
-used when writing characters. While these were global, they were
-never intended to be public API. They have been replaced with private
-functions.
+** Cleanups to Guile's primitive object system.
-** EBCDIC support is removed
+There were a number of pieces in `objects.[ch]' that tried to be a
+minimal object system, but were never documented, and were quickly
+obseleted by GOOPS' merge into Guile proper. So `scm_make_class_object',
+`scm_make_subclass_object', `scm_metaclass_standard', and like symbols
+from objects.h are no more. In the very unlikely case in which these
+were useful to you, we urge you to contact guile-devel.
-There was an EBCDIC compile flag that altered some of the character
-processing. It appeared that full EBCDIC support was never completed
-and was unmaintained.
+** GOOPS cleanups.
+
+GOOPS had a number of concepts that were relevant to the days of Tcl,
+but not any more: operators and entities, mainly. These objects were
+never documented, and it is unlikely that they were ever used. Operators
+were a kind of generic specific to the Tcl support. Entities were
+applicable structures, but were unusable; entities will come back in the
+next alpha release, but with a less stupid name.
-** Packaging changes
+** Faster bit operations.
-Guile now provides `guile-2.0.pc' (used by pkg-config) instead of
-`guile-1.8.pc'.
+The bit-twiddling operations `ash', `logand', `logior', and `logxor' now
+have dedicated bytecodes. Guile is not just for symbolic computation,
+it's for number crunching too.
+
+** `inet-ntop' and `inet-pton' are always available.
+
+Guile now use a portable implementation of `inet_pton'/`inet_ntop', so
+there is no more need to use `inet-aton'/`inet-ntoa'. The latter
+functions are deprecated.
+
+** R6RS block comment support
+
+Guile now supports R6RS nested block comments. The start of a comment is
+marked with `#|', and the end with `|#'.
+
+** `guile-2' cond-expand feature
+
+To test if your code is running under Guile 2.0 (or its alpha releases),
+test for the `guile-2' cond-expand feature. Like this:
+
+ (cond-expand (guile-2 (eval-when (compile)
+ ;; This must be evaluated at compile time.
+ (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
+ (guile
+ ;; Earlier versions of Guile do not have a
+ ;; separate compilation phase.
+ (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
+
+** ABI harmonization
+
+`scm_search_path' now has the signature it did in 1.8, reverting an
+incompatible change made in 1.9.0.
+
+** Compile-time warnings: -Warity-mismatch
+
+Guile can warn when you pass the wrong number of arguments to a
+procedure. Pass the -Warity-mismatch on the `guile-tools compile'
+command line, or add `#:warnings '(arity-mismatch)' to your `compile'
+or `compile-file' invocation.
+
+** Guile is now built without `-Werror' by default
+
+Use the `--enable-error-on-warning' configure option to enable it.
** And of course, the usual collection of bugfixes
Interested users should see the ChangeLog for more information.
+\f
Changes in 1.9.x (since the 1.8.x series):
* New modules (see the manual for details)
Pass the `--help' command-line option to these commands for more
information.
+** Guile now adds its install prefix to the LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH
+
+Users may now install Guile to nonstandard prefixes and just run
+`/path/to/bin/guile', instead of also having to set LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH to
+include `/path/to/lib'.
+
+** Guile's Emacs integration is now more keyboard-friendly
+
+Backtraces may now be disclosed with the keyboard in addition to the
+mouse.
+
* Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
** Procedure removed: `the-environment'
not compiled. This bug will be fixed before 2.0. FIXME 2.0: Should say
something here about module-transformer called for compile.
+** Files loaded with `load' will now be compiled automatically.
+
+As with files loaded via `primitive-load-path', `load' will also compile
+its target if autocompilation is enabled, and a fresh compiled file is
+not found.
+
+There are two points of difference to note, however. First, `load' does
+not search `GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH' for the file; it only looks in the
+autocompilation directory, normally a subdirectory of ~/.cache/guile.
+
+Secondly, autocompilation also applies to files loaded via the -l
+command-line argument -- so the user may experience a slight slowdown
+the first time they run a Guile script, as the script is autocompiled.
+
** New POSIX procedures: `getrlimit' and `setrlimit'
Note however that the interface of these functions is likely to change
to guile-devel@gnu.org (subscription required) or bug-guile@gnu.org (no
subscription required).
+** `case-lambda' is now available in the default environment.
+
+The binding in the default environment is equivalent to the one from the
+`(srfi srfi-16)' module. Use the srfi-16 module explicitly if you wish
+to maintain compatibility with Guile 1.8 and earlier.
+
+** `lambda*' and `define*' are now available in the default environment
+
+As with `case-lambda', `(ice-9 optargs)' continues to be supported, for
+compatibility purposes. No semantic change has been made (we hope).
+Optional and keyword arguments now dispatch via special VM operations,
+without the need to cons rest arguments, making them very fast.
+
+** New syntax: include-from-path.
+
+`include-from-path' is like `include', except it looks for its file in
+the load path. It can be used to compile other files into a file.
+
+** New syntax: quasisyntax.
+
+`quasisyntax' is to `syntax' as `quasiquote' is to `quote'. See the R6RS
+documentation for more information. Thanks to Andre van Tonder for the
+implementation.
+
+** Unicode characters
+
+Unicode characters may be entered in octal format via e.g. `#\454', or
+created via (integer->char 300). A hex external representation will
+probably be introduced at some point.
+
+** Unicode strings
+
+Internally, strings are now represented either in the `latin-1'
+encoding, one byte per character, or in UTF-32, with four bytes per
+character. Strings manage their own allocation, switching if needed.
+
+Extended characters may be written in a literal string using the
+hexadecimal escapes `\xXX', `\uXXXX', or `\UXXXXXX', for 8-bit, 16-bit,
+or 24-bit codepoints, respectively, or entered directly in the native
+encoding of the port on which the string is read.
+
+** Unicode symbols
+
+One may now use U+03BB (GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMBDA) as an identifier.
+
+** Support for non-ASCII source code files
+
+The default reader now handles source code files for some of the
+non-ASCII character encodings, such as UTF-8. A non-ASCII source file
+should have an encoding declaration near the top of the file. Also,
+there is a new function, `file-encoding', that scans a port for a coding
+declaration. See the section of the manual entitled, "Character Encoding
+of Source Files".
+
+The pre-1.9.3 reader handled 8-bit clean but otherwise unspecified source
+code. This use is now discouraged.
+
+** Support for locale transcoding when reading from and writing to ports
+
+Ports now have an associated character encoding, and port read and write
+operations do conversion to and from locales automatically. Ports also
+have an associated strategy for how to deal with locale conversion
+failures.
+
+See the documentation in the manual for the four new support functions,
+`set-port-encoding!', `port-encoding', `set-port-conversion-strategy!',
+and `port-conversion-strategy'.
+
+** String and SRFI-13 functions can operate on Unicode strings
+
+** Unicode support for SRFI-14 character sets
+
+The default character sets are no longer locale dependent and contain
+characters from the whole Unicode range. There is a new predefined
+character set, `char-set:designated', which contains all assigned
+Unicode characters. There is a new debugging function, `%char-set-dump'.
+
+** Character functions operate on Unicode characters
+
+`char-upcase' and `char-downcase' use default Unicode casing rules.
+Character comparisons such as `char<?' and `char-ci<?' now sort based on
+Unicode code points.
+
+** Global variables `scm_charnames' and `scm_charnums' are removed
+
+These variables contained the names of control characters and were
+used when writing characters. While these were global, they were
+never intended to be public API. They have been replaced with private
+functions.
+
+** EBCDIC support is removed
+
+There was an EBCDIC compile flag that altered some of the character
+processing. It appeared that full EBCDIC support was never completed
+and was unmaintained.
+
+** Compile-time warnings: -Wunbound-variable, -Warity-mismatch.
+
+Guile can warn about potentially unbound free variables. Pass the
+-Wunbound-variable on the `guile-tools compile' command line, or add
+`#:warnings '(unbound-variable)' to your `compile' or `compile-file'
+invocation.
+
+Guile can also warn when you pass the wrong number of arguments to a
+procedure, with -Warity-mismatch, or `arity-mismatch' in the
+`#:warnings' as above.
+
** New macro type: syncase-macro
XXX Need to decide whether to document this for 2.0, probably should:
See `cancel-thread', `set-thread-cleanup!', and `thread-cleanup'.
+** GOOPS cleanups.
+
+GOOPS had a number of concepts that were relevant to the days of Tcl,
+but not any more: operators and entities, mainly. These objects were
+never documented, and it is unlikely that they were ever used. Operators
+were a kind of generic specific to the Tcl support. Entities were
+applicable structures, but were unusable; entities will come back in the
+next alpha release, but with a less stupid name.
+
+** `inet-ntop' and `inet-pton' are always available.
+
+Guile now use a portable implementation of `inet_pton'/`inet_ntop', so
+there is no more need to use `inet-aton'/`inet-ntoa'. The latter
+functions are deprecated.
+
+** R6RS block comment support
+
+Guile now supports R6RS nested block comments. The start of a comment is
+marked with `#|', and the end with `|#'.
+
+** `guile-2' cond-expand feature
+
+To test if your code is running under Guile 2.0 (or its alpha releases),
+test for the `guile-2' cond-expand feature. Like this:
+
+ (cond-expand (guile-2 (eval-when (compile)
+ ;; This must be evaluated at compile time.
+ (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
+ (guile
+ ;; Earlier versions of Guile do not have a
+ ;; separate compilation phase.
+ (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
+
** Fix bad interaction between `false-if-exception' and stack-call.
Exceptions thrown by `false-if-exception' were erronously causing the
`(make-promise (lambda () foo))' is equivalent to `(delay foo)'.
+** `defined?' may accept a module as its second argument
+
+Previously it only accepted internal structures from the evaluator.
+
** New entry into %guile-build-info: `ccachedir'
** Fix bug in `module-bound?'.
As syntax-case is available by default, importing `(ice-9 syncase)' has
no effect, and will trigger a deprecation warning.
+** New readline history functions
+
+The (ice-9 readline) module now provides add-history, read-history,
+write-history and clear-history, which wrap the corresponding GNU
+History library functions.
+
+** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures:
+ dimensions->uniform-array, list->uniform-array, array-prototype
+
+Instead, use make-typed-array, list->typed-array, or array-type,
+respectively.
+
+** Last but not least, the `λ' macro can be used in lieu of `lambda'
+
* Changes to the C interface
+** Guile now uses libgc, the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector
+
+The semantics of `scm_gc_malloc ()' have been changed, in a
+backward-compatible way. A new allocation routine,
+`scm_gc_malloc_pointerless ()', was added.
+
+Libgc is a conservative GC, which we hope will make interaction with C
+code easier and less error-prone.
+
** The GH interface (deprecated in version 1.6, 2001) was removed.
** Internal `scm_i_' functions now have "hidden" linkage with GCC/ELF
This procedure corresponds to Scheme's `module-public-interface'.
+** Inline vector allocation
+
+Instead of having vectors point out into the heap for their data, their
+data is now allocated inline to the vector object itself. The same is
+true for bytevectors, by default, though there is an indirection
+available which should allow for making a bytevector from an existing
+memory region.
+
+** Removal of Guile's primitive object system.
+
+There were a number of pieces in `objects.[ch]' that tried to be a
+minimal object system, but were never documented, and were quickly
+obseleted by GOOPS' merge into Guile proper. So `scm_make_class_object',
+`scm_make_subclass_object', `scm_metaclass_standard', and like symbols
+from objects.h are no more. In the very unlikely case in which these
+were useful to you, we urge you to contact guile-devel.
+
+** No future.
+
+Actually the future is still in the state that it was, is, and ever
+shall be, Amen, except that `futures.c' and `futures.h' are no longer a
+part of it. These files were experimental, never compiled, and would be
+better implemented in Scheme anyway. In the future, that is.
+
+** Support for static allocation of strings, symbols, and subrs.
+
+Calls to snarfing CPP macros like SCM_DEFINE macro will now allocate
+much of their associated data as static variables, reducing Guile's
+memory footprint.
+
** `scm_stat' has an additional argument, `exception_on_error'
** `scm_primitive_load_path' has an additional argument `exception_on_not_found'
** The `long_long' C type, deprecated in 1.8, has been removed
+** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures: scm_make_uve,
+ scm_array_prototype, scm_list_to_uniform_array,
+ scm_dimensions_to_uniform_array, scm_make_ra, scm_shap2ra, scm_cvref,
+ scm_ra_set_contp, scm_aind, scm_raprin1
+
+These functions have been deprecated since early 2005.
+
* Changes to the distribution
** Guile's license is now LGPLv3+
later (at the discretion of each person that chooses to redistribute
part of Guile).
+** GOOPS documentation folded into Guile reference manual
+
+GOOPS, Guile's object system, used to be documented in separate manuals.
+This content is now included in Guile's manual directly.
+
** `guile-config' will be deprecated in favor of `pkg-config'
`guile-config' has been rewritten to get its information from
If $(libdir) is /usr/lib, for example, Guile will install its .go files
to /usr/lib/guile/1.9/ccache. These files are architecture-specific.
-** New dependency: GNU libunistring.
+** Dynamically loadable extensions may be placed in a Guile-specific path
+
+Before, Guile only searched the system library paths for extensions
+(e.g. /usr/lib), which meant that the names of Guile extensions had to
+be globally unique. Installing them to a Guile-specific extensions
+directory is cleaner. Use `pkg-config --variable=extensionsdir
+guile-2.0' to get the location of the extensions directory.
+
+** New dependency: libgc
+
+See http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/, for more information.
+
+** New dependency: GNU libunistring
-See http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/. We hope to merge in
-Unicode support in the next prerelease.
+See http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/, for more information. Our
+Unicode support uses routines from libunistring.
\f
** Fix possible buffer overruns when parsing numbers
** Avoid clash with system setjmp/longjmp on IA64
+** Fix `wrong type arg' exceptions with IPv6 addresses
\f
Changes in 1.8.7 (since 1.8.6)
HCoop / bpt / guile.git / blobdiff