[Ecls-list] [ANN] ECL 10.3.1

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

ECL 10.3.1:
===========

This release has three important focuses: performance improvements in
various
fronts (garbage collection and hash tables), extending the run-process
function
and important fixes to let ECL work better with Slime. To quote one lisper
"this feels like a real Lisp implementation now"

* Bugs fixed:

 - DIRECTORY used stat() also on files that did not match the directory
masks.

 - The syntax for matching strings in DIRECTORY is now the same as in
   PATHNAME-MATCH-P. Formerly there were small differences, such as
DIRECTORY
   understanding characters #\? and #\\ and PATHNAME-MATCH-P not.

 - Standalone executables do not require the existence of the ECLDIR
directory
   to start up -- it may be required, though, for working Unicode because
the
   encodings are stored there.

 - PROCESS-JOIN was exported from the wrong package.

 - PROCESS-JOIN failed when invoked with a thread that was in the process of
   being set up.

 - The output values of a process or thread are now collected in the process
   object and returned by PROCESS-JOIN.

 - ECL's interrupt servicing thread could not be shut down.

 - When compiling LET forms, ECL emitted warnings about removal of variables
   even when they were declared IGNORABLE.

 - An internal variable MP:*ALLOW-WITH-INTERRUPTS* was not declared special.

 - The compiler now understands function type proclamations with &OPTIONAL
   values.

 - The compiler now accepts THE special forms with a VALUES type.

 - If file A.lsp explicitely loads B.lsp to use a package that is only
defined
   in B, then ECL signaled an error in the compiled version of A even after
   this one had required B.lsp.

 - ECL accepts FTYPE proclamations for SETF-functions.

 - On platforms where a stack overflow does not trigger a SIGSEGV, ECL was
   unable to recover from the overflow. Now it jumps to the outermost
   protection frame (typically the toplevel).

 - Socket streams are now two-way streams. This solves a problem with
certain
   platforms (OS X) where a C stream can not be used to read and write
   simultaneously by two different threads.

 - TRUENAME and PROBE-FILE were not thread safe.

* Visible changes:

 - Hash tables now use hand-coded specialized loops for EQ, EQL, EQUAL,
EQUALP
   and package types, achieving a reduction of about 30% time in lookups.

 - A new function EXT:ENVIRON returns the list of strings that makes up the
   process environment. This is the equivalent of POSIX (char **environ)
   and Windows' GetEnvironmentStrings.

 - EXT:RUN-PROGRAM now accepts a keyword argument, :ENVIRON, with a list of
   strings used to configure the environment of the child process. For
instance
   '("PWD=/home" "PATH=/usr/bin")

 - EXT:RUN-PROGRAM returns as third value an EXT:EXTERNAL-PROCESS structure,
   which supports the queries
EXT:EXTERNAL-PROCESS-{PID,INPUT,OUTPUT,STATUS},
   following CCL's conventions.

 - The new function EXT:EXTERNAL-PROCESS-WAIT can be used to wait
indefinitely
   for termination of a process or simply to query its status.

 - ECL implements a new garbage collector marking mode which at the overhead
of
   one word per object achieves precise marking of heap objects, reducing
   accidental data retention and improving the time spent in garbage
   collection. This mode is only available when using --enable-boehm=system
at
   configuration time.

 - ECL now ships with ASDF version 1.604

 - The variables C:*USER-CC-FLAGS* and C:*USER-LD-FLAGS* are lists of
strings
   which can used to change the behavior of the C compiler and the
   linker. Note, however, that the flags that ECL uses may take priority.

 - In the C code we are beginning to use GCC's attributes (__attribute__)
and
   branch annotation (__builtin_expect). This decreases the size of code
that
   checks for errors and improves performance.

 - When printing compiler notes, instead of printing the macroexpanded form,
   ECL now prints the toplevel form, as follows
    ;;; Warning: in file src:lsp;autoload.lsp.NEWEST, position 1178 and top
form
    ;;;   (DEFMACRO WITH-COMPILATION-UNIT (OPTIONS &REST BODY) ...)
    ;;; The variable OPTIONS is not used.

 - ECL now implements EXT:*INVOKE-DEBUGGER-HOOK*, which works like
*DEBUGGER-HOOK*
   but is also observed by BREAK. (SBCL extension adopted by ECL)

 - The UFFI interface now supports C99 types, such as :int8-t, :uint32-t,
etc,
   but only when the corresponding types do exist in the underlying C
environment.

 - SOCKET-MAKE-STREAM defaults :BUFFERING to :FULL and allows three new
keyword
   arguments, :INPUT, :OUTPUT and :EXTERNAL-FORMAT, as in SBCL.

 - COMPILE-FILE admits the keyword argument :EXTERNAL-FORMAT.

 - A new function EXT:ALL-ENCODINGS lists all encondings known to ECL.

 - Improved readability of compiler messages.

 - SERVE-EVENT now allows time resolution of less than one second.

 - The PROFILE package now has an alias, SB-PROFILE.

 - ECL now stores the location of its source files in a logical hostname,
   "SRC:", which points to the directory where Announcement is located.

 - When building ECL, if "etags" is installed, a file TAGS is created which
   contains references to the location of all C functions. This file can be
   used to locate functions from the core library in Slime, using M-.

 - Documentation files now allow for annotation of arbitrary symbols,
   based on a key and a sub-key which are both symbols.

 - New function EXT:FUNCTION-LAMBDA-LIST which currently only works with
   functions from the core ECL library, generic functions and interpreted
   functions.

 - The debugger now is capable of showing the special variable bindings
   from a function, as well as the restarts newly bound by that function.

 - When using git, a new function EXT:LISP-IMPLEMENTATION-VCS-ID returns a
   unique identifier denoting the last commit. This can be used to
discriminate
   between unstable releases and remove stale FASL files.

 - COMPILE-FILE admits two new keyword arguments, :SOURCE-TRUENAME and
   :SOURCE-OFFSET which can be used to change the value returned by
   EXT:COMPILED-FUNCTION-FILE when acting on compiled functions.

-- 
Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com
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