[mkcl-devel] MKCL 1.1.0 RC1 is now available

[Jean-Claude Beaudoin]

The latest beta version of ManKai Common Lisp, MKCL 1.1.0 RC1, is now
available for general use.

Its key new features are:


   1. Standard Unicode support: Unicode is now a standard feature of MKCL
   and can be used anywhere in it. Code can use symbols with Unicode names as
   well as strings, in compiled or interpreted format. File names can also use
   any legal Unicode character if the surrounding OS allows it. This is also
   valid for the whole of file paths used for source code to be processed by
   #'compile-file.
   2. MKCL is now truly embeddable for the first time!  This is so thanks
   to the following new characteristics:
      1. The whole of MKCL has been purged of calls to exit() or abort().
      Thus MKCL never arbitrarily terminates the process it runs in through any
      of them. MKCL will always properly return control to its embedding outer
      context.
      2. Every externally visible C symbol of MKCL is prefixed by one of
      the character sequences "mk", "_mk", "MK" or "_MK" in order to minimize
      potential clashes with embedding C code.
      3. Careful attention as been devoted to assure that MKCL shares
      common process-wide resources with the rest of its process neighbors as
      fairly as possible and with little or no unilateral demands on them,
      waiving any pretense of monopoly.  This concerns mainly environment
      variables, general memory management (including GC) and signal/exception
      handling. (In a Unix context, MKCL's code is ready to support chaining of
      signal handlers).
   3. Finalization of objects is now done in a separate dedicated thread.
   This implements the finalization architecture strongly recommended by Hans
   Boehm, author of the conservative GC used by MKCL.


Cheers,

Jean-Claude Beaudoin
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