ecl/src/CHANGELOG

ECL 9.10.3:
===========

* Visible changes:

 - New function EXT:ARRAY-RAW-DATA returns a non-adjustable vector of type
   (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8) with the content of an array. The returned array overlaps
   with the original, so any change on one will affect the other.

* Bugs fixed:

 - In single-threaded builds, ECL did not properly restore the signal mask
   before jumping out of a signal handler.

 - Floating point exceptions were sometimes ignored, leading to infinite loops.

 - A new configuration flag is added, --with-dffi. This flag allows
   deactivating the foreign function interface when the compiler does not
   support inline assembly with the GCC syntax and libffi is not available.

 - In a multithreaded ECL, when handling a Ctr-C/SIGINT asynchronous interrupt,
   there was not always a CONTINUE restart available.

 - The cygwin port was broken because LOAD was unable to load and execute
   binary files.

 - In cygwin, FASL files can not lack a file extension, because dlopen()
   then looks for a file ending in ".dll" and fails.

 - In cygwin, files that are dlopen'ed must have executable permissions.

 - ECL ignored the IGNORABLE declaration.

 - ECL could not compile DEFMETHOD forms whose arguments referenced unfinalized
   classes. The actual bug was related to SUBTYPEP not being able to determine
   the relation between classes when one is unfinalized.

* Sockets:

 - The socket option TCP_NODELAY option used the wrong interface: SOL_SOCKET
   instead of IPPROTO_TCP (Chun Tian)

 - sockopt-linger and (setf sockopt-linger) now work as they should, using
   the struct linger argument (M. Mondor)

* ASDF:

 - ASDF:MAKE-BUILD now accepts also a :PROLOGUE-CODE argument with code to
   be executed before all lisp files are run.

 - C:BUILDER's argument :PROLOGUE-CODE can now be a lisp form and in the case
   of standalone programs it is always executed after cl_boot() has been
   invoked.

ECL 9.10.2:
===========

* Bugs fixed:

 - Fixed typo in src/c/unixint.d that affected single-threaded builds

 - The GMP library did not build in OS X Snow Leopard in 64-bits mode.

 - The package MP is needed also in single-threaded versions (for fake
   mp:with-lock, which is used in CLX).

 - In CLX, there were a couple of typos in the code related to locks and ECL.
   These typos only revealed in multithreaded builds of the CLX library.

 - In Linux there is a problem with handlers for SIGFPE being totally ignored
   by the system. The problem seems to be solved by avoiding the use of
   feenableexcept() and restricting to C99 exception tests. That is bad because
   we can not reliably and cheaply detect underflow exceptions.

 - Under OS X, --enable-rpath works again. It was broken for about a year
   due to my misunderstanding of how -install_name works and the differences
   between that and -rpath.

ECL 9.10.1:
===========

* Configuration flags:

 - The option --enable-slow-config is now always on in Solaris and it does not
   take more time than an ordinary build using --with-system-gmp=no

 - A new compiler macro ECL_NO_LEGACY can be defined to remove all deprecated
   macros and functions. Have a look at the end of src/h/external.h to see
   what functions are deprecated on each release -- typically they are functions
   that have been renamed with one of the prefixes, ecl_, cl_, si_, ext_ or _ecl.

 - Under OS X, you can use the environment variable ABI to select between
   32-bits (ABI=32) or 64-bits pointers (ABI=64).

* Bignums:

 - When embedded, ECL may coexist with code that uses the GMP library in
   different ways, and sometimes that code may use different memory allocation
   routines. In order to solve this problem ECL introduces a new option,
   ECL_OPT_SET_GMP_MEMORY_FUNCTIONS, which determines whether GMP will use the
   Boehm-Weiser garbage collector to allocate memory or not.

 - The previous change also implies that ECL must do all bignum computations
   using GMP-allocated numbers that are then automatically freed. More
   precisely, this is done using big_register[0-2]_get() and
   big_register_normalize() everywhere and operating destructively on those
   numbers. These functions have been made aware of the fact that GMP may
   use other allocation routines and always call mpz_clear() to free memory.

 - The internal functions dealing with bignums have been renamed with the usual
   prefix "_ecl", and some of them have been turned into macros. Do not use
   those functions if possible.

 - Bignums are now allocated as a compact IMMUTABLE unit that combines the lisp
   object and the data for the GMP integer itself. Since it can be now
   allocated as an atomic (i.e. pointerless) region of memory, the garbage
   collector has to work less for marking and collecting them.

 - The function ecl_alloc_simple_vector() also creates arrays as a compact unit
   with pointerfree memory whenever possible.

 - The functions cl_alloc_simple_{base,extended}_string() now carry the prefix
   ecl_ instead of cl_, and they are simple aliases for ecl_alloc_simple_vector.

 - ECL now implements weak pointers. The interface is
	(ext:make-weak-pointer value) => weak-pointer
	(ext:weak-pointer-value weak-pointer) => value
   and it defines a new built-in type, EXT:WEAK-POINTER

 - When running in multithreaded mode, the streams for *terminal-io*,
   *standard-input* and *standard-output* are created using non-locking
   C pipes, instead of locking C streams. This is essential to allow background
   threads gain control of the console.

* Native threads:

 - ECL now implements WITHOUT-INTERRUPTS and WITH-INTERRUPTS similarly to SBCL.
   It creates three local macros, ALLOW-WITH-INTERRUPTS and
   WITH-LOCAL-INTERRUPTS, and an additional one WITH-RESTORED-INTERRUPTS,
   which executes the forms with the value of interrupts of the forms that
   surround WITHOUT-INTERRUPTS.

 - Symbol SI:*INTERRUPT-DISABLE* changes name to SI:*INTERRUPTS-DISABLED*.

 - New function MP:PROCESS-JOIN, waits for a thread to terminate (J.C.Beaudoin)
   For this to work, threads are always created in a joinable state, and they
   only detach themselves when exiting and no process is waiting.

 - EXT:QUIT now has a different definition
	(ext:quit &optional (exit-code 0) (kill-all-threads nil))
   The first difference is that QUIT will execute all unwind-protect forms
   that surrounds the form that caused the exit. The second one is that we
   can explicitely kill all threads and wait for them to exit before exiting.

 - Two new functions MP:PROCESS-SUSPEND and MP:PROCESS-RESUME allow suspending
   and resuming a thread.

 - The C function ecl_import_current_thread() now automatically registers the
   thread with the garbage collector. You should use ecl_release_current_thread()
   before the thread exits, for consistency.

 - Due to the change in ecl_import_current_thread(), ECL now needs a slightly
   more modern version of the Boehm-Weiser garbage collector. Hence, even if you
   try to enforce --enable-boehm=system, you may find that ECL ignores the
   pre-installed library in favor of the one shipped with it.

* Bugs fixed:

 - WITH-LOCK might run into a race condition when the lock acquisition process
   was interrupted.

 - The following functions are now interrupt safe: MP:MAKE-LOCK.

 - The use of GIVEUP-LOCK in WITH-LOCK is now protected against interrupts.

 - Forms in toplevel EVAL-WHEN or PROGN statements did not have a proper value
   of bytecodes.definition, causing the debugger to enter an infinite chain
   of errors

 - In Solaris 8 ECL failed because it did not find inttypes.h

 - When signbit() is not available, ECL now looks for existence of copysign.

* Signals and environment:

 - The toplevel now allows handling multiple processes in the same console.
   Two new commands, :w and :s, allow reading the list of processes waiting for
   grabbing the console and switching to that given process.

 - ECL now has a signal handling thread running in the background. When
   Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break is pressed or the process gets a SIGINT signal, then
   a separate thread is spawned for handling that event. This thread typically
   enters the debugger, allowing either to continue or to interrupt specific
   processes.

* Packages:

 - The package hash tables are not destructively extended, but rather a new
   hash table is created when we need more room. ecl_sethash() now returns
   the pointer to the possibly reallocated hashtable.

 - ECL now follows the SBCL model, by which there is a global lock for
   destructive package operations (INTERN, EXPORT, etc), but not for
   query only operations (FIND-SYMBOL, PACKAGE-USE-LIST), etc.

* Windows:

 - The latest version of Visual Studio introduced a number of automatically
   generated files (*.implib, *.manifest, *.expdef) which are not used at
   all by ECL, but which were also not deleted, causing the temporary
   directory to be filled with garbage.

 - FASLs created by COMPILE and LOAD in the directory for temporary files are
   now properly deleted before exiting ECL.

 - ECL now embeds the manifest file in the generated executables and shared
   libraries.

* Other errors:

 - Extended strings (i.e. strings with characters that are not base-characters)
   were not identified as valid documentation strings by the interpreter.

;;; Local Variables: ***
;;; mode:text ***
;;; fill-column:79 ***
;;; End: ***