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remove incremental NEWS entries in preparation for 1.9.8

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* NEWS
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Andy Wingo 2010-01-27 21:45:47 +01:00
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209
NEWS
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@ -8,214 +8,7 @@ Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
(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 1.9.7 (since the 1.9.6 prerelease):
** Complete support for version information in Guile's `module' form
Guile modules now have a `#:version' field. They may be loaded by
version as well. See "R6RS Version References", "General Information
about Modules", "Using Guile Modules", and "Creating Guile Modules" in
the manual for more information.
** Support for renaming bindings on module export
Wherever Guile accepts a symbol as an argument to specify a binding to
export, it now also accepts a pair of symbols, indicating that a binding
should be renamed on export. See "Creating Guile Modules" in the manual
for more information.
** Imported statprof, SSAX, and texinfo modules from Guile-Lib
The statprof statistical profiler, the SSAX XML toolkit, and the texinfo
toolkit from Guile-Lib have been imported into Guile proper. See
"Standard Library" in the manual for more details.
** Function profiling and tracing at the REPL
The `,profile FORM' REPL meta-command can now be used to statistically
profile execution of a form, to see which functions are taking the most
time. See `,help profile' for more information.
Similarly, `,trace FORM' traces all function applications that occur
during the execution of `FORM'. See `,help trace' for more information.
** New debugger
By default, if an exception is raised at the REPL and not caught by user
code, Guile will drop the user into a debugger. The user may request a
backtrace, inspect frames, or continue raising the exception. Full
documentation is available from within the debugger.
** New function, `truncated-print', with `format' support
`(ice-9 pretty-print)' now exports `truncated-print', a printer that
will ensure that the output stays within a certain width, truncating the
output in what is hopefully an intelligent manner. See the manual for
more details.
There is a new `format' specifier, `~@y', for doing a truncated
print (as opposed to `~y', which does a pretty-print). See the `format'
documentation for more details.
** Primitive procedures are now VM trampoline procedures
Guile's old evaluator used to have special cases for applying "gsubrs",
primitive procedures with specified numbers of required, optional, and
rest arguments. Now, however, Guile represents gsubrs as normal VM
procedures, with appropriate bytecode to parse out the correct number of
arguments, including optional and rest arguments, and then with a
special bytecode to apply the gsubr.
This allows primitive procedures to appear on the VM stack, allowing
them to be accurately counted in profiles. Also they now have more
debugging information attached to them -- their number of arguments, for
example. In addition, the VM can completely inline the application
mechanics, allowing for faster primitive calls.
However there are some changes on the C level. There is no more
`scm_tc7_gsubr' or `scm_tcs_subrs' typecode for primitive procedures, as
they are just VM procedures. Likewise the macros `SCM_GSUBR_TYPE',
`SCM_GSUBR_MAKTYPE', `SCM_GSUBR_REQ', `SCM_GSUBR_OPT', and
`SCM_GSUBR_REST' are gone, as are `SCM_SUBR_META_INFO', `SCM_SUBR_PROPS'
`SCM_SET_SUBR_GENERIC_LOC', and `SCM_SUBR_ARITY_TO_TYPE'.
Perhaps more significantly, `scm_c_make_subr',
`scm_c_make_subr_with_generic', `scm_c_define_subr', and
`scm_c_define_subr_with_generic'. They all operated on subr typecodes,
and there are no more subr typecodes. Use the scm_c_make_gsubr family
instead.
Normal users of gsubrs should not be affected, though, as the
scm_c_make_gsubr family still is the correct way to create primitive
procedures.
** SRFI-4 vectors reimplemented in terms of R6RS bytevectors
Guile now implements SRFI-4 vectors using bytevectors. Often when you
have a numeric vector, you end up wanting to write its bytes somewhere,
or have access to the underlying bytes, or read in bytes from somewhere
else. Bytevectors are very good at this sort of thing. But the SRFI-4
APIs are nicer to use when doing number-crunching, because they are
addressed by element and not by byte.
So as a compromise, Guile allows all bytevector functions to operate on
numeric vectors. They address the underlying bytes in the native
endianness, as one would expect.
Following the same reasoning, that it's just bytes underneath, Guile
also allows uniform vectors of a given type to be accessed as if they
were of any type. One can fill a u32vector, and access its elements with
u8vector-ref. One can use f64vector-ref on bytevectors. It's all the
same to Guile.
In this way, uniform numeric vectors may be written to and read from
input/output ports using the procedures that operate on bytevectors.
Calls to SRFI-4 accessors (ref and set functions) from Scheme are now
inlined to the VM instructions for bytevector access.
See "SRFI-4" in the manual, for more information.
** Nonstandard SRFI-4 procedures now available from `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)'
Guile's `(srfi srfi-4)' now only exports those srfi-4 procedures that
are part of the standard. Complex uniform vectors and the
`any->FOOvector' family are now available only from `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)'.
Guile's default environment imports `(srfi srfi-4)', and probably should
import `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)' as well.
See "SRFI-4 Extensions" in the manual, for more information.
** Unicode: String normalization, general categories, title case
Guile now exports the Unicode string normalization functions
`string-normalize-nfc', `string-normalize-nfd', `string-normalize-nfkc',
and `string-normalize-nfkd'. See "String Comparison" in the manual for
more information. See "Characters" for information on the new
`char-general-category', and "Character Case Mapping" for
`char-titlecase', `char-locale-titlecase', and
`string-locale-titlecase'.
** Faster access to the free variables of a closure
Guile's old garbage collector limited the size of Scheme objects to be 2
or 4 words. Now with the BDW collector, Guile can allocate
variable-sized objects, allowing storage of the free variables of a
closure inline to the closure itself.
** New primitive `getsid'
Scheme binding for the `getsid' C library call.
** Changed invocation mechanics of applicable SMOBs
Guile's old evaluator used to have special cases for applying SMOB
objects. Now, with the VM, when Guile sees a SMOB, it looks up a VM
trampoline procedure for it, and use the normal mechanics to apply the
trampoline. This simplifies procedure application in the normal,
non-SMOB case.
The upshot is that the mechanics used to apply a SMOB are different from
1.8. Descriptors no longer have `apply_0', `apply_1', `apply_2', and
`apply_3' functions, and the macros SCM_SMOB_APPLY_0 and friends are now
deprecated. Just use the scm_call_0 family of procedures.
** Remove deprecated array C interfaces
Removed the deprecated array functions `scm_i_arrayp',
`scm_i_array_ndim', `scm_i_array_mem', `scm_i_array_v',
`scm_i_array_base', `scm_i_array_dims', and the deprecated macros
`SCM_ARRAYP', `SCM_ARRAY_NDIM', `SCM_ARRAY_CONTP', `SCM_ARRAY_MEM',
`SCM_ARRAY_V', `SCM_ARRAY_BASE', and `SCM_ARRAY_DIMS'.
** String encoding errors throw to `encoding-error' instead of `misc-error'
** Keyword argument errors uniformly throw to `keyword-argument-error'
** Remove unused snarf macros
`SCM_DEFINE1', `SCM_PRIMITIVE_GENERIC_1', `SCM_PROC1, and `SCM_GPROC1'
are no more. Use SCM_DEFINE or SCM_PRIMITIVE_GENERIC instead.
** Add foreign value wrapper
Guile now has a datatype for aliasing "foreign" values, such as native
long values. This should be useful for making a proper foreign function
interface. Interested hackers should see libguile/foreign.h.
** New functions: `scm_call_n', `scm_c_run_hookn'
`scm_call_n' applies to apply a function to an array of arguments.
`scm_c_run_hookn' runs a hook with an array of arguments.
** Load path change: search in version-specific paths before site paths
When looking for a module, Guile now searches first in Guile's
version-specific path (the library path), *then* in the site dir. This
allows Guile's copy of SSAX to override any Guile-Lib copy the user has
installed. Also it should cut the number of `stat' system calls by half,
in the common case.
** Compile-time warning: -Wunused-toplevel
Guile can warn about potentially unused top-level (global)
variables. Pass the -Wunused-toplevel on the `guile-tools compile'
command line, or add
`#:warnings '(unused-toplevel)' to your `compile' or `compile-file'
invocation.
** New reader options: `square-brackets' and `r6rs-hex-escapes'
The reader supports a new option (changeable via `read-options'),
`square-brackets', which instructs it to interpret square brackets as
parenthesis. This option is on by default.
If this causes problems with your code, make sure to report it to
bug-guile@gnu.org so we can change the default.
When the new `r6rs-hex-escapes' reader option is enabled, the reader
will recognize string escape sequences as defined in R6RS.
Changes in 1.9.8 (since the 1.9.7 prerelease):
** And of course, the usual collection of bugfixes