Re: Scheme 48 1.9 available

On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 9:28:26 AM UTC-8, Michael Sperber wrote:
> Version 1.9 of the Scheme 48 system is now available from the Scheme 48
> 
> home page:
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.s48.org/
> 
> 
> 
> Scheme 48 is a based on byte-code interpreter and comes with a module
> 
> system, an extensive set of libraries, an interactive command-line-based
> 
> development environment and a manual in various formats. Scheme 48 runs
> 
> on most Unix/Linux systems, as well as Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista,
> 
> and is fully R5RS-conformant.
> 
> 
> 
> The 1.9 release has been a long time in the making, and is a substantial
> 
> feature release, with help from many contributors.  See the attached
> 
> release notes for details.
> 
> 
> 
> This release marks a change in direction (actually two
> 
> changes) for Scheme 48:
> 
> 
> 
> As most regular users of the system know, the system was originally
> 
> developed by Richard Kelsey and Jonathan Rees.  I have handled the
> 
> releases of Scheme 48 since version 1.1, with the help of Martin
> 
> Gasbichler, Marcus Crestani and many other volunteers.  We have tried to
> 
> make the system more oriented towards practical uses, and thus moved
> 
> away from Richard's and Jonathan's original goals for the system.
> 
> Nevertheless, we continued to release and distribute with Richard's and
> 
> Jonathan's names featured most prominently, as the number of
> 
> contributors and the amount of contributed code steadily increased.
> 
> 
> 
> Richard and Jonathan requested that we made the gradual change in
> 
> direction of the project explicit, which we are trying to do starting
> 
> with this release.  The last release Richard and Jonathan handled was
> 
> 0.57, and they created a 0.58 release that is a more appropriate
> 
> starting point for the subsequent releases.  This release 0.58 is also
> 
> now available from the web site.  Unfortunately, Richard, Jonathan, and
> 
> I were not able to reach an agreement on how to best handle changes made
> 
> since then, particularly on how to properly attribute contributions and
> 
> changes made to the system.  I decided to do my best to accurately
> 
> credit contributors for each single file in the system.  This involved a
> 
> lot of archeology: I'm more than happy to add credit where I dropped the
> 
> ball, and apologize for any inaccuracies I have introduced.
> 
> 
> 
> Also, the 1.9 release is also probably the last release handled by me
> 
> that is actually called "Scheme 48", as we are working on introducing
> 
> more major changes, among them R6RS support.  (This may take a while
> 
> yet.  I do not have much time to spend on Scheme 48 these days.)  So
> 
> future releases along this line will have a name other than "Scheme 48".
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, for now, here's Scheme 48 1.9.  I appreciate the help of
> 
> numerous contributors who helped me pushing this out; the long delay,
> 
> however, is all my fault.
> 
> 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> 
> NOTE IF YOU ARE BUILDING ON A MAC OS X: The C compilers shipped with the
> 
> current Xcode are buggy - compiling the system takes very long, and the
> 
> resulting binary is very slow.  Either compile with -O0 with or get a
> 
> current binary version of LLVM + Clang from the LLVM Download page at
> 
> 
> 
> http://llvm.org/releases/download.html
> 
> 
> 
> Release notes for Scheme 48 1.9
> 
> 
> 
> 1.1 Additions 
> 
> --------------
> 
> - A new C FFI as added, thanks to Crestani, Harald Glab-Plhak.  The
> 
>   old one is still there but will eventually be phased out.
> 
>   See Crestani's paper "Foreign-Function Interfaces for Garbage-Collected Programming Languages"
> 
>   [http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/crestani/publications/2008-sws-ffi.pdf]
> 
> - A new networking code layer was added with full support for IPv6,
> 
>   UDP etc. (undocumented as of yet)
> 
> - Records now support single inheritance (accessible through the
> 
>   r6rs-records packages)
> 
> - `letrec*' was added to the `scheme' structure
> 
> - A `r5rs' structure was added.
> 
> - A new condition system based on R6RS's system has replaced the old system.
> 
> - Some R6RS libraries were added (with help from Robert Ransom).
> 
> - A statistical profiler was added (Marcel Turino, Manuel Dietrich) -
> 
>   check the documentation for details.
> 
> - TLC tables (`eq?' tables) were added by Marcus Crestani and David Frese.
> 
> - The module system warns on cycles and redefinitions
> 
> - When the VM is compiled with GNU C, it uses direct threading for
> 
>   instruction dispatch, which speeds up the VM noticeably (done by
> 
>   Timo Harter)
> 
> - The reader for a structure is configurable (again).
> 
> - SRFI 19 now works on Windows
> 
> - `list-spine{,-cycle-safe}[*%]' sequence macros were added to `reduce'
> 
>   structure by Robert Ransom
> 
> - The Windows build can be done via a Boo script (contributed by
> 
>   Robert Ransom)
> 
> - The unquote and unquote-splicing were generalized to several
> 
>   operands, in line with R6RS.
> 
> - Commands ,show-known-packages, ,show-interface, and
> 
>   ,show-default-package were added to support SDT (Marcus Crestani,
> 
>   Sebastian Rheinecker).
> 
> - `placeholder-value' now accepts a `deadlock?' argument that says
> 
>   whether blocking on the placeholder contributes to deadlock.
> 
> - Most source files now carry author information.
> 
> - A document =doc/deriving.txt= was added that clarifies how works
> 
>   derived from Scheme 48 should be labelled.
> 
> 
> 
> 1.2 Changes 
> 
> ------------
> 
> - The BIBOP GC was heavily debugged and is now considered stable - it
> 
>   is enabled by default.
> 
> - The system builds on Windows Visual Studio Express 2010 instead of
> 
>   Visual Studio 2005.
> 
> - The BIBOP GC code was simplified significantly.
> 
> - The `syntax-rules' implementation was rewritten by Richard Kelsey
> 
> - Some structures were added to the POSIX subsystem 
> 
>   (`posix-errnos', `posix-syslog')
> 
> - Various procedures were added to the POSIX structures by Roderic
> 
>   Morris to support scsh.
> 
> - The autoconf code was reorganized by Ivan Shmakov.
> 
> - The REPL now prints values without quotes and auto-capitalization of
> 
>   record-type names.
> 
> - The Makefile now builds the documentation upon `make install'.
> 
>   (This requires a working LaTeX installation and tex2page.)  A target
> 
>   `install-no-doc' is available that does not.
> 
> - The license information was clarified.
> 
> - The external-events API was changed to fix a design bug; it now
> 
>   correctly accomodates "fire-once" applications such as
> 
>   wait-`for-child-process' (with help from Robert Ransom, Roderic
> 
>   Morris).
> 
> 
> 
> 1.3 Bug fixes 
> 
> --------------
> 
> - Many.

awesome!
will scsh follow?
sunet?

You mentioned a new direction? What will it be?