GerH build 2423 on-line at www.hebbut.net - bugfix release

FYI:

a new GerH build is available.

New stuff: see the ChangeLog (under the date header 2008-05-21).


This is mostly about getting the CRM script compiler into a position
where it can:

(a) parse scripts in a single pass (which should speed up large scripts)

but more importantly:

(b) can check the script for typos and other simple programmer
mistakes UP FRONT (i.e. at start-up), so you do not need to test all
the branches in the script just to find out if and where you made a
typing booboo.

The latter has happened too often to me to not bother about it and
from past experience with other languages and team members I don't
believe I'm the only one making this sort of mistake.



Second, there's the introduction of a generic, good quality random
generator (designed by prof. Marsaglia) to ensure any classifiers
(such as Neural Net), which use a bit of random noise to settle,
produce /precisely/ reproducible results across tests AND PLATFORMS
(rand() is definitely /non/-portable if the numbers coming out of it's
derriere matter to you in /any/ way.)


Third, there's the introduction of the 'cssmigrate <flags> (:src:)
(:dst:) ...' command intended for those folks who want to migrate from
previous releases to a new (GerH versioning system-using) CRM114 build
without the need to recreate their CSS from scratch. The range of this
command is intended to be limited to 'production quality' classifiers
only. Migrating old 64-bit CSS files may cause a few troubles as the
hashes MAY be different from the current version, but there's always
the option to keep GerH crm114 running with another hasher for
continued backwards compatibility (it already offers multiple hash
functions).

Note that the 'cssmigrate' command is an empty hull right now; it will
be filled out when I move the utils into their css* command containers
too - those separate utils will be obsoleted in the near future for
the GerH builds at least.


On the planning board:

- an extra set of tests to validate legal and ILLEGAL scripts - the
current compiler in both vanilla and GerH accepts some illegal
constructs, some of them silently.

- further fortification of compiler and script executor (fixing fault
cascades causing trap jumps, for one)

- major overhaul of the Win32 syscall section: 'The Final Solution' - I hope ;-)

- implementation of the css* script commands for production
classifiers / obsolescence of the cssdiff/merge/util and osbfutil
tools.

- code merge with Bill?

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten / Best regards,

Ger Hobbelt

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web: http://www.hobbelt.com/
 http://www.hebbut.net/
mail: [email protected]
mobile: +31-6-11 120 978
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