========================== C M U C L 19 b =============================

The CMUCL project is pleased to announce the release of CMUCL 19b. This is a major release which contains numerous enhancements and bugfixes from the 19a release.

CMUCL is a free, high performance implementation of the Common Lisp programming language which runs on most major Unix platforms. It mainly conforms to the ANSI Common Lisp standard. CMUCL provides a sophisticated native code compiler; a powerful foreign function interface; an implementation of CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System, which includes multimethods and a metaobject protocol; a source-level debugger and code profiler; and an Emacs-like editor implemented in Common Lisp. CMUCL is maintained by a team of volunteers collaborating over the Internet, and is mostly in the public domain.

New in this release:

• Newly supported platforms:
  • CMUCL has been ported to Mac OS X. The port includes support for callbacks from foreign code, and linkage-table support (which makes it possible to dump images that contain references to foreign code).
  • the NetBSD/x86 platform is supported, with generational conservative garbage collection (the :gencgc *feature*), linkage-table support, and the Motif interface.
• Feature enhancements:
  • Added a much faster and much less consy bignum printer and a faster bignum reader.
  • Extended REQUIRE to support *MODULE-PROVIDER-FUNCTIONS* from SBCL.
  • SIMPLE-STREAM fixes:
    • READ-SEQUENCE and WRITE-SEQUENCE for signed-byte/unsigned-byte 8 streams.
    • Memory-mapped file streams.
  • Large file support for Solaris, so CMUCL can handle files larger than 2GB.
  • A much faster GCD implementation.
  • A faster Karatsuba multiplier when the number of words of the bignums is not a power of 2. (Break-even is still around 1500 bits, though.)
  • New command-line switch -debug-lisp-search to show how lisp is searching for its core file.
  • DEBUG-RETURN implemented which allows you to return a value from function. Only enabled with DEBUG 3.
  • Lazy sxhash on symbols implemented for ppc.
  • Pretty-printer for LOOP.
  • Added some more pprinters for various forms.
  • Loop analysis code added to the compiler. It's incorporated into the build and can be enabled by setting *loop-analyze* to T, but the compiler doesn't use the loop information for anything yet.
  • Errors from socket functions signal a SOCKET-ERROR instead of a generic ERROR condition.
  • Efficiency notes are no longer printed if inhibit-warnings >= 2.5.
  • Simple support for datagram networking added: INET-RECVFROM, INET-SENDTO, INET-SHUTDOWN.
  • MAKE-INDENTING-STREAM and INDENTING-STREAM-P are exported from the EXTENSIONS package instead of being internal.
  • TRACE will work now for the known-return convention, which used to require encapsulation so that only the first call was traced. Useful for tracing recursive functions.
  • Bivalent streams are supported. Thus, streams with element-type (unsigned-byte 8) can be used for character input/output as well as binary input/output. Supply the option :CLASS 'EXT:BINARY-TEXT-STREAM for OPEN to get bivalent streams. EXT:READ-VECTOR and EXT:WRITE-VECTOR also implemented. This is somewhat experimental right now, and may change slightly in a future version.
  • Loading fasls compiled for a different version of CMUCL will now signal an EXT:INVALID-FASL error instead a generic error.
• Numerous ANSI compliance fixes:
  • FILE-AUTHOR should signal errors appropriately.
  • CMUCL was computing the wrong value for some special functions when the argument was on the branch cut for the function.
  • MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND accepts &REST and friends in the var list.
  • When constructing logical pathnames, all components will be automatically upcased. Needed for print/read consistency, and fixes an issue with ASDF and logical pathnames.
  • Numerous fixes to the float printer, including a new float printer.
  • Justification (~< ~> FORMAT directives) works better.
  • ~V with the value of NIL in format strings is treated to mean as if it weren't given at all, as specified by ANSI CL.
  • Characters print consistently with ~:C and ~S.
  • Numerous bug fixes for pretty-printing and format strings.
  • Pathnames are now printed with #P instead of #p.
  • The types COMPLEX and (COMPLEX REAL) are the same now.
  • UPGRADED-COMPLEX-PART-TYPE returns RATIONAL for integer types now. (CMUCL doesn't really have a (COMPLEX INTEGER) type).
  • When a pathname can't be printed readably, signal a PRINT-NOT-READABLE condition.
  • Printing arrays readably was sometimes wrong.
  • FOR-AS-ON-LIST works with dotted lists.
  • DEFSTRUCT predicates for list structures don't produce errors anymore on dotted or short lists.
  • UNBOUND-SLOT condition no longer takes the :slot keyword. It uses the ANSI-specified :name keyword. This is not backward compatible!
  • MAKE-SYMBOL takes STRINGs, not just SIMPLE-STRINGs.
  • PPRINT-POP did not return NIL when the list arg to PPRINT-LOGICAL-BLOCK was NIL.
  • Signal appropriate error conditions instead of a plain error condition in many situations.
  • TYPECASE was treating the type T as an otherwise clause even though it was not the last clause. It should be just a regular clause.
  • ASIN, ACOS, ACOSH, and ATANH were returning the wrong values when the arg was a real number on the branch cut.
  • Missed some places where loop variables were duplicated, which should signal a program-error.
  • LOOP INITIALLY clauses occur after variable initialization for FOR, WITH, and AS clauses, as required by ANSI CL.
  • Format bugs in ~{ and ~@[X~], as noted by ansi-tests, have been fixed.
  • Evaluation order of REMF, INCF, and DECF.
  • When *READ-SUPPRESS* is T, READ, READ-PRESERVING-WHITESPACE, READ-DELIMITED-LIST, and READ-FROM-STRING now return NIL, as specified by ANSI CL. (Previously, CMUCL would return a list of NILs.)
  • Pathname components of type :UNSPECIFIC are no longer printed in namestrings.
  • Dumping of symbols in fasls now works according to ANSI.
  • READ-FROM-STRING was sometimes not returning the correct second value when the string was a displaced string.
  • The invalid trait for constituent characters is handled better.
  • (formatter "~V[...~]") now returns a correct second value.
  • MAKE-DISPATCH-MACRO-CHARACTER is supposed to return T.
  • APROPOS and APROPOS-LIST no longer take 3 arguments. ANSI CL says they only take 2.
  • A reader error is signaled when bad ratios (like 1/0) are read or when a float can't fit into the specified float type.
  • A form like #(1 . 2) now signals a reader error.
  • NIL as a keyword arg is no longer silently accepted, unless NIL was actually a specified keyword arg.
  • Some cases of reader errors being signaled when *READ-SUPPRESS* was T no longer occur.
  • The datum slot for check-type contains the place-value now instead of the place.
  • The expected-type and datum should now be consistent in type-errors (datum is not of the expected-type). Similar situations in other errors are also corrected.
• Numerous bugfixes:
  • FFLOOR and friends preserve the sign of the arg, so -0.0 is returned for negative args.
  • EXPT sometimes returned NaN instead of 1 when the power was 0.
  • Weak pointers no longer have O(n^{2) GC behavior.}
  • X11 authorization changes to solve problems seen with servers that don't listen to TCP connection requests.
  • UNIX-READ fix
  • The compiler would give an error on deriving the result type of RANDOM when the arg to RANDOM was a union type.
  • "~*~" was not being parsed to mean a wildcard version.
  • UNIX-GETPWUID implemented for Darwin. Needed for FILE-AUTHOR.
  • The compiler no longer gives errors when deriving the result type of COERCE when converting a integer to a float that would not fit in a float.
  • Fix bug in reading from streams with element-type SIGNED-BYTE for sizes greater than 32: Positive numbers were incorrectly being returned as negative.
  • REMOVE-DUPLICATES was not honoring the :START option.
  • PPRINT-LOGICAL-BLOCK sometimes didn't close the block properly because PPRINT-EXIT-IF-LIST-EXHAUSTED caused an early exit.
  • Macro expansion was not looking in the local environment properly for local definitions.
  • Circular weak pointers can now be printed when *PRINT-CIRCLE* is T.
  • "foo.lisp.*" is interpreted to have version :wild, just like "foo.lisp.~*~".
  • DIRECTORY will report all versions of a file if the pathname has version :wild.
  • Fixed bug with CLX on MacOS X where the WM-SIZE-HINTS were larger than CLX expected. Replaced card16 with card32.
  • Callbacks on sparc that returned double-floats were sometimes causing a sigbus error.
  • Type specifiers like (float low high) where low and high were outside the range of single-float numbers no longer cause compiler errors.
  • Fix source-form reporting in the disassembler.
  • Arrays in fasl files had non-NIL fill-pointer. Make them NIL.
  • FILE-POSITION was incorrectly set for simple-streams after a READ-VECTOR.
  • Printing 1d23 no longer causes an error.
  • Work around the problem of (concatenate 'fixnum '(1)) causing deletion of all following code.
  • A directory with a component of :WILD was not correctly handled.
  • CREATE-INET-LISTENER was missing a call to htonl.
  • (coerce #c(1 2) '(complex float)) works now.
  • Type derivation for logior and logxor was broken.
  • Fixed bug where (setf (aref f 0) (aref d 0)) doesn't produce a warning and causes code including the function return to be deleted, where f is a single-float array and d is a double-float array.
  • COUNT for bit arrays was sometimes failing to include the count from the last 32-bits of the array.
  • The default heap size was causing CMUCL to fail on Solaris
    10. Change the default so this doesn't happen. (The real cause is unknown.)
  • In some cases, the compiler was spending large amounts of time deriving union of a bunch of disjoint integer intervals. If the union is long enough, we give up and just return the smallest new interval that contains all of the disjoint intervals. (This needs a better fix.)
  • The :WHEREIN option to TRACE handles methods now.
  • The maximum dynamic space size was wrong on Linux.
  • Type inferencing for OPEN was broken when :IF-DOES-NOT-EXIST was given and was not a compile-time constant.
  • ~G output always had a zero for the last digit when exponential form was used. Fix this so the last digit has the correct digit.
  • Output to (make-two-way-stream (make-concatenated-stream) (make-broadcast-stream)) silently discards output instead of producing an error.
  • STRING<, STRING<=, STRING>, STRING>= no longer produce incorrect results.
  • COPY-SEQ sometimes produced erroneous results because the compiler was confused by the derived result type of COPY-SEQ.
  • Many (all?) compiler failures about a STRANGE-TEMPLATE-FAILURE should be fixed.
  • Type derivation for LOGAND is fixed. (Affects LOGAND and LOGBITP.)
  • Type derivation for SCALE-FLOAT is fixed. Should also work better on x86. (But there are still bugs in x86's handling of single-floats.)
  • generic-site.lisp won't give an error when updating *HERALD-ITEMS* when the -quiet flag is used.
  • The disassembler handles closures better.
  • The result array for bit-* operations was sometimes too short if the args had fill pointers.
  • Weak hash tables no longer cause GC to go into an infinite loop.
  • (PEEK-CHAR nil s nil foo) doesn't remove the character that was read if FOO happens to match the character that PEEK-CHAR returns.
  • PROFILE no longer crashes when an internal data structure was set to a non-boolean value.
  • Regressions in float printing with ~F, ~E, and ~G are fixed.
  • OPEN-X-STREAM accepts :INTERNET as a valid protocol again.
• Other changes:
  • Infinite loops in map and friends caused by specifying sequence types that are too hairy for CMUCL should no longer occur. But CMUCL will now signal an error, which may not be compliant either.
  • Compiler is a little smarter in deriving the result type of MAP.
  • MAKE-PATHNAME will accept a :HOST arg of NIL, and will use NIL as the host slot instead of filling in the host slot from the defaults.
  • CMUCL/sparc should now run on Solaris 10. This port no longer uses the reserved register %g7 anymore. The heap size is now rounded to a multiple of 8 MB. Without this, CMUCL eventually gets a GC error on Solaris 10 when using gencgc. There appear to be no problems with Cheney GC on Solaris 10.
  • The config script uses REQUIRE instead of LOAD to load up CMUCL's system libraries so there are no package-lock errors.
  • REQUIRE no longer disables package-locks when loading requested file. But package-locks are disabled for CMUCL's own system libraries like gray-streams, clx, etc.
  • CMUCL should fail gracefully on x86 if something is already mapped at addresses CMUCL wants for itself. Previously, CMUCL would just use it.
• Improvements to the PCL implementation of CLOS:
  • AMOP-style custom slot allocation supported.
  • The value of a slot that is specified as shared in the old class and as local in the new class is now retained.
  • CMUCL supports using the class name for the :metaclass argument.
• Changes to rebuilding procedure:
  • Added a new script to run all of the subscripts needed to build CMUCL. Won't handle all cases, but will handle the most common builds.

This release is not binary compatible with code compiled using CMUCL 19a; you will need to recompile FASL files.

See <URL:http://www.cons.org/cmucl/> for download information, guidelines on reporting bugs, and mailing list details.

We hope you enjoy using this release of CMUCL!