========================== C M U C L  20 b =============================

[--- WORK IN PROGRESS ---]

The CMUCL project is pleased to announce the release of CMUCL 20b.
This is a major release which contains numerous enhancements and
bug fixes from the 19f 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 multi-methods and a meta-object 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:

  * Known issues:
    - CMUCL cannot create working executable images anymore.
    - FILE-POSITION is sometimes off by 2 (4) for input files for
      UTF-16 (UTF-32) encodings.  This is caused by the BOM
      (byte-order mark) which is essentially never seen by Lisp.

  * Feature enhancements:
    - Read operations using an external format of utf8 are now much
      faster.  Some simple tests on Linux shows that read-line now
      only takes 40% as much time.  Sparc shows 60% as much time.
    - ASCII external format added.
    - Support for static arrays added.  These are allocated in foreign
      space and are never moved by GC.  When the arrays are no longer
      referenced, they are properly freed.  To create an array, use
      new the :ALLOCATION :MALLOC parameter to MAKE-ARRAY.  Currently,
      only arrays of character; 8, 16, and 32-bit integers (signed and
      unsigned); single and double floats; and complex single and
      double floats are supported.
    - FROUND is much faster for single and double float numbers.  This
      is not currently available for x87 (due to potential roundoff
      errors), but is available everywhere else.

  * ANSI compliance fixes:

  * Bugfixes:
    - On Unicode builds, printing of '|\|| and '|`| was incorrect
      because no escapes were printed.  This is fixed now.
    - Fixed issue with SSE2 support.  The vops for complex +/- float
      would add random junk to the imaginary part of the result.
    - UNIX-SYSINFO was broken for Unicode builds, which affected
      MACHINE-TYPE and MACHINE-VERSION.
    - Type predicates for double-double float and complex
      double-double float arrays are now done inline.
    - UNIX:UNIX-EXECVE was not converting Lisp strings to C strings on
      Unicode builds.
    - When continuing from the INTEXP-LIMIT-ERROR condition (for
      raising an integer to a large integer power) and setting a new
      limit, the limit was set to the power.  We really wanted the
      absolute valie of the power to used as the new limit.
    - FILE-POSITION was returning incorrect values for file streams on
      unicode builds.  This is fixed now.  But also see the known
      issue listed above.
    - The error-output and trace-file files for COMPILE-FILE are now
      opened using the same external format as specified in
      COMPILE-FILE.  Previously, they were opened using the default
      external format.  This meant that these files could lose
      information if the default format could not represent the
      characters in the source file.
    - Handling of source files in the debugger is better now for
      unicode builds.  The source files are opened using the same
      format as used to compile them.  Previously, the default format
      was used, which would be wrong if the file is in a different
      format.
    - CMUCL no longer segfaults on Linux when running on a kernel
      without COMPAT_BRK.  CMUCL will set the personality
      appropriately and re-exec itself.
    - GET-MACRO-CHARACTER would return the wrong second value because
      *READTABLE* was always being used instead of the specified
      readtable. 
    - COMPILE-FILE was generating an error when compiling COMPILE
      forms.  This is fixed.
    - A critical bug in SSE2 support has been fixed.  Multiplying a
      complex single-float by a single-float produced the wrong
      result. 
    - Fix issue where CMUCL does not correctly handle FLETs in
      DEFMETHOD bodies which use the same name as that of the generic
      function.   The generic function was called instead of the local
      function.
    - CMUCL would fail to compile external formats if *readtable* was
      not the standard readtable.  This is fixed by binding
      *readtable* to the standard readtable before compiling the
      external format.

  * Trac Tickets:
    #33: get-dispatch-macro-character doesn't signal errors in
      compiled code
      Fixed.
    #22: sun4_solaris_sunc config uses gcc to build motif
      This is fixed.  If Sun C is used to build lisp, it is also used
      to build motifd.

  * Other changes:
    - :freebsd4 is no longer a *feature*
    - Added UNIX-GETENV, UNIX-SETENV, UNIX-PUTENV, and UNIX-UNSETENV,
      in the UNIX package to allow access to these C functions.
    - OCTETS-TO-STRING has changed.
      o The output string is no longer automatically extended.
      o Parameters can be given to specify the start and end of the
        octet array and for the start and end of the string.
        (These all default to the beginning and end of the arrays.)
    - UNIX-GETRLIMIT added for solaris and darwin/x86.
    - TRANSLATE-PATHNAMES now creates the resulting path to be an
      absolute or relative path according to whether the TO pathname
      is abslute or relative.  Previously, the result was take from
      the SOURCE pathname, except if TO were absolute, in which case
      the result was absolute.
    - The debugger help message is updated to reflect the actual
      options for L and PP commands.  Help for the DESCRIBE command
      has been added.

  * Improvements to the PCL implementation of CLOS:

  * Changes to building procedure:

This release is not binary compatible with code compiled using CMUCL
20a; 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!

