ECL 16.1.3 release

Tagged as release

Written by Daniel Kochmański on 2016-12-19 11:30

Announcement

Dear Community,

After almost a year of development we are proud to present a new release of ECL tagged with version 16.1.3 . All changes are backward compatible fixing bugs and other issues, implementing new interfaces and cleaning up the code base.

ECL manual has been updated in a few places. Work on a new documentation is still pending. New documentation is still incomplete, but you may see it here: https://common-lisp.net/project/ecl/static/ecldoc/.

Before this release we have performed extensive tests on many platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OSX, Windows MSVC, Windows MinGW, Windows Cygwin, Android and Haiku). For details please consult https://gitlab.com/embeddable-common-lisp/ecl/issues/307. Extra attention has been paid to Windows testing to improve that platform support.

This release is available for download in form of a source archive:

Best regards,

ECL Development Team

API changes

Added better interface for package-locks. Introduced functions: ext:package-locked-p package ext:lock-package package ext:unlock-package package ext:without-package-locks &body body ext:with-unlocked-packages (&rest packages) &body body To use these functions user has to require the module (require '#:package-locks) defpackage accepts new option lock to allow locking package on creation: (defpackage foo (:lock t))

mp:holding-lock-p : introduce new function for multiprocessing. Function verifies if lock is hold by the thread which calls the function. Usage: (mp:holding-lock-p my-lock) .

make-random-state : fix problem with simple-vectors. The correct initialization types for make-random-state are: (OR RANDOM-STATE FIXNUM (MEMBER T NIL)) . Initializing a random state with an appropriate array (element type and arity dependent on platform) is also possible.

ext:random-state-array : new extension for random-states. Usage: (ext:random-state-array random-state) .

ext:terminate-process : new extension for external processes. Usage: (ext:terminate-process process) with a second, optional boolean argument whenever termination should be forced or not.

Enhancements

Implemented CDR-7 . https://common-lisp.net/project/cdr/document/7/index.html

implemented CDRs: CDR-1 , CDR-5 , CDR-14 . Both CDR-1 and CDR-5 were already implemented, CDR-14 made us to list them in *features* (https://common-lisp.net/project/cdr/document/14/index.html).

if ECL is build with --with-cxx option, :CXX-CORE is present in *features* .

deprecated configure option --with-local-gmp has been removed - use --enable-gmp (defaults to auto).

configure options has been revised.

ASDF has been upgraded to version 3.1.7.26 (with a few patches scheduled for 3.2.0).

bundled CLX has been purged. Lately I've fixed ECL support on portable CLX maintained by sharplispers on https://github.com/sharplispers/clx (available via QuickLisp).

initial port for the Haiku platform. The port is done by Kacper Kasper's work, one of Haiku developers. Threads are not supported yet.

refactored ECL internal tests framework. Tests in src/tests are now asdf-loadable (with load-source-op ) and divided into test suites. make check target runs all regression and feature tests which aren't supposed to fail.

removed 15000 lines of obsolete code. Files not included in the buildsystem but lingering in the codebase or options failing to build. All info is added in the new documentation in the section "Removed interfaces".

improved man page and help output. Man page now contains up-to-date list of flags, as well as explanation of flag's behavior.

deprecated long flags with one dash, added two-dash version. Flags that aren't one-character, but start with one dash (e.g. -eval ) are now deprecated; long version --eval was added instead.

indented C/C++ code to follow emacs's gnu C style. This is a first step towards coding standards in the documentation. Additionally all in the src/c/ directory are listed in the appropraite documentation section (new-doc).

refactored list_current_directory in unixfsys.d . Function was obfuscated with ifdefs with non-even pairs of #\{ and #\} .

Issues fixed