NEWS FROM 3.2.1 TO 3.2.2
o Fixes to gst-remote.
o Fixes to the Emacs mode.
o Fixes to compilation warnings.
o Generational GC is broken on SPARC and is now disabled.
o When compiling a 32-bit version on a 64-bit system, detection of
which packages to install was improved.
NEWS FROM 3.2 TO 3.2.1
o All built-in packages can be disabled with a configure option like
--disable-gdbm or --disable-complex.
o All tools support --verbose.
o Fixed bugs in the distributed gnu-smalltalk.pc file.
o Improved portability to Solaris.
o Many bug fixes to UDP sockets. In particular, daragrams received from
a socket can be placed directly onto another socket using #nextPut:.
o Many improvements to VisualGST.
o Each test in the testsuite has a 1-minute timeout.
o The undocumented DynamicVariable class in GNU Smalltalk 3.2 is now
documented, but it had a small change in the implementation. The
#defaultValue class method is not present anymore, and is replaced by
#valueIfAbsent:. Subclasses can override #value to obtain the
effect of #valueIfAbsent:.
The class has also been rewritten and is much faster now.
NEWS FROM 3.1 TO 3.2
Backwards-incompatible bug fixes and changes:
o Collection>>#anyOne gives an error if the receiver is empty.
o "aNumber raisedToInteger: 0" will raise an exception if and only if
aNumber is not a floating-point value. This was backwards in previous
versions.
o Interval>>#first and Interval>>#last give an error if the interval is
empty (i.e. if start > stop and the step is positive, or start < stop
and the step is negative).
o SequenceableCollection>>#sortBy: was renamed to #sort:. The old message
is _not_ provided for backwards-compatibility.
o The semantics of recursive directory descent were adjusted as follows:
1) the '.' and '..' directory entries are not passed; 2) for #do:, the
file is passed directly (3.1 used to pass another recursive decorator);
3) before the descent starts, the directory itself is passed to the block.
o The XML parser will ignore whitespace if placed in non-validating mode.
o The suggested way to instantiate an XML parser is now using
"SAXParser defaultParserClass", which will work with either of the
two available parsers (the existing Smalltalk parsers, and the Expat
bindings; see below).
New features (base classes):
o Floating-point rounding to integer is now correct also for very
large numbers; fix contributed by Nicolas Cellier.
o Methods have been added to Integer to print numbers with padding
to a specified width.
o New FilePath methods #owner:, #group:, #owner:group: allow setting
a file's owner and group.
o Sending mode, file time and owner setters to a recursive directory
decorator (such as `Directory working all') sets the mode/time/owner
on all files under the path.
o Speedups for hashed collections
o String>>#subStrings: accepts a single separator character or also, in
accordance with ANSI, a String holding a list of separators.
o The old instance-based exception handling has been removed. Standard
ANSI class-based exceptions have been available since GNU Smalltalk 1.8.2.
o The text-based #inspect method is now available also as
Object>>#examine and Object>>#examineOn:, so that it will also work
on arbitrary streams and will be available when a GUI is loaded.
Contributed by Stefan Schmiedl.
New features (tools):
o gst-convert can emit Squeak fileouts.
o New graphical interface VisualGST, loaded with gst-browser. The old
browser is still available, but obsolete.
o New ProfilerTools package for callgraph profiling of Smalltalk programs.
A companion gst-profile tool will create profiles in callgrind-compatible
format. Contributed by Derek Zhou.
o Packages can be downloaded and updated directly from the network. The
repository of packages is at http://smalltalk.gnu.org/project; the
repository holds the location of the package.xml files, which point to
the svn or git URL of the code.
In order to download a package with git, version 1.6.2 is required.
o SUnit supports expected failures.
New features (VM):
o Fixes in garbage collection heuristics provide improved performance on
programs allocating many long-lived objects. Contributed by Derek Zhou.
o Floating-point numbers are now read correctly.
o In idle times, GNU Smalltalk will perform incremental garbage
collection. When it finishes, GNU Smalltalk will consume zero CPU.
o Mostly rewritten Windows port. It should mostly work except for
sockets. The socket code will be rewritten (for all platforms)
for 3.3 anyway.
o Support for one-way become (Object>>#becomeForward:)
o The millisecond clock uses CLOCK_MONOTONIC where available.
New features (packages):
o Many improvements to the Gtk bindings.
o NetClients supports ESMTP commands.
o New goodie, the SandstoneDb object persistence framework.
o Swazoo upgraded to version 2.2, plus local fixes.
o The Complex package uses numerically stable algorithms
o The Continuations package provides delimited continuations via
BlockClosure>>#shift and BlockClosure>>#reset. Both methods accept
a block (1-arg for shift, 0-arg for reset).
o An XML pull parser is included as package XML-PullParser. The package
is based on the VisualWorks and Squeak pull parsers by Anthony Blakey
and Ken Treis.
o In addition to the validating XML parser, a non-validating Expat-based
parser is available in package XML-Expat. The Expat parser is
experimental, but it is very fast and supports both pull and push
operation.
Bug fixes:
o Code running as a Generator now honors exception handlers outside the
Generator block.
o Fixed copying of Dictionary to not share the underlying associations.
o Fixed ##() expressions that return a block
o EPIPE is handled correctly.
o Running on kernels without SOCK_CLOEXEC support will not fail
even if the VM was compiled on a kernel that supported it.
o The Sockets package failed to initialize when the machine was not
connected to the network; this has been fixed.
o The Transcript now uses a RecursionLock. This fixes crashes when
an exception occurred while printing a backtrace.
Miscellaneous:
o GNU Smalltalk now does not rely anymore on specific (old) versions
of libtool.
o GNU Smalltalk tries to enable Emacs modes automatically on systems
that support a site-lisp/site-start.d directory.
o REPL autocompletion includes all symbols including unary messages
(and variable names).
o Process-local variables are now stored in an IdentityDictionary rather
than a LookupTable.
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