Difference between revisions of "Release Notes (Versions history)"

Revision as of 20:10, 9 April 2016

For upcoming releases see the list of names.

not yet released (see next section for current release notes)
first release since LibertyEiffel is the official GNU Eiffel compiler
User-visible changes:
- changed Environment Variable name from SmartEiffel to LibertyEiffel (anyhow, normally it should not be necessary to set this one)
- removed linebreaks in compiler output
- many bugfixes
- GC call at exit is optional
- generic creation
Developer changes:
Known bugs:
- there is still an issue in both GC implementations (classical SEGC and BDW), if it shows up, it often yields a "Bad target type" runtime error.
- for the full list see [2]

First release as LibertyEiffel
User-visible changes:
- Added NATURAL_8, NATURAL_16, NATURAL_32, and NATURAL_64 classes. See tutorial/natural.e for examples.
- Even low-level features (i.e. external "built_in") are now checking their assertions. As an example, division by zero is now checked by assertions.
- Inlined dynamic dispatch for better performance
- A missing export clause is deprecated. Use {ANY} instead.
- New core libraries: cli, json, log, parse (beware, these libraries are not yet tuned to be used without GC)
- Improved libraries: string (with notably a new FIXED_STRING class)
- Wrapper libraries: gtk, gdk, readline, ffi...
- A new tool that can generate mocks to help unit testing
- BDW GC support
Developer changes:
- The web site now belongs to the repository
- Automatic testing tools (ET on the web, and watch_eiffeltest.sh in the shell)
- Automatic Debian packages generation
Known bugs:
- BDW GC is not well tested; currently weak references seem not to work properly; and the GC is not run at program exit (it should run all finalizers)
- Sometimes SmartEiffel's native GC behaves wrongly, analysis is welcome
- Some of the newer core libraries do not work very well when there is no GC
- See the bugs page

Again, a lot of novelties for this release:

New typing rules have been revisited and are now crystal clear. See this page for details.
Implemented a new class loading algorithm, which takes into account the "distance" between classes, thus reifying the notion of clusters and sub-clusters. Everything is trans

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 ** changed Environment Variable name from SmartEiffel to LibertyEiffel (anyhow, normally it should not be necessary to set this one)
 ** removed linebreaks in compiler output
+** many bugfixes
-** many bugfixes (including the long lasting weak references bug with the BDW GC)
 ** GC call at exit is optional
-** ZMQ library wrapper
-** new CGI library
-** new library EDC-new???
 ** generic creation
 * Developer changes:
 **
 * Known bugs:
+** there is still an issue in both GC implementations (classical SEGC and BDW), if it shows up, it often yields a "Bad target type" runtime error.
-** no (hopefully)
-** see [https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=liberty-eiffel] for the full list
+** for the full list see [https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=liberty-eiffel]
 === Adler (2013.11, named after [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Adler,_Jr. Charles Adler, Jr.]) ===