We are pleased to announce GNU Guile release 1.9.8. This is the next pre-release of what will eventually become the 2.0 release series. It provides many new noteworthy features, most notably the addition of a compiler and virtual machine. We encourage you to test them and provide feedback to `guile-de...@gnu.org'.
The Guile web page is located at http://gnu.org/software/guile/, and among other things, it contains a link to the Guile FAQ and pointers to the mailing lists. Guile is an implementation of the Scheme programming language, with support for many SRFIs, packaged for use in a wide variety of environments. In addition to implementing the R5RS Scheme standard, Guile includes a module system, full access to POSIX system calls, networking support, multiple threads, dynamic linking, a foreign function call interface, and powerful string processing. Guile can run interactively, as a script interpreter, and as a Scheme compiler to VM bytecode. It is also packaged as a library so that applications can easily incorporate a complete Scheme interpreter/VM. An application can use Guile as an extension language, a clean and powerful configuration language, or as multi-purpose "glue" to connect primitives provided by the application. It is easy to call Scheme code From C code and vice versa. Applications can add new functions, data types, control structures, and even syntax to Guile, to create a domain-specific language tailored to the task at hand. Here are the compressed sources: ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-1.9.8.tar.gz (4.9MB) Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]: ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-1.9.8.tar.gz.sig To reduce load on the main server, use a mirror listed at: http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums: bbdfe868bb1cffb2b170aa8e55aa1f39 guile-1.9.8.tar.gz 9b1ef8f920db0a4119e18f19141698782c650aa3 guile-1.9.8.tar.gz [*] You can use either of the above signature files to verify that the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this: gpg --verify guile-1.9.8.tar.gz.sig If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, then run this command to import it: gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys EA52ECF4 and rerun the `gpg --verify' command. This release was bootstrapped with the following tools: Autoconf 2.65 Automake 1.11.1 Libtool 2.2.6b Gnulib v0.0-3448-g6078aa4 This is a new release series with many new features and differences compared to 1.8. The complete list of changes compared to the 1.8.x series is available in the `NEWS' file. Changes since the 1.9.7 pre-release: ** Struct optimizations Structs underly many types in Guile, including records and objects. This release speeds up struct access and creation. ** Add libffi dependency Libffi is now required, to build the foreign function interface. See http://sourceware.org/libffi/, for more information on libffi. We are not aware of a platform that Guile runs on for which libffi is unavailable. ** Foreign function interface This release comes with a new `(system foreign)' module. Currently it provides a low level "foreign function interface" (FFI), which allows users to write Scheme code to invoke C code, without writing a single line of C code. The `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-func' procedures, which have been available for a long time, can be used to get the address of a C function as a "foreign" object at the Scheme level; using libffi, Guile can construct calls to these functions. The arguments to a C function may be integers, floating point numbers, pointers, and structs. Numbers are passed using their normal Scheme representations, and pointers and structs are represented as foreign objects. Foreign objects can be converted back and forth to/from a bytevector. They can have an associated foreign finalizer (e.g., a procedure that will reclaim any associated resources when the object becomes unreachable); alternatively, they can be finalized using a guardian. The `(system foreign)' API is currently low-level and possibly inconvenient. It will be extended to provide higher-level constructs. ** Incompatible changes to the foreign value interface introduced in 1.9.7 The API in <libguile/foreign.h> changed since 1.9.7. C extensions need recompilation. ** `dynamic-wind' compilation `dynamic-wind' now has special support from the compiler and VM. The compiler is able to inline the body of a `dynamic-wind', making it more efficient. The run-time support is provided by the `wind' and `unwind' VM instructions. ** New module: `(ice-9 vlist)' This module provides an implementation of Bagwell's VLists and VList-based hash lists ("VHashes"). VLists are a list data structure that provides constant-time random access and length computation logarithmic in the number of elements. VLists also use less storage space than standard Scheme linked lists. VHashes are a functional dictionary type similar to association lists. However, unlike association lists, accessing a value given its key is typically a constant-time operation. VHashes are now used in a few places of the compiler. ** New procedures: `getaddrinfo' and family Bindings for the POSIX getaddrinfo(3) host name and service lookup function are available. This function is now recommended over `gethostname' and friends as it's more expressive and can return a sorted list of addresses, as opposed to a single address. ** Tutorial deleted The tutorial was removed. It was incomplete, outdated, and contained C examples that were no longer valid. The reference manual, on the other hand, contains up-to-date examples and documentation. ** And of course, the usual collection of bugfixes Interested users should see the ChangeLog for more information. You can follow Guile development in the Git repository and on the Guile mailing lists. Guile builds from the `master' branch of Git have version number 1.9.x. Guile versions with an odd middle number, e.g., 1.9.*, are unstable development versions. Even middle numbers indicate stable versions. This has been the case since the 1.3.* series. Please report bugs to `bug-gu...@gnu.org'. We also welcome reports of successful builds, which can be sent to the same email address. Ludovic Courtès, on behalf of the Guile team.
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