T3.1

[kranz@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (David Kranz)]

   Date: Fri, 6 May 88 18:03:10 MST
   From: "Mike Coffin" <mike@arizona.edu>

   Could someone summarize the differences between 3.0 and 3.1?  Is this
   version mostly bug fixes, mostly enhancements, neither, both...

	   mike


Here is a copy of the tentative release notes:

Release notes for T3.1

Fixes:
All reported bugs in T3.0 have been fixed.  In addition the longstanding bugs
with shadowing in locales have been fixed.  The Scheme bugs have been fixed
and the scheme environment is now more complete.  See the Scheme documentation
for details.


Removals:
RECKLESSNESS no longer exists.  T now runs with the efficiency of better than
recklessness high and the safety of recklessness low (almost).


Changes in behavior:
SET on global variables is no longer expensive.

Because of a problem with interrupts and the GC, a keyboard interrupt may
not be detected.  A second interrupt will cause an immediate break, but
if a GC occurs while in the breakloop it will not be possible to continue
the interrupted procedure.

Generic arithmetic on fixnums is much faster.

The object file extension has been changed to two characters.
T3.0 object files will not run in T3.1

Additions:
(LOAD-OUT-OF-DATE-ACTION) is a switch that controls what the loader does
with a filespec without an extension.  The options are: (default warn)

binary    -- load the object file.
source    -- load the source file.
newer     -- load the most recent of object and source files.
recompile -- recompile the file if the source is newer than the object file.
warn      -- give a warning if the source is newer than the object file.
query     -- offer to recompile if the source is newer than the object file.

(ORBIT expression . locale) does expression at a time compilation, e.g.
  (orbit '(define (f x) (+ x 1))) will cause the expression to be compiled
and loaded into the (repl-env).

(CL expression) prints out assembly code for expression.


(TIME expression count) computes expression count times and prints the
virtual time used.  The count argument is optional.

LOAD-FOREIGN is now released for all systems except HP's.

Before loading a T object file with a DEFINE-FOREIGN, use
(LOAD-FOREIGN file.o) to install the Unix .o files needed.

Suspending systems is now documented.

A system is suspended as follows:

% t -h 8000000 # as big as possible

> ;; load stuff
> (gc)
> ((*value t-implementation-env 'system-suspend) filespec nil)
> (exit)


If a GC occurs during the suspend it will hang.  This means that the heap
was not big enough.

The binary distributions are a directory called tsystem.  In that directory
are a bunch of files including a script called linkt which takes a .o file
produced by suspend and creates an executable.

% cd tsystem
% linkt filespec.o newimage

If the code to be loaded before suspending a system contains DEFINE-FOREIGN
forms, files containing these forms should be loaded inside of:

(bind (((*value t-implementation-env 'make-foreign-procedure)
        (*value t-implementation-env 'make-foreign)))
  (load file1)
  ...)


In this case the linkt script must be modified to include .o files that are
referenced by DEFINE-FOREIGN expressions.



System building:  

It is possible to build a system from the sources.  The tsystem directory
contains a file, i.e. sunbuild.t which explains how.

Installation:

As in T3.0 a shell variable TSYSTEM should be defined to be the tsystem
directory.  If there are fixes to the T3.1 system, there will be a fix file
in the same place as this one.  Send your email address to t-project@yale.arpa
to receive fixes, updates, etc.

Bugs: t-version-number doesn't work anymore.

additional bugs to kranz@wheaties.ai.mit.edu