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Tip revision: c812045b6b43f7bfeca7954a47baf2dcbb8c6d8d authored by Software Heritage on 03 September 2018, 13:40:43 UTC
hal: Deposit 174 in collection hal
Tip revision: c812045
CHANGES
Caml Light 0.74:
---------------

* Typing: when typing a sequence (e1;e2), warn if e1 does not have
  type "unit".

* Standard library:
  - module string: added index_char, rindex_char, index_char_from,
    rindex_char_from.
  - module vect: added init_vect.
  - module format: added a printf facility to control the pretty-printer.
  - module float: more floating-point functions (all ANSI-C functions).
  - The iterators do_list, do_vect et al have more restricted types, e.g.
    ('a -> unit) -> 'a list -> unit instead of ('a -> 'b) -> 'a list -> unit.
  - module sys: new function sys__time to measure elapsed time.

* MS Windows port: fixed bugs in functions over graphics__image.

* libnum: square root rewritten. Many bug fixes to support 64 bits
  architectures. Lot of functions rewritten or added. More tests
  added.
  Module nat: now performs sanity checks.
  New module fnat: the same functionality as module nat, without
  sanity checks.
  The toplevel "camlnum" now comes with printers installed for the
  num types.
  Assembly code for pentium processors is now supported (on average
  this implementation is approximately 3 times faster than the pure C
  implementation) (set the variable BIGNUM_ARCH to pentium in the
  Makefile of the contrib directory).

* camllex: fixed bug causing undetected type errors in lexer definitions.

Caml Light 0.73:
---------------

* Standard library:
  - Fixed a bug with hasthbl__do_table_rev, causing #open of a module
    with multiply defined identifiers to behave incorrectly.
  - map__iter now conforms to the documentation w.r.t. old bindings.

* MS Windows port: fixed several bugs in the interactive application
  that showed up only under Win 3.1.

Caml Light 0.72:
---------------

* Parsing: fixed precedence of alphanumeric user-defined infixes,
  as well as lor, land, lxor; fixed location bug in error reporting
  involving the empty list [].

* Typing: better handling of constant or non-contractive type abbreviations
  such as type 'a t == int or type 'a t == 'a.

* Standard library:
  - The type 'a option = None | Some of 'a is now a built-in type;
  - Module "format": added ability to run several formatters with
    different output channels in parallel;
  - Module "genlex": better handling of comments and character literals;
  - Module "hashtbl": fixed memory leak caused by hashtbl__remove;
  - Module "int": added the constants max_int and min_int
  - Module "printf": added the sprintf function to output to a string
  - Module "stream": fixed unsharing bug in streams built by stream_from
  - Module "string": added the "concat" function to catenate a list of strings.

* Compilation: fixed handling of top-level exceptions in compilation
  units (e.g. let x = raise Foo;;).

* Run-time system: allocation bug for the Sys_error exception fixed;
  fixed pointer assignment bug in the parsing engine.

* MS Windows port: numerous fixes in the interactive toplevel application;
  fully automatic installation procedure.

* Emacs editing mode for Caml replaced by Ian Zimmerman's caml-mode.
  It's a complete reimplementation that offers fully automatic
  indenting and much more.

* caml-tex formatter: also available for LaTeX 2e
  (contributed by Jens Kloecker).

* X11 graphics primitives: bug fixes in event handling and
  interaction between close_graph and image reclaimation.

* MS Windows graphics primitives: blit_image, draw_image, get_image
  now working properly; drawing area no longer limited to 600x400.

* libnum: bug in square root fixed.

* libstr: fixed bug in string_before when length = 0.

* libunix: pipe bugs in open_process_in fixed; termios interface more
  POSIX compliant.


Caml Light 0.71:
---------------

* Port to MS Windows (3.1, 95, NT).

* Parsing: better handling of optional ";", concatenations (@, ^) now
  associate to the right.

* Typing: type constraints in inner lets could cause incorrect generalizations;
  now, all type variables in type constraints are considered bound at
  the outermost "let".

* Compilation: bug fix in "when" clauses in pattern-matchings on mutables.

* Standard library: fixed bug in parsing engine that generated wrong symbol
  positions for epsilon-productions; various fixes in "format".

* camlyacc: trailer text in grammar was not copied to generated file.

* libunix: added "gettimeofday", bug fixes in "select", "times",
  "open_process_in".

* libnum: bug in conversion to string fixed.

* French version for the Macintosh (thanks to Jerome Kasparian).

Caml Dim :
----------

* Added support for dimension types (integers, floats, and user built
  types)

* The programming tools : debugger, profiler, camlsearch and browser
  (example of contrib/camltk/browser) would have to be upgraded to work with
  dimensions; this has not been done, and these tools have been
  removed.


Caml Light 0.7:
--------------

* Source-level debugger with replay capabilities. Compiler support for
  the debugger added. [Unix-only]

* New contributed libraries and tools:
        - camltk: a complete X-windows toolkit based on TCL/TK.
        - camlpro: a profiler for Caml Light programs (execution counts)
        - lorder: determine ordering of .zo files at link-time

* camlbrowser: a camltk-based graphics browser for Caml sources
  and interfaces, with hypertext navigation. [Unix-only]

* Polymorphism is now restricted to values (let x = e generalizes the type of
  x only if e is syntactically a value, e.g. a constant, a variable, a
  function, a tuple of values, etc). This ensures correct, type-safe handling
  of polymorphic mutable structures.

* "Guards" in pattern-matching (match ... with pat when cond -> expr).

* Partial matches and unused match cases are correctly detected now.

* Internationalized error messages (controlled by the LANG environment
  variable; known languages so far: english, french, spanish,
  german, and italian).
  More detailed error messages.

* Various fixes in the garbage collector to fight fragmentation of the
  major heap, result in major speedups for some long-running programs.

* Generic comparisons (prefix < : 'a -> 'a -> bool). Compiler optimizations
  for comparisons on base types.

* Type-checker rewritten in bottom-up style instead of top-down style.
  Hopefully this makes type errors more understandable.

* let rec (f : ty) = ... now supported.

* New class of infix and prefix symbols supported (e.g. *=, !!, ++, with
  precedence/associativity determined by their first character).

* Syntactic sugar:
  - Alternate syntax for string access and update (s.[i], s.[i] <- c).
  - Final semicolons permitted in sequences, lists, arrays and records
    (e.g. begin ...; ...; end or [1;2;]).
  - Initial | permitted in pattern matchings and type definitions
    (e.g. function | pat -> expr | ...
     or type t = | Cstr1 | ...)
  - "&&" and "||" synonymous for "&" and "or".

* Optimized access to unqualified identifiers in symbol tables.

* Parser cleaned up a bit, reduce/reduce conflicts eliminated.

* New library modules: format (to write pretty-printers), gc (to control the
  garbage collector and obtain various statistics on memory allocation).

* The toplevel pretty-prints values and types.

* New toplevel functions: install_printer (user-defined printing functions,
  now type safe and associated with a type expression -- e.g. int list --
  not with a type constructor -- e.g. list); set_print_depth and
  set_print_length (control how much is printed).

* Better support for non-generalizable type variables in phrases:
  they no longer cause an error immediately, the check is delayed till
  the end of the compilation unit.

* Static type-checking of printf. User-defined printers supported in printf
  formats (%a and %t).

* "camlc -W" prints extra warnings (useless #open, capitalized variable, ...).

* camlyacc: more checks on grammar for missing actions, etc.
  Parsing engine now reentrant; a camlyacc-generated parser can call
  another one in one of its actions. Bug with tokens having a tuple as
  semantic attribute fixed.

* Better support for 64-bit architectures: 32-bit architectures can read
  values written on a file by a 64-bit architecture; max length of strings
  and arrays now determined by the runtime system.

* New primitive ouput_compact_value to write arbitrary values to disk in
  a more compact (but more CPU-demanding) format than output_value.

* More robust parsing of argv (some Unix kernels set argv[0] = argv[1] = file
  when a #! file is run).

* CAMLRUNPARAM environment variable to set GC parameters.

* contrib/libgraph: implemented alternate event handling methods if async I/O
  are not available; ask for system calls to be restarted if possible;
  restart read and write system calls if interrupted; better handling
  of "button up" and "mouse motion" events.

* contrib/libnums: upgraded the bignum library; better 64-bit support
  (but still has some 64-bit bugs); alternate names for num operations
  (+/ -/ */ etc).

Main incompatibilities with Caml Light 0.61:

* Polymorphic generalization has been severely restricted to eliminate
  unsoundness w.r.t. polymorphic mutables. As a consequence, several
  "let" declarations that used to be polymorphic are now monomorphic,
  which may cause type errors later. See the manual p. 54 for a complete
  description of the problem and several workarounds.

* Due to the new infix operators, extra blank space sometimes needs
  to be inserted, e.g. `x+!y' should now be written `x+ !y'
  (or better yet, `x + !y').


Caml Light 0.61:
----------------

* Pattern-matching against (C x) where C has several arguments now works
  correctly.

* The fatal error "labels_of_type" has been fixed (it was raised when
  typing e.label, where the type inferred for e is not a record type,
  but an abbreviation for a record type).

* Hashing has been rewritten to give consistent results across all 
  architectures, including when -custom is used.

* output_value and intern_value are now fully compatible across 32-bit and
  64-bit architectures. A 32-bit architecture can read values written
  on a 64-bit architecture.

* Better error message when compiling a .ml whose .mli has not been compiled.

* The preprocessed files are more compatible with cpp: (**) instead of /**/.

* Typos in library interfaces fixed.

Caml Light 0.6:
---------------

* Better handling of type abbreviations. Implementing an abstract type
  as an abbreviation now works correctly.

* Debugging mode (option -g to camlc and camllight) to get access
  to the internals of module implementations.

* 64-bit architectures are supported.

* New library modules:
        genlex    generic lexical analyser
        set       applicative sets over ordered types
        map       applicative maps over ordered types
        baltree   balanced binary trees over ordered types

* "compile" command at toplevel (especially useful in the Macintosh version).

* #directory directive.

* Better support for ISO-Latin-1 character set.

* -i option also works when compiling .mli files.

* Errors and warnings: detection of type redefinitions .ml/.mli; warning for
  partial applications in sequences

* Bug fixes: removed incorrect "optimizations" in stream parsers; incorrect
  declaration of string__compare_strings; stream__stream_get fixed;
  POPTRAP restarts correctly after signal handling.

* Optimizations: io__input_line rewritten in C.

* New functions: parsing__rhs_start, parsing__rhs_end; sys__interactive.

* New contributed libraries and tools:
        camlmode  Emacs editing mode for Caml Light
        mletags   Indexing of Caml Light source files for use with Emacs "tags"
        libnum    Arbitrary-precision arithmetic
        libstr    String operations, regular expressions

* The 80386 PC version is now DPMI-compliant, hence it can run under Windows
  (in text mode inside a DOS windows and with no graphics, though).

* More examples, including those from the book "Le langage Caml".

* libunix: tty interface (POSIX termios), popen-style functions.

Caml Light 0.5:
---------------

Language extensions:

* Streams and stream matching, for writing parsers and printers.

* Abstract types can now be implemented as type abbreviations.

* Constructors for variant types are now either constant or
non-constant, instead of having a fixed arity as before. This fixes
the nasty problem of ref(1,2) being rejected because ref has arity 1.

Extensions to the caml light environment:

* A general mechanism to link Caml Light code with C code. As a
consequence, an X-windows interface and a library of Unix system calls
are now provided.

* Two new commands: camllibr, to build libraries, and camlmktop, to
construct custom toplevel systems.

* Several new modules in the library (printf, hashtbl, random, stack,
queue, ...)

* Executable bytecode files are now machine-independent: you can run
the same bytecode file on different architectures.

Bug fixes: lots of them. The most important are:

* Pattern-matching over mutable structures is now correctly compiled:
modifying the matched structure after matching, then accessing parts
of the structure used to fail in various ways; this is now safe.

* Redefinition of exceptions is now correctly handled.

Implementation changes:

* A new garbage collector. The major collector is now incremental,
meaning that garbage collection is even less disruptive than before.

* The produced bytecode is slightly better, due to several new
optimizations in the compiler back-end.

* The linker has been separated from the compiler, and is now clever
enough to avoid linking in useless code. To support this, the format
of .zo files was changed. The new format is much more compact, loads
faster, and supports libraries.

* Autoconfiguration script.

Microcomputer ports:

* Graphics primitives.

* For the Macintosh port, the toplevel system is now a standalone
application, with its own user interface, and does not require MPW
anymore. (The batch compilers still require MPW.)

* The PC ports work in conjunction with TSR line editors.

* The 80386 PC port is now VCPI-compliant, and handles keyboard
interrupts correctly.

Main incompatibilities with Caml Light 0.41:

* Assignment operations such as :=, vect_assign, <- now return (), instead
of the new value.

* The "failure" exception from the standard library is now named "Failure".

* Searching functions from the standard library (assoc, assq, ...) now
raise "Not_found" on error, instead of "failure".

* Some library modules have been renamed or modified. The old "unix"
module is now named "sys". The new "sys" module is less Unix-specific.
Some of the functions in the old "unix" module have disappeared, other
have a slightly different interface. The old "hash" module is now
subsumed by the "hashtbl" module.


Caml Light 0.41:
----------------

* Alternate spelling for floating-point operators: +. -. *. etc.

* New library functions: io__input_line, lexing__create_lexer_string.

* io__seek*, io__pos* more efficient.


Caml Light 0.4:
---------------

* A lexer generator (in the style of lex) and a parser generator (in
  the style of yacc). These tools makes it easier to write compilers
  and similar programs. They also clean up the bootstrapping process a lot.

* Two new ports to microcomputers: to the 386 PC, and to the Amiga.
  The 386 PC version runs in 32 bit protected mode, and takes
  advantage of memory above 640K.

* Many bug fixes.

* A simpler installation procedure.

Caml Light 0.3:
---------------

* First public release.
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