~ chicken-core (master) /NEWS


   16.0.1
   2
   3- Core libraries
   4  - Writing to an output bytevector could write beyond allocated range,
   5    as the buffer wasn't resized large enough.
   6  - The default range used in `bytes->string' was calculated incorrectly.
   7  - Fixed various bugs in the implementation of the use of explicit port 
   8    methods for reading bytevectors in custom input ports.
   9  - Fixed implementation of `read-buffered' for string input-ports.
  10
  116.0.0
  12
  13- Core libraries
  14  - All modules specified by the R7RS small language are now available in
  15    the core system.
  16  - The internal string representation has been converted to UTF-8,
  17    making strings fully UNICODE capable.
  18  - The (chicken blob) module has been replaced with (chicken bytevector),
  19    containing R7RS compatible bytevector operations. Bytevectors are
  20    now fully equivalent to SRFI-4 u8vectors.
  21  - The read-syntax for blobs (`#${...}') has been removed. Bytevectors
  22    can be read using `#u8(...)' or `#u8"..."'.
  23  - `char-name' now allows removing a named character definition.
  24  - `open-input-file' and `open-output-file' accept a file encoding,
  25    supported are currently UTF-8 (the default) and Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1).
  26  - `file-read', `file-write', 'set-pseudo-random-seed!' and `random-bytes'
  27    require a bytevector argument and do not accept strings.
  28  - `process-fork', `process-run', `process' and `process*' return now
  29    a process-object instead of a PID, use process record accessors to
  30    retrieve exit-status and input/output ports. `process-wait' and
  31    `process-signal' accept either a PID or a process object as
  32    argument.
  33  - File-locking operations in the (chicken file posix) module now use the
  34    flock(2) system call, operator over whole files, are thread-safe and
  35    use a simpler interface. `file-test-lock' has been removed.
  36  - `read-u8vector', `read-u8vector!' and `write-u8vector' have been
  37    removed, use the equivalent operations from the (chicken io)
  38    module instead.
  39  - Added `read-bytevector', `read-bytevector!' and `write-bytevector'
  40    to the (chicken io) module.
  41  - Removed `set-port-name!', use the SRFI-17 setter for `port-name'
  42    instead.
  43  - Added `port-encoding' to the (chicken port) module.
  44  - `make-input-port' and `make-output-port' take their optional
  45    port methods as keyword arguments now.
  46  - Added `make-binary-input-port' and `make-binary-output-port'.
  47  - Locatives on strings are now indexed by code-point, not byte.
  48  - `symbol-escape' now also controls whether symbols are printed in
  49    escaped ("|...|") mode or not.
  50  - Symbol printing is stricter in deciding when symbols should be escaped
  51    or not.
  52  - The following primitives have been moved from (chicken base)
  53    to R7RS modules:
  54    - `exact-integer?`, `exact-integer-sqrt?', `vector-copy!',
  55      `make-parameter', `call/cc', `open-input-string',
  56      `open-output-string', `get-output-string', `input-port-open?',
  57      `output-port-open?', `parameterize' and `port?' moved from the
  58      (chicken base) to the (scheme base) module.
  59    - `case-lambda' moved from (chicken base) to (scheme case-lambda).
  60    - `features' moved from (chicken platform) to (scheme base).
  61    - `write-string' moved from (chicken io) to (scheme base) and its
  62      signature changed to the R7RS one.
  63    - `define-record-type' moved to (scheme base) and is generative,
  64      to be compliant with R7RS.
  65  - `syntax-error' has been removed from (chicken syntax) and is now a
  66    macro and part of (scheme base).
  67  - `record-instance?' and `make-record-instance' accept non-symbolic
  68    type specifiers to support generative record types.
  69  - The new (chicken number-vector) module now provides a superset of
  70    SRFI-4, including 64 and 128-bit complex number vectors, the `srfi-4'
  71    module is still available but exports only those procedures as are
  72    specified in SRFI-4.
  73  - The second (optional) parameter for `load' and `load-relative' may be
  74    either an environment or an evaluation procedure.
  75  - The module aliases `srfi-0', `srfi-6', `srfi-9', `srfi-11', `srfi-23',
  76    `srfi-39' and `srfi-98' have been removed (all of these are covered by
  77    R7RS).
  78  - The modules `r4rs', `r5rs', `r4rs-null' and `r5rs-null' have been
  79    renamed to `(scheme XXX)'.
  80  - Hexadecimal escape sequences in strings and extended symbols must be
  81    terminated by the `;' character, following R7RS.
  82  - The `#ci'/`#cs' read syntaxes have been removed, use
  83    `#![no-]fold-case'
  84    markers instead.
  85  - `include' and `include-relative' accept multiple filenames,
  86    `include-ci' has been added.
  87  - Added `include-path' to (chicken platform) module.
  88  - Added `number-vector-data' to (chicken memory representation) module.
  89  - `define-library' has been extended to support the `export-all'
  90    specification.
  91  - The platform-identifier "mingw32" has been renamed to "mingw".
  92  - Library procedures that return paths now always convert them to
  93    contain forward slashes, 'make-pathname' always uses "/" for path
  94    separation.
  95  - Added `expand1' to (chicken syntax) module for expanding a macro
  96    only once, also added the ",x1" command to "csi" for this.
  97  - Added the (chicken version) module.
  98  - `delete-file*' and `delete-file' now behave consistently with
  99    broken symlinks.
 100  - `number->string' now accepts bases up to 36, where before it only accepted
 101    bases up to 16 (thanks to Diego A. Mundo)
 102  - `string->number' now handles ambiguous cases involving the character "i"
 103    in bases higher than 18 more consistently.
 104  - `make-rectangular' returns a complex number if the imaginary part
 105    is inexact zero.
 106  - `string->number' and the reader accept and handle correctly complex 
 107    numbers with a negative inexact zero as the imaginary part.
 108  - `imag-part' returns exact zero when given a non-complex number.
 109  - `max' and `min' ignore nan values when given any non-nan argument.
 110
 111- Syntax expander
 112  - `syntax-rules' attempts to better support tail patterns with ellipses
 113     (#1736).
 114
 115- FFI changes
 116  - Strings and symbols passed to foreign code are not copied, they are
 117    passed directly, any mutations done by external code will be visible on the
 118    Scheme side.
 119  - Complex numbers, C structs and unions can now be passed directly as
 120    arguments and returned as results when interfacing to C code.
 121
 122- Tools
 123  - The compiler and interpreter option `-r5rs-syntax' has been renamed to
 124    `-r7rs-syntax' and does not disable extended symbol syntax ("|...|")
 125    anymore.
 126  - The "feathers" debugger has been removed from the core and is now
 127    available as an egg.
 128  - The `set-describer!' procedure has been removed from the `csi' module.
 129  - The "csc" program now accepts tool flags (e.g. -compiler, -cc etc)
 130    which have paths with spaces in them without requiring the user to
 131    double-quote them.  As a consequence, it no longer accepts programs
 132    with space separated flags for tool arguments (e.g.
 133    "csc -cc 'gcc -debug'" etc).  If this is desired, write a short
 134    shell script which calls the tool with your flags.
 135  - `chicken-install' now locks the cache directory during
 136    egg-installation.
 137  - Added component type `installed-c-object' to egg format.
 138  - The `csc-options' and `link-options' configuration clauses in egg
 139    specifications now allow `custom-config' forms to produce arbitrary
 140    computed compiler and linker options.
 141  - Added scripts/smoke-test.sh to automate basic testing of chicken-core
 142
 143- Compiler
 144  - Added the `-merge-reusable-closures' and `-merge-shareable-closures'
 145    options that enable closure reuse and sharing to reduce memory 
 146    allocations. These options are enabled automatically by optimization
 147    levels 1 (reuse) and 2 (sharing), respectively.
 148
 149- Build system
 150  - A "configure" script is now used to prepare the sources for building
 151    everything. This simplifies the use of "make", allows more elaborate
 152    platform sanity checks and follows conventions.
 153  - On Windows the minimal "mingw" build is not supported anymore, a POSIX
 154    shell and the basic sete of command-line utilities is now required
 155    (formerly the "mingw-msys" build). Chris Wellons "w64devkit" is now
 156    the recommended toolchain. The platform identifier "mingw-msys" has
 157    been renamed to "mingw".
 158  - The system can now be built with "zig cc" as a C compiler/linker
 159    replacement.
 160
 1615.4.0
 162
 163- Security fixes
 164  - CVE-2022-45145: Neutralize possible escape characters in egg metadata
 165    to avoid arbitrary OS command injection during egg installation,
 166    reported by Vasilij Schneidermann who also provided the necessary
 167    patches to mitigate this problem.
 168  - The runtime option "-:b" has been removed, as it was deemed too
 169    insecure to be able to drop to a REPL from the CLI of any program.
 170  - Runtime option processing has been hardened: processing now stops on
 171    the first non-runtime option or after "-:", whichever comes first.
 172
 173- Core libraries
 174  - Fix type declarations for `file-select` (reported by Anton Idukov).
 175  - Change `create-temporary-{file,directory}` fallback code on Windows to
 176    use %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Local/Temp if that environment variable is set.
 177  - Added new thread-safe API for POSIX signals ("make-signal-handler",
 178    "signal-ignore" and "signal-default") and deprecated the existing one.
 179  - Added "make-finalizer" to execute finalizers in a thread-safe
 180    manner.
 181  - Added weak pairs to (chicken base), with similar behaviour to Chez Scheme.
 182  - Added "locative-index", kindly contributed by John Croisant.
 183  - Added "fp*+" (fused multiply-add) to "chicken.flonum" module
 184    (suggested by Christian Himpe).
 185  - Added flonum-specific hyperbolic functions and their inverse to
 186    "chicken.flonum" module (suggested by Christian Himpe).
 187  - The `process-execute` procedure now sets argv[0] to the unmodified
 188    filename. Previously, the directory part would be stripped.
 189  - Added support for embedded strings and characters in SRFI-4 vector
 190    literals.
 191  - read-with-source-info is now documented and officially supported,
 192    from the (chicken syntax) module.  read/source-info is still exported
 193    from the undocumented internal (chicken compiler support) module, but
 194    using it from there is deprecated.
 195  - Added "export/rename" to (chicken module) for renaming identifiers on
 196    export.
 197  - The values of the TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP environment variables are no
 198    longer memoized (fixes #1830).
 199  - Condition objects produced by procedures that change errno now have
 200    an `errno' property.
 201  - Deprecated "chicken-home" and added "include-path" in the
 202    chicken.platform module.
 203  - Irregex has been updated to upstream 0.9.11 plus an additional fix
 204    for sre->string.  The 0.9.11 release fixes a few problems related to
 205    utf-8 handling (which should not affect CHICKEN) and expands the
 206    definition for the 'whitespace character set to include vertical tab,
 207    carriage return and form feed.
 208
 209- Tools
 210  - Fix scripts generated by `chicken-install` on Windows to not quote `>>`
 211    when echoing into files which would result in empty egg-info files
 212    (reported and fixed by Jani Hakala).
 213  - The -R option for csi and csc now accepts list-notation like
 214    e.g. (srfi 1).  Fixes #1809, reported by Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe.
 215  - Fix shell quotation in options passed from csc to other tools.
 216    Fixes #1302, reported by Xin Wang.
 217  - The -prelude and -postlude options for csc work properly again.
 218  - chicken-install now retrieves the latest egg version when
 219    instructed to install an egg that's already installed (#1802).
 220  - When `location' is specified in setup.defaults, chicken-install
 221    will consider two location layouts when looking for eggs:
 222    <location>/<egg> and <location>/<egg>/<version>.
 223  - chicken-install: Fix #1684 (programs that specify
 224    component-dependencies should build-depend on their import
 225    libraries).
 226  - chicken-install now caches eggs installed from local locations.
 227  - chicken-install now accepts the -location command line option
 228    (short: -l) to specify local directories where to get egg sources
 229    from.
 230  - chicken-install now gives a warning on unexpected properties (#1492).
 231  - chicken-install now uses a directory specific for cache metadata
 232    (VERSION, STATUS and TIMESTAMP files) to avoid collisions with source
 233    files on case-insensitive file systems like on MacOS (#1753, reported
 234    by Kon Lovett).
 235
 236- Syntax expander
 237  - When passing a module as an environment to eval, correctly resolve
 238    identifiers in macro expansions (#1295 reported by Caolan McMahon).
 239  - Internal definitions honor rebindings of core special forms (#1132).
 240  - Globally defining an identifier previously bound to a macro now fully
 241    shadows the macro (#1166, reported by Michele La Monaca).
 242
 243- Compiler
 244  - When emitting types files, the output list is now sorted, to ensure
 245    deterministic build output (fixes #1783, reported by "ss2").
 246
 247- Build system
 248  - Fix compiler warnings about zero-sized `memset` (reported by Claude Marinier).
 249  - Disable broken test-create-temporary-file on Windows (reported by "jjhoo").
 250  - Drop use of XCODE_... environment variables on MacOS.
 251  - Add build directory to rpath on MacOS so that the test suite picks up correct
 252    libchicken, even if CHICKEN is already installed (thanks to Christian Himpe).
 253  - Default "cc" on BSD systems for building CHICKEN to avoid ABI problems
 254    when linking with C++ code.
 255
 256- Runtime system
 257  - Make line numbers available for error output and during syntax expansion
 258    in the interpreter as well as the compiler.
 259
 2605.3.0
 261
 262- Core libraries
 263  - In (chicken process-context posix), the setters for current-user-id,
 264    current-effective-user-id and current-group-id now check that the
 265    new user/group value is a fixnum instead of blindly passing it on
 266    to the C implementation (which would cause bogus user ids to be set).
 267    Fixes #1787, thanks to Christopher Brannon.
 268  - The srfi-17 module now exports the `getter-with-setter` and `setter`
 269    procedures, not just the set! macro (thanks to Lassi Kortela)
 270  - Fix hang in chicken-install -update-db on Windows (thanks to Mark
 271    Fisher for reporting and Jani Hakala for debugging and patch).
 272  - Fixed an inadvertant error during error reporting in the `numerator`
 273    and `denominator` procedures when passed non-finite flonums (#1730).
 274  - Fixed a bug where optimisations for `irregex-match?` would cause
 275    runtime errors due to the inlined specialisations not being
 276    fully-expanded (see #1690).
 277  - Irregex has been updated to upstream 0.9.10, which fixes behaviour
 278    of irregex-replace/all with positive lookbehind so all matches are
 279    replaced instead of only the first (reported by Kay Rhodes), and
 280    a regression regarding replacing empty matches which was introduced
 281    by the fixes in 0.9.7 (reported by Sandra Snan).  Also, the
 282    http-url shorthand now allows any top-level domain and the old
 283    "top-level-domain" now also supports "edu" (fixed by Sandra Snan).
 284    Also, a problem was fixed with capturing groups inside a kleene
 285    star, which could sometimes return incorrect parts of the match.
 286    Finally, "bol" handling was fixed to handle newlines consistently
 287    so that multiple matches don't overlap (reported by Sandra Snan).
 288  - current-milliseconds has been deprecated in favor of the name
 289    current-process-milliseconds, to avoid confusion due to naming
 290    of current-milliseconds versus current-seconds, which do something
 291    quite different.  Also, its definition has been tweaked to
 292    guarantee that it returns the time since process startup.  On
 293    Windows, it will now return sane values after 24 days of uptime.
 294    On UNIX, the values returned will be precise to the millisecond
 295    instead of rounded down to the nearest second at startup (which
 296    would result in erratic startup times).
 297  - The default mode for files created by `file-open' has been changed
 298    to 0666 (plus whatever change the effective umask applies), rather
 299    than 0744 (see #1698).
 300  - Fixed type database entry for "log" with second arg (fixes #1725).
 301  - Made topological-sort behave better when dependency target is listed
 302    multiple times by concatenating dependencies (fixes #1185).
 303
 304- Module system
 305  - Reexported macros now work when the reexporting module redefines
 306    identifiers from the original (fixes #1757, reported by Sandra Snan).
 307  - When using "except" in "import" to omit reexported macros,
 308    they are really not imported (#1771, reported by Sandra Snan).
 309
 310- Runtime system
 311  - Sleeping primordial thread doesn't forget mutations made to
 312    parameters in interrupt handlers anymore. (See #1638. Fix
 313    contributed by Sebastien Marie)
 314  - A feature corresponding to the word size is available
 315    regardless of the word size (#1693)
 316  - The default maximum heap size on 64-bit platforms is now the
 317    theoretical maximum addressable memory size (#1675).  Use -:m
 318    if you would like to override this at run-time.
 319  - Deprecated C_(a_i_current_)milliseconds in favor of
 320    C_(a_i_)current_process_milliseconds to match the Scheme-level
 321    deprecation of current-milliseconds.
 322  - Officially deprecated C_pair() in favor of C_a_pair(); it has
 323    been deprecated for years.
 324  - At program cleanup, finalizers are only forced when the live
 325    finalizer count is non-zero
 326  - The symbol `srfi-87` has been added to the list of built-in
 327    feature identifiers.
 328  - Garbage collection algorithm has been changed to reduce thrashing
 329    when heap is almost full, by growing the heap sooner.  A new -:hf
 330    option was added to tweak when heap growth should occur.
 331  - Added `-:R' runtime option to initialize rand() state
 332    deterministically (should help with #1650 and benchmarking).
 333
 334- Compiler
 335  - Statically linked programs using built-in libraries are supported
 336    again (fixes #1788, a regression from 5.2.0).
 337  - Avoid re-using argvector when inline rest operations are being
 338    used in CPS calls (#1703, thanks to Jakob L. Keuze).
 339  - An `emit-types-file` declaration has been added, which corresponds
 340    to the compiler flag of the same name (#1644, thanks to Marco Maggi
 341    for the suggestion).
 342  - Fixed a bug caused by a bad interaction between two optimizations:
 343    argvector rest ops would be applied even if a procedure already got
 344    its rest arg consed at the call site (#1756, thanks to Sandra Snan).
 345
 346- Build system
 347  - Fix build with tcc.
 348  - Fix a few tests on Windows so the suite passes once again.
 349  - Auto-configure at build time on most platforms. Cross-compilation
 350    still requires PLATFORM to be set, and it can still be provided
 351    manually, but it is no longer required in the common case.
 352  - Fix Linux to MingW cross-compilation (#1768, thanks to Théo Cavignac)
 353  - The `clean' target for make now also removes build configuration files.
 354  - The `distclean' target for make has been removed (now `clean' does what
 355    `distclean' used to do).
 356
 357- Tools
 358  - Fix a problem with egg installation scripts on Windows, where the
 359    platform was not correctly identified, depending on the shell used
 360    during installation of the core system (thanks again to Mark Fisher
 361    for reporting and helping in finding the culprit).
 362  - Fixed a bug in chicken-install (#1744) that would cause
 363    `Error: (string->number) bad argument type: #!eof` in some cases.
 364  - If chicken-install has a program prefix/suffix, it now writes to a
 365    cache directory matching its program name (#1713, thanks to Alice Maz)
 366  - Fixed bug in chicken-install regarding variable quotation on UNIX-like
 367    systems which prevented installation into paths with spaces (#1685).
 368  - Fixed a similar bug in chicken-install for paths with spaces on mingw
 369    and mingw-msys (#1727, thanks to Josh Helzer for reporting and Vasilij
 370    Schneidermann for the patch).
 371
 372- Module system
 373  - Fixed a memory leak when calling (import) multiple times in a row
 374    on the same module (#1772; reported by "plugd" on IRC).
 375
 3765.2.0
 377
 378- Core libraries
 379  - Fix `memory-statistics` by returning semi-space bytes and used
 380    semi-space bytes like the documentation says. Old implementation
 381    returned full-heap size and (full-heap - used-semi-space).
 382  - for-each and map now behave consistently in compiled and interpreted
 383    mode, like in SRFI-1.  They now stop when the shortest list is
 384    exhausted instead of raising an exception (fixes #1422).
 385  - There is now a srfi-88 module which contains just the three
 386    procedures from the (chicken keyword) module defined by the SRFI.
 387  - A feature identifier named "srfi-88" is now registered.
 388  - The procedures `record-printer` and `set-record-printer!` and a
 389    corresponding SRFI-17 setter have been added. These deprecate
 390    `define-record-printer` which isn't a "real" definition (see #1294).
 391  - On Windows, `decompose-directory` no longer crashes when a drive
 392    letter is present in the supplied path string.
 393  - irregex-replace[/all] have been fixed for empty matches, so they
 394    will no longer drop characters and ignore the replacement (#1661).
 395  - Irregex has been updated to upstream 0.9.7, which also improves
 396    how empty matches are treated in irregex-fold and irregex-split.
 397
 398- Runtime system
 399  - Quoted empty keywords like ||: and :|| are now read like prescribed
 400    by SRFI-88 in the corresponding keyword mode.  Symbols containing
 401    quoted empty prefixes or suffixes like ||:abc and abc:|| will be
 402    read correctly as symbols now (fixes #1625, thanks to Andy Bennett).
 403  - IEEE floating point negative zero is now properly handled: it can
 404    be read, written and distinguished by eqv? and equal?, but not =
 405    (fixes #1627, thanks to John Cowan).
 406  - ##sys#check-exact and its C implementations C_i_check_exact and
 407    C_i_check_exact_2 have been deprecated (see also #1631).
 408  - When garbage collector is manually invoked from a finalizer, raise
 409    an error instead of hanging forever (fixes #1586).
 410  - define-record-type will now give an error if the constructor
 411    definition refers to field that's not listed elsewhere (see #1633)
 412  - Added new -:hu option to set the memory usage low watermark
 413    percentage at which the heap should be shrunk, and changed the
 414    calculation to actually reflect this (see #1379).
 415
 416- Compiler
 417  - Fixed a bug in lfa2 pass which caused "if" or "cond" nodes to be
 418    incorrectly unboxed if the "else" branch had a flonum result type
 419    (#1624, thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
 420  - Inline files no longer refer to unexported foreign stub functions
 421    (fixes #1440, thanks to "megane").
 422  - In some cases, rest argument lists do not need to be reified, which
 423    should make using optional arguments and case-lambda faster (#1623).
 424  - Values from foreign types which have an argument or return value
 425    converter are no longer inferred to have the Scheme type which
 426    corresponds to the raw foreign type, which was incorrect (#1649).
 427
 428- Module system
 429  - Trying to export a foreign variable, define-inlined procedure or
 430    define-constant variable gives a friendly error instead of saying
 431    the variable doesn't exist (fixes #1346).
 432  - When modules are registered, they no longer pollute the global
 433    environment with imports made in that module (fixes #1548)
 434
 435- Tools
 436  - The new "-module-registration" options causes module registration
 437    code to always be included in the program, even when it has also
 438    been emitted as a separate file (for example with "-J").
 439  - chicken-install now correctly checks server response code to avoid
 440    interpreting error response bodies (like 404, 500) as Scheme code.
 441  - chicken-install now follows HTTP redirects when downloading eggs.
 442  - chicken-install will now change to the correct drive before
 443    attempting to change to the egg directory (fixes #1647).
 444
 445
 4465.1.0
 447
 448- Core libraries
 449  - Symbols ending or starting with a colon are now always pipe-quoted
 450    when written by `write` to ensure they can be read back with a
 451    different keyword-style setting.
 452  - Read-write invariance of special symbols starting with #! other
 453    than #!key, #!rest or #!optional is now preserved (#1572).
 454  - When using (set-file-position!) on a port, its EOF status will now
 455    be reset.
 456  - In (chicken file posix), the values of perm/irgrp, perm/iwgrp,
 457    perm/ixgrp, perm/iroth, perm/iwoth and perm/ixoth are now correctly
 458    defined (they were all for "usr"; #1602, thanks to Eric Hoffman).
 459  - In (chicken file posix), `file-truncate` now accepts also accepts
 460    port objects, for consistency with other file procedures.
 461    All such procedures from (chicken file posix) now have the correct
 462    types in types.db (fixes #1609, thanks to Robert Jensen).
 463  - Add the system-config-directory and system-cache-directory procedures
 464    in the chicken.platform module. These procedures follow the XDG
 465    specification and also give sensible results on Windows.
 466  - Fix get-environment from (chicken process-context) to raise an
 467    error when passed #f instead of segfaulting.
 468  - Qualified symbols (##foo#bar style) are no longer encoded by a
 469    byte prefix inside the symbol name.  This ensures read-write
 470    invariance of symbols which start with a low-byte character
 471    (fixes #1077, except for keywords, which start with NUL bytes).
 472  - Fix a missing export (list->s64vector) in SRFI-4.
 473
 474- Runtime system
 475  - Keywords are now distinct types; they are not a subtype of symbols.
 476  - Use arc4random on FreeBSD (thanks to Tobias Kortkamp and gahr)
 477  - Removed the unused, undocumented (and incorrect!) C functions
 478    C_delete_symbol_table and C_set_symbol_table.
 479  - Continuations which discard additional values beyond the first no
 480    longer accept multiple values via direct invocation after being
 481    captured through `call/cc`, only via `values` (revert of #1390,
 482    due to #1601)
 483  - SRFI-4 vector predicates, reference, set and length procedures
 484    should now be faster in tight loops as they're inlineable (#757).
 485  - Keywords are now interned in a separate keyword table, not in the
 486    standard symbol table.  This brings full read-write invariance
 487    for symbols (they can now also start with NUL bytes).  Keywords
 488    no longer have plists.  Fixes #1576.
 489  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 11.
 490
 491- Compiler
 492  - Restored optimized implementations of =, +, -, /, * and quotient in
 493    fixnum-arithmetic mode (fixes #1604 mostly; thanks to "chickendan").
 494  - Added an optimization pass for reducing the amount of boxing of
 495    intermediate floating point values, enabled by the "-lfa2" compiler
 496    option.
 497  - The "lfa2" pass is now enabled at optimization levels 2 or higher.
 498
 499- Module system
 500  - When you try to import the module you are currently defining into
 501    itself, an error will be raised. This prevents an infinite loop in
 502    the compiler when later trying to import that same module (fixes
 503    #1506, thanks to Kristian Lein-Mathisen).
 504
 505- Foreign function interface
 506  - Improved hygiene in FFI macro expansions, which means you don't
 507     have to import "scheme" or "(chicken base)" for them to work.
 508
 509- Type system
 510  - It is now possible to quote free variables in type declarations,
 511     which acts as shorthand for `forall' (thanks to "megane")
 512
 513- Tools
 514  - csi now uses (system-config-directory) to find csirc and falls back to
 515    $HOME/.csirc when needed.
 516  - chicken-install now uses (system-config-directory) to find a user
 517    defined setup.defaults file ; it also uses (system-cache-directory)
 518    for its egg cache directory when the CHICKEN_EGG_CACHE environment
 519    variable is not defined.
 520
 521- Egg specifications
 522  - Allows "cond-expand" and "error" forms in egg specification files.
 523  - Add "c-object" and "object" properties to link separately compiled
 524     C objects into CHICKEN code.
 525
 526
 5275.0.0
 528
 529- Runtime system
 530  - Added support for the full numeric tower, including various new
 531    procedures taken from the "numbers" egg.  All calculations will
 532    now return exact numbers where possible, so code relying on flonums
 533    being returned may need to be changed if rational numbers do not
 534    provide the desired performance.
 535  - Port directionality has been generalized from a simple input/output
 536    flag to a bitmap, to allow for multidirectional ports.
 537  - Weak symbol GC is faster, simpler, and can now collect all
 538    unreferenced symbols instead of a maximum of 997 per major GC.
 539  - The -:w option has been removed; symbols are now always collected.
 540  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 9.
 541  - Continuations which discard additional values beyond the first now
 542    also accept multiple values via direct invocation after being
 543    captured through `call/cc`, not just via `values` (#1390)
 544  - Removed the deprecated C_locative_ref and C_mutate2 C functions.
 545  - The trace buffer no longer holds on to thread objects, allowing them to
 546    be garbage collected sooner (#1356, thanks to Kristian Lein-Mathisen)
 547  - On Cygwin and MinGW, the "build-platform" now corresponds to the
 548    tool chain used (gnu, clang, unknown) like on *nix, while the
 549    software-version is now "cygwin" or "mingw32" instead of "unknown".
 550    This also means the features list will now contain the tool chain
 551    on all platforms.
 552  - Symbols starting with #% are no longer treated specially and need
 553    to be quoted with pipes. This makes the "%" sign available for use
 554    in custom/user-defined sharp-sign read syntax.
 555
 556- Compiler
 557  - Fixed an off by one allocation problem in generated C code for (list ...).
 558  - The "-scrutinize" compiler option has been removed.
 559  - The "-module" compiler option (aliased as "-m") now expects a module name.
 560  - The generated C output of the compiler is now deterministic: it
 561    will be bit-for-bit identical when compiling the same Scheme file
 562    with the same version of the compiler.
 563  - the "-consult-type-file" and "-emit-type-file" options have been renamed
 564    to "-consult-types-file" and "-emit-types-file", respectively.
 565
 566- Tools
 567  - The new "-link" option to csc allows linking with objects from extensions.
 568  - The new "-libdir" option to csc allows overriding the runtime library
 569    directory.
 570  - The ambiguous "-l<libname>" option for csc has been removed (#1193).
 571  - Removed deprecated "-n" shorthand for "-emit-inline-file" from csc.
 572  - Removed "chicken-bug" tool.
 573
 574- Core libraries
 575  - Removed support for memory-mapped files (posix), queues
 576    (data-structures), binary-search (data-structures), scan-input-lines
 577    (utils), group-information (posix) object-eviction (lolevel), and
 578    compile-file (utils). These are now available as eggs.
 579  - Removed the srfi-1, srfi-13, srfi-14, srfi-18, srfi-69, and utils
 580    units. These are now available as eggs.
 581  - Added the `executable-pathname` procedure for retrieving a path to
 582    the currently-running executable.
 583  - Removed all support for SWIG.
 584  - Removed interrupts-enabled declaration specifier.
 585  - `sleep` now suspends the current thread when threading is enabled,
 586    otherwise it sleeps the process. The new `process-sleep` procedure
 587    in unit posix can be used to sleep the process unconditionally.
 588  - `with-error-output-to-port' from the ports module has been renamed
 589    to the more common `with-error-to-port', and `with-error-to-string'
 590    has been added for completeness (thanks to Michael Silver).
 591  - A new `make-bidirectional-port' procedure has been added to the
 592    ports unit that will combine separate input- and output- ports into
 593    a single bidirectional port.
 594  - New `input-port-open?` and `output-port-open?` procedures have been
 595    added for testing whether a port is open in a specific direction.
 596  - An `include-relative` form has been added to the (chicken base) module.
 597    This works like `load-relative` but for textual inclusion.
 598  - Keywords are now always written in "portable" style by WRITE, so
 599    that the reader's keyword style doesn't need to match the writer's.
 600  - The environment variable `CHICKEN_PREFIX` has been removed.
 601  - Added the `glob->sre` procedure to the irregex library.
 602  - Removed the `get-host-name' and `system-information' procedures.
 603    These are available in the "system-information" egg.
 604  - Removed the `eval-when`, `select` and `ensure` macros.  These are
 605    available in the "miscmacros" egg.
 606  - Removed the require-extension-for-syntax macro.
 607  - Renamed bit-set? to bit->boolean because of swapped argument order
 608    with respect to SRFI-33 and SRFI-60, which was confusing (fixes
 609    #1385, thanks to Lemonboy).
 610  - file-{read,write,execute}-access will now raise an exception when
 611    the file doesn't exist or some other non-access related problem is
 612    detected (fixes #1386, thanks to Vasilij Schneidermann).
 613  - `change-file-mode` was renamed to set-file-permissions! and SRFI-17
 614    generalized set! support has been added for `file-permissions`.
 615    This procedure now also accepts a file descriptor or a port.
 616  - `file-permissions` now returns one value: the permission integer.
 617  - `read-file` has been renamed to `read-list`.
 618  - `read-all` was dropped, as `read-string` with #f as its NUM argument
 619     is equivalent.
 620  - `read-lines` and `read-all` no longer accept a string naming a file,
 621     only ports.
 622  - The procedures for random numbers have been reimplemented;
 623    access to system-specific entropy is available, together with a reasonably
 624    good pseudo random number generator (WELL512).
 625  - `glob` now returns an empty list for non-existent or inaccessible
 626    directories, instead of erroring out.
 627  - `file-copy' and `file-move' have been renamed to `copy-file' and
 628    `move-file', for consistency with `delete-file' and `rename-file'.
 629  - `rename-file' now refuses to overwrite an existing file unless an
 630    optional "clobber" argument is provided.
 631  - The `r4rs` module no longer exports `eval`, which was not in R4RS.
 632  - `process`, `process*` and `process-execute` now expect lists of the form
 633    (("NAME" . "VALUE") ...) instead of the previous (("NAME=VALUE") ...)
 634    as their environment argument.
 635  - `repository-path` is now a parameter containing a list of strings instead
 636    of a string, as the search path for libraries can now contain multiple
 637    directories.
 638  - `file-read-access?`, `file-write-access?` and `file-execute-access?` have
 639    been renamed `file-readable?`, `file-writable?` and `file-executable?`
 640    into the (chicken file) module.
 641
 642- Module system
 643  - The compiler has been modularised, for improved namespacing.  This
 644    means names from the compiler should not leak out into the compiled
 645    program's (macro) namespace anymore.
 646  - The core units have been converted to modules under the "chicken"
 647    namespace.
 648  - Added support for list-style library names.
 649  - The "use" and "use-for-syntax" special forms have been removed
 650    in favor of "import" and "import-for-syntax" to reduce confusion.
 651  - Module imports are now lexically scoped: identifiers provided by
 652    an (import ...) inside (let ...) won't be visible outside that let.
 653  - Modules implementing an interface can now correctly export extra
 654    identifiers (bug reported by Martin Schneeweis, fix by "megane").
 655
 656- Syntax expander
 657  - Removed support for (define-syntax (foo e r c) ...), which was
 658    undocumented and not officially supported anyway.
 659  - Removed support for normal "lambda" forms as syntax transformers,
 660    which has been deprecated since 4.8.0.
 661  - define and friends are now aggressively rejected in "expression
 662    contexts" (i.e., anywhere but toplevel or as internal defines).
 663  - define-record and define-record-type now create record types
 664    which are tagged with the module in which they're defined, so
 665    predicates no longer return #t for records with the same tag
 666    defined in another module. This tag is now also available under
 667    an identifier that matches the record type name (fixes #1342).
 668  - `include` now splices included expressions in the context in which
 669    the inclusion appears and does not treat the expressions as toplevel
 670    expressions by default.
 671
 672- Eggs management
 673  - Egg-installation and building has been completely overhauled.
 674  - .meta + .setup files have been merged into a single declarative
 675    ".egg" file.
 676  - More static checks for egg descriptions, simplified generation
 677    of OS-specific build + install commands that is (hopefully)
 678    more practical for package maintainers.
 679  - Egg sources are cached locally to reduce download and rebuild
 680    times.
 681  - Dropped many obscure or unimportant options and features from
 682    `chicken-install`: (`-keep-installed`, `-reinstall`, `-proxy`,
 683    `-no-install`, `-username`, `-password`, `-init`, `-deploy`,
 684    `-keep-going`, `-scan`, `-csi`, `-show-depends`, `-show-foreign-depends`,
 685    `-prefix`.
 686  - Added new "-from-list" option to chicken-install.
 687  - Eggs can now be installed and located in multiple directories,
 688    using the `CHICKEN_REPOSITORY_PATH` +
 689    `CHICKEN_INSTALL_REPOSITORY`
 690    environment variables.
 691  - Static compilation of eggs is now fully supported and static
 692    versions of compiled eggs are available by default.
 693  - In a statically built chicken, the egg-tools ("chicken-install", "...-status",
 694    "...-uninstall") are still available, but only support static compilation
 695    of eggs.
 696
 697- Foreign function interface
 698  - The foreign type specifier "ssize_t" is now accepted, and "size_t"
 699    arguments now only accept positive integers.  Return values of
 700    type size_t are no longer truncated on 32-bit platforms.
 701
 702
 7034.13.0
 704
 705- Security fixes
 706  - CVE-2017-6949: Remove unchecked malloc() call in SRFI-4 constructors
 707    when allocating in non-GC memory, resulting in potential 1-word
 708    buffer overrun and/or segfault (thanks to Lemonboy).
 709  - CVE-2017-9334: `length' no longer crashes on improper lists (fixes
 710    #1375, thanks to "megane").
 711  - CVE-2017-11343: The randomization factor of the symbol table was
 712    set before the random seed was set, causing it to have a fixed value
 713    on many platforms.
 714
 715- Core Libraries
 716  - Unit "posix": If file-lock, file-lock/blocking or file-unlock are
 717    interrupted by a signal, we now retry (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 718  - char-ready? on string ports now also returns #t at EOF, as per R5RS;
 719    in other words, it always returns #t (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp)
 720  - Unit srfi-4: Fixed typo that broke SRFI-17 generalised set! syntax
 721    on s8vectors (thanks to Kristian Lein-Mathisen).
 722  - Large literals no longer crash with "invalid encoded numeric literal"
 723    on mingw-64 (#1344, thanks to Lemonboy).
 724  - Unit irregex: Fix bug that prevented multibyte UTF-8 character sets
 725    from being matched correctly (Thanks to Lemonboy and Chunyang Xu).
 726
 727- Runtime system:
 728  - The profiler no longer uses malloc from a signal handler which may
 729    cause deadlocks (#1414, thanks to Lemonboy).
 730  - The scheduler no longer indirectly hangs on to the old thread
 731    when switching to a new one, which caused excessive memory
 732    consumption (#1367, thanks to "megane").
 733  - C++ programs no longer fail with a symbol lookup error when
 734    compiled with debugger support (-d3 or -debug-info).
 735
 736- Syntax expander
 737  - Renaming an identifier twice no longer results in an undo of the
 738    rename (fixes #1362, thanks to "megane").
 739
 740- Build system
 741  - Fixed broken compilation on NetBSD, due to missing _NETBSD_SOURCE.
 742  - Fixed compilation on DragonflyBSD due to no feature macro support
 743    in its standard C library (thanks to Markus Pfeiffer).
 744
 745- Compiler
 746  - The scrutinizer no longer uses 'fixnum as the type for fixnums
 747    that might not fit into a fixnum on 32-bit architectures.
 748
 749- Foreign function interface
 750  - Correctly calculate memory requirements of Scheme objects produced
 751    from foreign types with "const" qualifiers, avoiding memory
 752    corruption (#1424, thanks to Vasilij Schneidermann and Lemonboy)
 753  - Do not read beyond temporary stack buffer, which could lead to
 754    a crash when returning from a foreign callback (#1428).
 755
 7564.12.0
 757
 758- Security fixes
 759  - CVE-2016-6830: Fix buffer overrun due to excessively long argument
 760    or environment lists in process-execute and process-spawn (#1308).
 761    This also removes unnecessary limitations on the length of
 762    these lists (thanks to Vasilij Schneidermann).
 763  - CVE-2016-6831: Fix memory leak in process-execute and
 764    process-spawn.  If, during argument and environment list
 765    processing, a list item isn't a string, an exception is thrown,
 766    in which case previously malloc()ed strings weren't freed.
 767  - CVE-2016-9954: Irregex has been updated to 0.9.6, which fixes
 768    an exponential explosion in compilation of nested "+" patterns.
 769
 770- Compiler:
 771  - define-constant now correctly keeps symbol values quoted.
 772  - Warnings are now emitted when using vector-{ref,set!} or one
 773    of take, drop, list-ref or list-tail with an out of range index
 774    for vectors and proper lists of a definitely known length.
 775  - The scrutinizer will no longer drop knowledge of the length of a
 776    vector.  It still drops types of its contents (which may be mutated).
 777  - Fixed incorrect argvector restoration after GC in directly
 778    recursive functions (#1317).
 779  - "Direct" procedure invocations now also maintain debug info (#894).
 780
 781- Syntax expander
 782  - DSSSL lambda lists have improved hygiene, so they don't need
 783    the chicken or scheme modules to be imported in full (#806).
 784  - The let-optionals* macro no longer needs "quote", "car" and "cdr"
 785    to be imported and bound to their default values (#806).
 786
 787- Runtime system:
 788  - C_locative_ref has been deprecated in favor of C_a_i_locative_ref,
 789    which is faster because it is inlined (#1260, thanks to Kooda).
 790  - The default error handler now truncates very long condition
 791    messages (thanks to Lemonboy).
 792  - Weak symbol GC (-:w) no longer drops random symbols (#1173).
 793  - The number of arguments to procedures, both via "apply" and direct
 794    invocation, are now limited only by the C stack size (#1098).
 795  - "time" macro now shows peak memory usage (#1318, thanks to Kooda).
 796  - Avoid crashes in ffi callbacks after GC (#1337, thanks to cosarara).
 797
 798- Core libraries:
 799  - Irregex has been updated to 0.9.5, which fixes matching of all "bow"
 800    occurrances beyond the first with irregex-fold (upstream issue #14).
 801  - Keywords are more consistently read/written, like symbols (#1332).
 802  - SRFI-39: When jumping out of a parameterized dynamic extent,
 803    "parameterize" now remember the actual values, so when jumping back
 804    in, they are restored (fixes #1336, thanks to Joo ChurlSoo).
 805    This was a regression caused by the fix for #1227.
 806
 807- Tools:
 808  - "chicken-install"
 809    - When installing eggs in deploy mode with "-keep-installed", eggs
 810      under the prefix won't unnecessarily be reinstalled (#1144).
 811    - Added new option "-no-install-deps" which inhibits automatic
 812      installation of dependencies, useful with "-prefix" (#1298).
 813
 814
 8154.11.0
 816
 817- Security fixes
 818  - Specialisation rules for string-{ref,set!}, bit-set?
 819    and move-memory no longer use unchecked C functions which could
 820    result in undefined behaviour, including buffer overruns (#1216).
 821
 822- Platform support
 823  - CHICKEN now supports the Linux X32 ABI (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf).
 824
 825- Tools
 826  - Feathers now has a more neutral color scheme and larger font size.
 827  - With the -dir option, feathers can now correctly find source code.
 828
 829- Runtime system:
 830  - The calling convention of CPS procedures has been changed to
 831    use "argument vectors" instead of C calling convention.
 832  - The C API of C_values(), C_do_apply() and how to invoke CPS
 833    functions has changed.  The C_procN() macros have disappeared.
 834    The manual example in "Accessing external objects" for C_values
 835    has been updated.  See also the "numbers" egg for examples on
 836    how to support pre- and post-4.10.1 CHICKENs simultaneously.
 837  - Apply hack is no longer used; the limitation of 128 arguments
 838    has been lifted for platforms which had no apply hack.
 839  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 8.
 840  - Delivery of signals in other OS-level threads is now dealt with
 841    in a more robust way (#1232) (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 842  - Compiled programs with large literals won't crash on startup (#1221).
 843  - Comparisons of closures now behave in a stable way, whether or not
 844    the code was compiled with the -no-lambda-info option (#1041).
 845  - The signal handling code can no longer trigger "stack overflow" or
 846    "recursion too deep or circular data encountered" errors (#1283).
 847
 848- Compiler:
 849  - Specializations on implicit "or" types like "number" or "boolean" now
 850    work, removing the requirement for the inferred types to match
 851    declared types exactly.  Specializations are matched from first to
 852    last to resolve ambiguities (#1214).
 853  - Compiler rewrites for char{<,>,<=,>=,=}? are now safe (#1122).
 854  - When requesting to emit import libraries that don't exist, the
 855     compiler now gives an error instead of quietly continuing (#1188).
 856  - Don't silently truncate huge literals (thanks to Claude Marinier).
 857
 858- Core libraries
 859  - try-compile from setup-api cleans up temporary output files (#1213).
 860  - SRFI-18: thread-join! no longer gives an error when passed a
 861    thread in the "sleeping" state (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
 862  - SRFI-18: mutex-lock! will not set ownership of mutexes when
 863    passed #f as the owner (#1231), not disown a mutex from owner if
 864    locking fails for timeout and not keep the last thread which held
 865    a mutex until the next lock (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 866  - SRFI-39: When a parameter's "guard" procedure raises an exception,
 867    "parameterize" now correctly resets the original values of all
 868    parameters (fixes #1227, thanks to Joo ChurlSoo).
 869  - Irregex has been updated to 0.9.4, which fixes severe performance
 870    problems with {n,m} repeating patterns (thanks to Caolan McMahon).
 871  - Unit "posix": The following posix procedures now work on port
 872    objects: file-stat, file-size, file-owner, file-permissions,
 873    file-modification-time, file-access-time, file-change-time,
 874    file-type and all procedures using file-type. These are:
 875    regular-file?, symbolic-link?, block-device?, character-device?
 876    fifo? and socket?.
 877  - Unit "posix": When "file-close" is interrupted it will retry,
 878    to avoid leaking descriptors (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 879  - Unit "data-structures": alist-{update[!],ref} were made consistent
 880    with srfi-1 in the argument order of comparison procedures.
 881  - Unit "lolevel": locative-ref has been fixed for locatives of u32
 882    and s32vectors (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger for pointing this out).
 883  - string->number now signals exceptions if passed a bad base instead
 884    of segfaulting (#1272; reported by "Tilpner" on IRC).
 885
 886- Tools
 887  - A debugger is now available, known as "feathers", which allows
 888    basic source-level debugging of compiled Scheme code.
 889  - A statistical profiler has been added, enabling sampling-based
 890    runtime profiling of compiled programs.
 891  - "chicken-install"
 892    - When installing eggs in deploy mode, already satisfied
 893      dependencies aren't reinstalled every time (#1106).
 894  - "chicken-uninstall"
 895    - -prefix and -deploy options were added, matching chicken-install.
 896  - "chicken-status"
 897    - -prefix and -deploy options were added, matching chicken-install.
 898  - The -sudo and -s options for chicken-install and chicken-uninstall
 899    now honor a "SUDO" environment variable (thanks to Timo Myyrä).
 900
 901- Syntax expander
 902  - Mixed internal define/define-values are now correctly ordered, so
 903    later defines can refer to earlier define-values (#1274).
 904
 9054.10.0
 906
 907- Security fixes
 908  - CVE-2014-6310: Use POSIX poll() on Android platform to avoid
 909    potential select() buffer overrun.
 910  - CVE-2014-9651: substring-index[-ci] no longer scans beyond string
 911    boundaries.
 912  - CVE-2015-4556: string-translate* no longer scans beyond string
 913    boundaries.
 914
 915- Core libraries
 916  - alist-ref from unit data-structures now gives an error when passed
 917    a non-list, for consistency with assv/assq/assoc.
 918  - Unit tcp now implicitly depends on ports instead of extras.
 919     This may break programs which don't use modules and forgot to
 920     require extras but use procedures from it.
 921  - SRFI-13: fix string-copy! in cases source and destination strings'
 922    memory areas overlap (#1135).
 923  - SRFI-1: Check argument types in lset and list= procedures (#1085).
 924  - Fixed another, similar bug in move-memory! for overlapping memory.
 925  - Fixed broken specialisation for move-memory! on pointer types.
 926  - Fixed broken specialisation for irregex-match-num-submatches.
 927  - Fixed bug in make-kmp-restart-vector from SRFI-13.
 928  - Removed deprecated implicit expansion of $VAR- and ~ in pathnames.
 929     The ~-expansion functionality is now available in the
 930     "pathname-expand" egg (#1001, #1079) (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl).
 931  - normalize-pathname has been simplified to avoid adding trailing
 932     slashes or dots (#1153, thanks to Michele La Monaca and Mario Goulart).
 933
 934- Unit srfi-4:
 935   - write-u8vector has been made more efficient (thanks to Thomas Hintz).
 936   - read-u8vector has been made more efficient (thanks to Andy Bennett
 937      for pointing this out and testing an improvement).
 938
 939- Unit lolevel:
 940  - Restore long-lost but still documented "vector-like?" procedure (#983)
 941
 942- Unit "files":
 943  - normalize-pathname no longer considers paths starting with ".//"
 944    as absolute (#1202, reported by Haochi Kiang).
 945
 946- Unit "posix":
 947  - set-file-position! now allows negative positions for seek/cur (thanks
 948    to Seth Alves).
 949  - file-mkstemp now works correctly on Windows, it now returns valid
 950    file descriptors (#819, thanks to Michele La Monaca).
 951  - create-directory on Windows now creates all intermediate
 952    directories when passed #t as second parameter.
 953
 954- Runtime system:
 955  - Removed several deprecated, undocumented parts of the C interface:
 956    C_zap_strings, C_stack_check, C_retrieve, C_retrieve_proc,
 957    C_retrieve_symbol_proc, C_i_foreign_number_vector_argumentp,
 958    C_display_flonum, C_enumerate_symbols
 959  - Removed several deprecated and undocumented internal procedures:
 960    ##sys#zap-strings, ##sys#round, ##sys#foreign-number-vector-argument,
 961    ##sys#check-port-mode, ##sys#check-port*
 962  - SIGBUS, SIGILL and SIGFPE will now cause proper exceptions instead
 963    of panicking (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 964
 965- Module system
 966  - Allow functor arguments to be optional, with default implementations.
 967  - Fixed a bug that prevented functors from being instantiated with
 968     built-in modules.
 969  - Fixed generation of import libraries for instantiated functors
 970     (#1149, thanks to Juergen Lorenz).
 971
 972- Syntax expander
 973  - define-values, set!-values and letrec-values now support full lambda
 974    lists as binding forms
 975  - cond expands correctly when a constant is used in combination with =>
 976     (thanks to Michele La Monaca)
 977
 978- C API
 979  - Removed deprecated C_get_argument[_2] and
 980    C_get_environment_variable[_2] functions.
 981  - C_mutate2 has been deprecated in favor of C_mutate
 982  - chicken.h can be included in C++ programs in strict C++11 mode
 983     without compiler errors on Linux (thanks to "Izaak").
 984
 985- Foreign function interface
 986  - The foreign type specifier "scheme-pointer" now accepts an optional
 987    C pointer type (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp and Kristian Lein-Mathisen).
 988  - Type hinting for foreign-primitives now allows returning multiple
 989    values when no return type has been specified.
 990
 991- Compiler
 992  - Fixed an off by one allocation problem in generated C code for (list ...).
 993
 994- Build system
 995  - MANDIR was renamed to MAN1DIR and TOPMANDIR was renamed to MANDIR
 996     in order to comply with standard Makefile practice in UNIX.
 997  - INCDIR was renamed to CHICKENINCDIR, and now derives from
 998     INCLUDEDIR, which defaults to $(PREFIX)/include
 999  - BINDIR, LIBDIR, SHAREDIR, INCLUDEDIR, MANDIR, MAN1DIR, DOCDIR,
 1000     CHICKENINCDIR and CHICKENLIBDIR will now also be taken from
1001     the environment, if present (like PLATFORM, DESTDIR and PREFIX).
1002
1003- Tools
1004  - "csc"
1005    - On Cygwin, -static now works again (thanks to Michele La Monaca)
1006  - "chicken-install"
1007    - When using chicken-install -retrieve, and an error occurs during
1008       retrieval (or the egg doesn't exist), the egg's directory is
1009       now properly cleaned up (#1109, thanks to Alex Charlton)
1010  - "chicken"
1011    - The -r5rs-syntax option did nothing; this has been fixed.
1012
10134.9.0
1014
1015- Security fixes
1016  - CVE-2014-3776: read-u8vector! no longer reads beyond its buffer when
1017    length is #f (thanks to Seth Alves).
1018  - CVE-2013-4385: read-string! no longer reads beyond its buffer when
1019    length is #f.
1020  - CVE-2013-1874: ./.csirc is no longer loaded from the current directory
1021    upon startup of csi, which could lead to untrusted code execution.
1022    (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl)
1023  - CVE-2013-2024: On *nix, the qs procedure now single-quotes everything
1024    instead of relying on a blacklist of shell characters to be escaped.
1025    On Windows, it properly duplicates double-quote characters.  (thanks
1026    to Florian Zumbiehl)
1027  - CVE-2013-2075: Use POSIX poll() in other places where select() was
1028    still being used.  (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl and Joerg Wittenberger)
1029  - CVE-2012-6122: Use POSIX poll() on systems where available.  This avoids a
1030    design flaw in select(); it supports no more than FD_SETSIZE descriptors.
1031
1032- Core libraries
1033  - Fix subvector when the TO optional argument equals the given vector
1034    length (#1097)
1035  - Unit extras now implicitly depends on ports.  ports no longer
1036     implicitly depends on extras.  This may break programs which don't
1037     use modules and forgot to require ports but use procedures from it.
1038  - Support has been added for the space-safe R7RS macro "delay-force".
1039  - Export file-type from the posix unit (thanks to Alan Post).
1040  - SRFI-4 s8vectors now work correctly in compiled code on PowerPC and ARM.
1041  - thread-join! now works correctly even if the waiting thread was
1042     prematurely woken up by a signal.
1043  - unsetenv has been fixed on Windows.
1044  - The process procedure has been fixed on Windows.
1045  - Nonblocking behaviour on sockets has been fixed on Windows.
1046  - Possible race condition while handling TCP errors has been fixed.
1047  - The posix unit will no longer hang upon any error in Windows.
1048  - resize-vector no longer crashes when reducing the size of the vector.
1049  - Distinct types for boolean true and false have been added to the
1050    scrutinizer.
1051  - Fixed bugs in string-trim-right, string-index-right and
1052    string-skip-right, from SRFI-13
1053  - read-line no longer returns trailing CRs in rare cases on TCP ports (#568)
1054  - write and pp now correctly use escape sequences for control characters
1055     (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl)
1056  - posix: memory-mapped file support for Windows (thanks to "rivo")
1057  - posix: find-file's test argument now also accepts SRE forms.
1058  - numerator and denominator now accept inexact numbers, as per R5RS
1059    (reported by John Cowan).
1060  - Implicit $VAR- and ~-expansion in pathnames have been deprecated (#1001)
1061  - Fixed EINTR handling in process-wait and when reading from file ports.
1062  - Irregex is updated to 0.9.2, which includes bugfixes and faster submatches.
1063  - Compile-time expansions for "[sf]printf" are slightly more efficient.
1064  - Removed the deprecated "always?", "never?", "shuffle" and "none?" procedures.
1065  - Fixed problem "make-pathname" that returned an absolute path if given
1066    a relative one without a directory argument.
1067  - The implementation of promises has been made more efficient.
1068  - Removed the deprecated "c-runtime", "null-pointer?" and "pointer-offset"
1069    procedures.
1070  - The deprecated alias "mutate-procedure" for "mutate-procedure!" has
1071    been removed.
1072  - On 64-bit systems the feature identifier "64bit" is registered.
1073  - "process-fork" accepts an optional argument that specifies
1074    wether other threads should be terminated in the child process.
1075  - The "signal/bus" signal identifier was missing.
1076  - Added setter-procedure for "signal-mask".
1077  - Added "recursive-hash-max-length" and "recursive-hash-max-depth"
1078    parameters (srfi-69).
1079
1080- Platform support
1081  - CHICKEN can now be built on AIX (contributed by Erik Falor)
1082  - CHICKEN can now be built on GNU Hurd (contributed by Christian Kellermann)
1083  - Basic support has been added for building Android and iOS binaries (see
1084    the "README" file for caveats and pitfalls) (contributed by Felix Winkelmann
1085    from bevuta IT GmbH)
1086  - Added support for 64-bit Windows (consult the "README" file for more
1087    information).
1088
1089- Runtime system
1090  - finalizers on constants are ignored in compiled code because compiled
1091    constants are never GCed (before, the finalizer would be incorrectly
1092    invoked after the first GC).  (Reported by "Pluijzer")
1093  - The call trace buffer is now also resizable at runtime via ##sys#resize-trace-buffer.
1094  - C_zap_strings and ##sys#zap-strings (undocumented) have been deprecated.
1095  - Special events in poll() are now handled, avoiding hangs in threaded apps.
1096  - When invoking procedures with many rest arguments directly (not via APPLY),
1097    raise an error when argument count limit was reached instead of crashing.
1098  - When the maximum allowed heap size is reached, panic instead of crashing.
1099  - The code generated for mutating data destructively is partially inlined
1100    and thus slightly more efficient.
1101  - Fixed incorrect code in the foreign argument conversion for
1102    "unsigned-integer64" (#955).  For unsigned-integer, integer64 and
1103    unsigned-integer64, disallow floating-point numbers.  Fix behavior
1104    on 32-bit systems.
1105  - On systems that provide sigprocmask(2), segmentation violations, illegal
1106    instruction signals, bus errors and floating-point exceptions are now caught
1107    and trigger normal error-processing (including a backtrace). The handling
1108    of these so called "serious" signals can be disabled by passing the
1109    "-:S" runtime option to executables.
1110  - Reclamation of unused interned symbols (enabled with the "-:w" runtime option)
1111    works much better now.
1112
1113- Build system
1114  - The tests can now be run without having to first install CHICKEN.
1115  - Fixed a dependency problem that made it impossible to build the distribution
1116    tarball on Windows with the mingw compiler.
1117  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 7.
1118
1119- Tools
1120  - "csc"
1121    - "-z origin" is now passed as a linker option on FreeBSD when
1122      compiling for deployment (thanks to Jules Altfas & Vitaly Magerya)
1123    - "-deploy" works now on FreeBSD (thanks to Jules Altfas and
1124      Vitaly Magerya), OpenBSD and NetBSD (see README for NetBSD).
1125    - added "-oi"/"-ot" options as alternatives to "-emit-inline-file"
1126       and "-emit-type-file", respectively; "-n" has been deprecated.
1127    - .c/.o files are no longer overwritten when they have the same basename
1128      as a Scheme source file (i.e. "csc foo.scm foo.c -o foo" works now).
1129  - "chicken-install"
1130    - "-deploy" now correctly installs dependencies of
1131      deployed eggs under the deployment directory instead of globally.
1132    - Full URI syntax is now supported for proxy environment variables
1133      (thanks to Michele La Monaca)
1134  - "chicken-status"
1135    - Added -eggs command line option to list installed eggs
1136  - misc
1137    - Removed the deprecated "-v" options (use "-version" instead) in various
1138      core programs.
1139    - The runtime linker path for compiled executables was not set correctly
1140      on FreeBSD systems.  This has now been fixed.
1141    - Removed the deprecated "make" and "make/proc" facility from the
1142      "setup-api" module; also removed the deprecated "required-extension-version"
1143      and "required-chicken-version" procedures.
1144
1145- Syntax
1146  - Added the aliases "&optional" and "&rest" as alternatives to "#!optional"
1147    and "#!rest" in type-declarations (suggested by Joerg Wittenberger).
1148  - Vectors, SRFI-4 number vectors and blobs are now self-evaluating for
1149     R7RS compatibility.  Being literal constants, they are implicitly quoted.
1150  - For R7RS compatibility, named character literals #\escape and #\null are
1151     supported as aliases for #\esc and #\nul.  WRITE will output R7RS names.
1152  - The CASE form accepts => proc syntax, like COND (as specified by R7RS).
1153  - letrec* was added for R7RS compatibility.  Plain letrec no longer behaves
1154    like letrec*.
1155
1156- Compiler
1157  - the "inline" declaration does not force inlining anymore as recursive
1158    inlining could lead to non-termination of the compiler (thanks to
1159    Andrei Barbu).
1160  - Type-analysis ("scrutiny") is enabled by default now, unless
1161    "-optimize-level 0" or "-no-usual-integrations" is given.
1162  - The "-scrutinize" compiler option has been deprecated.
1163  - A new lightweight flow-analysis pass ("lfa2") has been added.
1164    Enable by passing the "-lfa2" option to the compiler.
1165  - The deprecated options "-disable-warning", "-heap-growth", "-heap-shrinkage"
1166    and "-heap-initial-size" have been removed.
1167  - Removed the deprecated "constant" declaration.
1168  - Removed the deprecated "-lambda-lift" and "-unboxing" compiler options.
1169  - Removed the deprecated "-V" compiler option.
1170  - Generated names for formal parameters of foreign functions are slightly
1171    more informative.
1172  - Unused references to variables that name intrinsics can be removed.
1173  - In the flow-analysis pass, matching of combinations of "list"/"list-of" and
1174    "or" types with has been made more reliable.
1175  - Fixed various bugs in the type database.
1176
1177- Syntax expander
1178  - added "require-extension-for-syntax" and "use-for-syntax".
1179  - Extended syntactic definitions are now available by default in all
1180    evaluated code, particularly in code evaluated at runtime in compiled
1181    applications.
1182  - Removed the deprecated variant "(define-compiler-syntax (NAME . LLIST) BODY ...)"
1183    of "define-compiler-syntax".
1184
1185- C API
1186  - Deprecated C_get_argument[_2] and C_get_environment_variable[_2] functions.
1187  - Removed the deprecated "__byte_vector" type.
1188
1189
11904.8.0
1191
1192- Security fixes
1193  - CVE-2012-6125: Improved hash table collision resistance and added
1194    randomization to prevent malicious external causes of collisions.
1195    All SRFI-69 procedures accept extra arguments to control randomization
1196    for testing/debugging.
1197  - CVE-2012-6124: On 64-bit machines the "random" procedure no longer
1198    truncates result values (which caused very nonrandom results for very
1199    large values). Note that random shouldn't be used for
1200    security-critical code.
1201  - CVE-2012-6123: Added checks for embedded '\0' characters in strings
1202    passed to some C functions on a lower level than CHICKEN's FFI.
1203
1204- Build system
1205  - version information has been moved into a separate unit to make the
1206    build-version shown in the banner and accessible through library
1207    procedures more accurate, this also speeds up the build on version-
1208    changes (thanks to Jim Ursetto for contributing this)
1209  - the build was made more reliable with respect to cross-compilation
1210    and custom installation names
1211  - the test-suite is now working on the mingw32 platform (with
1212    a few tests disabled due to missing functionality)
1213  - the version and branch of the sources are now properly compiled
1214    into the core libraries and shown in the "csi" and "chicken"
1215    version headers
1216  - The default target library name for an installation configured for cross-
1217    compilation is now "libchicken" and independent on any particular
1218    setting of PROGRAM_PREFIX/PROGRAM_SUFFIX (thanks to Otavio Salvador)
1219
1220- Compiler
1221  - Fixed bug in handling of symbols in constant-definitions (thanks to Peter
1222    Bex)
1223  - Stricter check for value-part of constant definition (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1224  - Fixed bug that caused argument-signatures of external definitions to be
1225    incorrectly modified during optimization (thanks to Peter Bex)
1226  - Failing constant-folding expressions now produce a compile-time warning
1227  - Fixed various bugs in the internal type-database (thanks to Kon Lovett and
1228    Peter Bex)
1229  - Fixed incorrect optimization rules for some fp-rounding and fixnum operators
1230  - added "-specialize" option and "specialize" declaration which enables
1231    optimizations of uses of core library procedures based on type-
1232    information gathered during flow analysis
1233  - "-optimize-level 3" and higher now implies "-specialize"
1234  - added option "-strict-types" and "-emit-type-file"
1235  - progress-information is now only shown with "-debug p"; the "-verbose"
1236    option only shows informational but noncritical messages
1237  - added optimizations for some library procedures
1238  - variable propagation for global variable accesses is now done in certain
1239    situations
1240  - the algorithmic complexity of the closure-conversion pass has been
1241    reduced which speeds up compilation noticably for large files
1242  - the "-uses" option handles whitespace in unit lists given on the
1243    command line (thanks to Santosh Rajan)
1244  - the alternative branch in a conditional is dropped when the condition
1245    is known to be a non-boolean value (suggested by Joerg Wittenberger)
1246  - implemented numerous fixes and improvements for flow analysis
1247  - fixed a bug in the compiler that could cause some variable bindings
1248    to be optimized away in certain situations involving inlining
1249  - added an experimental optimization called "clustering" (enable
1250    with the compiler option of the same name)
1251  - the optimizations done by the compiler are now listed as a comment
1252    in the generated C file
1253  - the type-information obtained during flow-analysis ("scrutiny") is
1254    now used for performing type-sensitive optimizations of calls to
1255    most of the core-library procedures
1256  - deprecated the "constant" declaration specifier
1257  - "unboxing" optimization has been completely removed - the implementation
1258    was unreliable and unmaintainable; the "-unboxing" compiler option will
1259    still be accepted but will produce a warning
1260  - Peter Bex contributed an optimization to the analysis pass that
1261    greatly reduces compile time for source code containing deeply nested
1262    lexical bindings
1263  - procedures that are known to have the value of a core library procedure
1264    that is a "standard" or "extended binding" will be inlined
1265  - enhanced line number tracking to get better error messages from
1266    the scrutinizer.
1267  - hygiene bugs related to compiler-syntax were fixed.
1268  - the local flow-analysis was sometimes reporting multiple warnings
1269    for the same type-conflict.
1270  - the time/space-complexity of some algorithms used in the compiler
1271    were reduced resulting in much better compile-times especially
1272    for large source files.
1273
1274- Interpreter
1275  - ",q" leaves the currently active REPL invocation instead of
1276    terminating the process (as suggested by John Cowan)
1277  - ",m" properly switches between modules (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1278
1279- Core libraries
1280  - Cleaned up the set of available internal SRFI-feature-identifiers
1281  - Fixed bugs in "make-pathname" and "normalize-pathname" (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
1282  - The reader is now more consistent when parsing symbol- and keyword names
1283    that are fully or partially escaped (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1284  - The printer now does a better job at escaping certain single-character
1285    symbol names
1286  - Unit "lolevel"
1287    - deprecated "null-pointer" and "null-pointer?"
1288  - Fixed a bug in the Windows implementation of "file-type" (thanks to
1289    Jim Ursetto)
1290  - Fixed a bug in the implementation of "current-milliseconds" that could
1291    result in integer-overflow
1292  - Fixed an incorrect type-check in "list-ref" (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1293  - Disabled "-setup-mode" when compiling extensions for deployment (thanks
1294    to Ivan Raikov)
1295  - Got rid of some warnings in the C runtime system that were triggered on
1296    the SunPro C compiler (thanks to Joe Python)
1297  - Fixed bug in "string->number" that caused out-of-range characters to
1298    be accepted for base > 10 (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
1299  - added "foldl" and "foldr" procedures, which are more efficient and
1300    have a more consistent argument order than the corresponding
1301    SRFI-1 procedures
1302  - "shuffle" has been deprecated
1303  - added "queue-length"
1304  - "queue->list" allocates and returns a fresh list now
1305  - invoking a parameter-procedure with an argument will return the new
1306    value
1307  - added new procedure "quit"
1308  - port-procedures now check correctly for argument-ports being open
1309    (thanks to Peter Bex)
1310  - "repl" accepts an optional evaluator procedure (suggested by John
1311    Cowan)
1312  - added a setter procedure to "signal-handler" ("posix" unit)
1313  - EINTR is properly handled for input routines that may block
1314    waiting for input
1315  - the implementation of R5RS evaluation environments is now fully
1316    standards compliant
1317  - "file-exists?" and "directory-exists?" work now properly for files
1318    > 2GB (EOVERFLOW handling in stat(3) system call)
1319  - fixed bug in implementation of "fifo?"
1320  - the procedure returned by "condition-predicate" accepts any type
1321    of argument now
1322  - blobs have a readable textual representation ("#{...}")
1323  - "find-files" does not follow symlinks by default (as it did previously)
1324  - also, the old non-keyword argument signature for "find-files" is not
1325    supported anymore
1326  - added "alist-update" ("data-structures" unit)
1327  - "irregex-replace" returns the original string instead of #f when the
1328    regex does not match
1329  - irregex "real" built-in utility pattern now accepts a leading sign
1330  - added "change-directory*" ("posix" unit)
1331  - number parsing has been made more reliable and standards compliant
1332  - deprecated "none?", "always?" and "never?"
1333  - library procedures that take ports as arguments now all perform checks
1334    on port-direction and open/closed state
1335  - "mutate-procedure" has been renamed to "mutate-procedure!" - the old
1336    name is still available but deprecated
1337  - deprecated C_hash_string and C_hash_string_ci functions in the C API in
1338    favor of the more secure versions C_u_i_string_hash, C_u_i_string_ci_hash
1339  - a number of bugs in the irregex regular expression engine have been
1340    fixed; it has been updated to upstream release 0.8.3
1341  - "with-input-from-file", "with-output-to-file", "with-input-from-pipe" and
1342    "with-output-to-pipe" now properly restore the standard input/output
1343    ports in case the body thunk escapes
1344  - symbols with a single-char print-name where not always properly escaped
1345    when printed readably
1346  - the "make" facility of the "setup-api" module has been deprecated,
1347    please use the "make" extension when your egg requires this during
1348    setup.
1349
1350- Core tools
1351  - "csc"
1352    - The environment-variables "CHICKEN_C_INCLUDE_PATH" and
1353      "CHICKEN_C_LIBRARY_PATH" can now be used to add default include-
1354      and link-directories to C-compiler invocations
1355    - "-O5" passed expensive optimization flags to the C compiler which
1356      could expose C-Compiler bugs, depending on the compiler version
1357      (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf for pointing this out).
1358    - "-rpath" is ignored on OS X (thanks to Kon Lovett).
1359    - Fixed handling of "-output-file" (it was being ignored)
1360  - "chicken-install"
1361    - Added option "-override", which allows retrieving extension-
1362      versions from a file - this may be useful to ensure specific
1363      versions of a complete set of eggs are installed
1364    - Added option "-keep-installed"/"-x" that only installs explicitly
1365      named extensions given on the command line, if they are not
1366      already installed
1367    - Added option "-list" that lists all extensions available
1368    - Added option "-csi" to specify what interpreter should be used
1369      to execute the setup-script of an installed extension
1370    - Added option "-scan" that scans a local directory for the highest
1371      available extension versions available
1372    - Added option "-reinstall" that reinstalls all currently installed
1373      eggs, keeping their versions, if possible
1374    - Fixed bug with "chicken-install -test" when multiple extensions where
1375      given on the command line (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1376    - installing subdirectories works now on Windows.
1377    - fixed handling of "-force" when a "chicken" dependency version did
1378      not match
1379    - added new option "-show-foreign-depends" which lists foreign egg
1380      dependencies (if available)
1381    - added new option "-show-depends" which lists egg dependencies
1382    - added support for "or"-dependencies where a dependency is considered
1383      installed if one of a set of candidates is available
1384  - "chicken-profile"
1385    - fixed some bugs in the profiler and the runtime support code for
1386      profiling (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1387    - fixed broken percentage calculation (thanks to "megane")
1388  - "chicken-status"
1389    - Added option "-list" that dumps versions of installed extensions
1390      in a format suitable for "chicken-install -override ..."
1391    - the "pattern" argument is now actually treated as a pattern and not
1392      as a regex
1393
1394- Core syntax
1395  - "assert" shows the line number of the form when a second argument
1396    is not given or is a literal string
1397  - "parameterize" now correctly omits invoking the guard procedure when
1398    the old value is restored (thanks to Joo ChurlSoo)
1399  - added ":", "the" and "assume" syntax for declaring types
1400  - added "define-specialization" form to declare type-driven procedure
1401    call rewrites in compiled code
1402
1403- Syntax expander
1404  - Fixed a bug that caused imported identifiers to leak into the
1405    macroexpansion/compile-time environment (reported by Christian Kellermann)
1406  - Fixed a bug in the processing of extended lambda-lists (thanks to Peter Bex)
1407  - Peter Bex fixed a bug that caused bound variables to be incorrectly
1408    renamed in quoted literals (thanks to Matthew Flatt)
1409  - fixed devious bug in the invocation and generation of transformer
1410    procedures
1411  - using normal "lambda" forms as transformers for local or global
1412    syntax definitions is deprecated - one should use "syntax-rules",
1413    "er-macro-transformer" or "ir-macro-transformer" from now on
1414
1415- Runtime system
1416  - fixed handling of "inf" and nan" floating-point predicates for Solaris
1417    (thanks to Claude Marinier)
1418  - support for re-loading of compiled files has now been completely
1419    removed
1420  - the maximum length of strings is no longer limited to a 24-bit
1421    number on 64-bit architectures but can be 56 bits.
1422  - string-comparison handles embedded '\0' characters.
1423  - numerical predicates handle infinity and NaN correctly.
1424  - deprecated "[+-]nan", "[+-]inf" and other notations "accidentally"
1425    accepted by CHICKEN due to the underlying C library's strtod() function,
1426    standardizing on "[+-]nan.0" and "[+-]inf.0" from R6RS (and soon R7RS),
1427    when displaying numbers only these forms are generated now.
1428  - signals are queued to some extent and the interrupt handling has
1429    been cleaned up somewhat
1430  - the interpreter handles SIGINT directly - loading the "posix" unit
1431    is not needed anymore to handle this feature
1432  - changed default nursery size slightly and fixed a bug that caused
1433    incorrect (too small) nursery sizes on 64-bit platforms
1434  - deprecated the compiler option "-heap-initial-size", "-heap-growth"
1435    and "-heap-shrinkage"
1436  - the assembly-language stub routine for the implementation of "apply"
1437    was broken for Sparc64 systems and has been disabled for this platform
1438  - signal masks were accidentally reset upon GC for some platforms; use
1439    sigsetjmp/siglongjmp on BSD, Linux, MacOS X and Haiku
1440
1441- Type system
1442  - added new type-specifiers "input-port", "output-port", "(list-of T)"
1443    and "(vector-of T)"
1444  - the type-specifiers "(vector T ...)" and "(list T ...)" represent
1445    fixed size lists and vectors now
1446  - added qualified types ("forall"), optionally with type constrains
1447  - added the "define-type" special form and type-abbreviations
1448  - added "compiler-typecase", a compile-time typematching form
1449
1450- Module system
1451  - Added "interfaces", which are named groups of exports
1452  - Added "functors", which are parameterized modules
1453  - Modules can now be aliased
1454  - New syntax:
1455    (define-interface NAME EXPORTS)
1456    (functor (NAME ...) EXPORTS ...)
1457  - Extended syntax of "module" for aliasing and functor-instantiation
1458  - the "scheme" module has been integrated into the core library and
1459    is not installed as a separate import library anymore
1460  - added core module "r4rs" containing only bindings for R4RS identifiers
1461  - added core module alias "r5rs" for "scheme" module
1462  - added "module-environment" which returns an evaluation environment
1463    for the bindings of a module
1464  - fixed bugs related to using "export"/"reexport" in combination with
1465    wildcard ("*") module export lists (thanks to "megane")
1466
1467- Foreign function interface
1468  - locatives are allowed as arguments declared "c-pointer"
1469  - "int32" was not properly detected as a valid foreign type (thanks
1470    to Jim Ursetto)
1471
1472
14734.7.0
1474
1475- Build system
1476  - On BSD, libchicken.so is linked with -lpthread, as this seems
1477    to be required for linking libraries that require pthreads
1478  - The C header-files are now installed in a subdirectory below
1479    the "PRFIX/include" directory to allow installation of multiple
1480    chickens with different PROGRAM_PREFIX/PROGRAM_SUFFIX settings
1481    in the same prefix; to avoid conflicts with existing CHICKEN
1482    headers, it is recommended to completely remove any old
1483    installation before installing the new version
1484  - the PROGRAM_PREFIX and PROGRAM_SUFFIX configuration settings
1485    are applied to generated files and directories which allows
1486    perform differently named installations into the same PREFIX
1487  - increaded binary-compatibility version from 5 to 6, which
1488    means installed extensions in an existing installations will
1489    have to be re-installed
1490  - bugfixes in mingw/msys makefiles
1491  - Sven Hartrumpf contributed a bugfix to the internal helper
1492    script for creating distribution directories
1493  - Peter Bex has cleaned up the makefiles heavily, making the
1494    build more maintainable and easier to modify; thanks to all
1495    who helped testing this new build
1496  - renamed the makefile to `GNUmakefile' to catch using the
1497    a make(3) other than GNU make
1498  - configuration-header fix for BSD systems (thanks to Peter Bex
1499    and Christian Kellermann)
1500
1501
1502- Core libraries
1503  - the `regex' library unit has been removed and is separately
1504    available as an extension which should be fully backwards-
1505    compatible
1506  - `irregex' is now a core library unit and replaces the  `regex' API
1507  - "extras" unit
1508    - fixed pretty-printer output of certain escaped character
1509      sequences inside strings (thanks to Mario Domenech Goulart,
1510      thanks to Kon Lovett for pointing out a missing test-file)
1511    - The pretty printer did not escape some control characters correctly
1512      (reported by Alan Post)
1513    - control-characters in symbol-names are now properly escaped if
1514     the symbol is printed readably (thanks to Alaric Snell-Pym
1515     for pointing this out)
1516    - the deprecated `random-seed' function has been removed
1517  - "files" unit
1518    - fixed bug in `normalize-pathname'
1519    - `file-copy' and `file-move' check whether the source-file is a
1520      directory
1521    - `delete-directory' now optionally deletes directories recursively
1522  - "irregex" unit
1523    - Peter Bex has contributed various bugfixes and performance
1524      enhancements
1525  - "library" unit
1526    - Added "condition->list" (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1527    - The reader accepts now escaped octal character codes in string
1528      literals
1529    - Read-syntax can return zero values to indicate ignored objects
1530    - R5RS output output routines now always return a "void" result
1531    - "\|" was not correctly escaped when occurring inside
1532      symbol print names
1533    - added `condition->list', contributed by Christian Kellermann
1534    - added `equal=?'
1535    - removed deprecated `getenv', `left-section', `right-section',
1536      `project', `c-runtime' and `noop'
1537    - added missing import-library entry for `vector-copy!' (thanks
1538      to Jules Altfas)
1539    - circular or excessively deeply nested data generates a more
1540      useful error message when encountered by `equal?'
1541    - `list-tail' gives now a better error message when passed a
1542      non-list argument
1543    - fixed bug in `getter-with-setter' that modified the first
1544      argument if it already had a setter procedure attached
1545    - fixed incorrect size of internal data vector used in `time'
1546      (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1547  - "lolevel" unit
1548    - removed deprecated `global-bound?', `global-make-unbound',
1549      `global-ref' and `global-set!' procedures
1550    - added support for `pointer-vectors':
1551      -  make-pointer-vector
1552      -  pointer-vector?
1553      -  pointer-vector-length
1554      -  pointer-vector-ref
1555      -  pointer-vector-set!
1556  - "posix" unit
1557    - "close-input-pipe" did not return the status code of a
1558      terminated process on Windows (reported by Mario Domenech Goulart)
1559    - added `file-creation-mode' (suggested by Mario Domenech Goulart)
1560  - "setup-api" unit
1561    - `required-extension-version' and `required-chicken-version' have
1562       been deprecated
1563  - "srfi-18" unit
1564    - removed deprecated `milliseconds->time' and `time->milliseconds'
1565      procedures
1566    - `make-mutex' incorrectly created mutexes as initially owned by
1567      the current threads (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
1568    - the file-descriptor handling in the scheduler has been simplified
1569      and performs some sanity checks
1570    - deadlock in the scheduler now terminates the process instead of
1571      attempting to throw an error
1572    - added some sanity checks to the scheduler
1573  - "tcp" unit
1574    - Fixed bug in "tcp-abandon-port" (reported by Jim Ursetto)
1575  - "utils" unit
1576    - `compile-file' now returns `#f' when the compilation fails,
1577       instead of raising an error
1578
1579
1580- Compiler
1581  - Removed unreliable lambda-lifting optimization (now, really!);
1582    the "-lambda-lift" option is still accepted but produces a
1583    warning
1584  - When "-scrutinize" is given, installed ".types" files will be
1585    automatically consulted for extensions and used units
1586  - Fixed optimizer bug in handling of "let" forms with multiple
1587    bindings which could result in toplevel assignments being
1588    silently dropped (reported by Moritz Heidkamp)
1589  - the `-accumulate-profile' option did not provide a way to
1590    specify the target profile data file - now `-profile-name'
1591    must always be given when accumulated profiling is done
1592    (thanks to Taylor Venable)
1593  - added `-module' option, which wraps the code into an implicit
1594    module
1595  - removed check for unsafe toplevel calls in safe mode
1596  - intrinsic handling of `exact->inexact' and `string->number' is
1597    now more efficient
1598  - fixed bug in leaf-routine optimization (thanks to David
1599    Dreisigmeyer)
1600  - unit-toplevel entry-points are now named differently, which
1601    may break binary-compatibility with existing compiled Scheme
1602    code modules
1603  - fixed invalid dropping of unused external entry-points in
1604    block-mode
1605  - fixed incorrect lambda-list check in scrutinizer (thanks to
1606    Alan Post)
1607  - Kon Lovett reported numerous bugs in the type-database used
1608    by the scrutinizer
1609  - `-fwrapv' is disabled on OpenBSD, since the default compiler
1610     does not support this option (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1611  - on Solaris `gcc' is used by default, override `C_COMPILER'
1612    to use the Sun compiler instead
1613  - declaring a function `notinline' will prevent direct-call
1614    optimization for known procedure calls
1615  - the implementation of overflow-detection for arithmetic operations
1616    on fixnums have been replaced and now allow using the full 63-bit
1617    range of fixnums on 64-bit systems
1618  - fixed serious inlining-bug (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1619  - constant-folding in the compiler has been simplified and
1620    is more reliable (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1621  - optimization-levels 3 and higher imply `-unboxing -inline-global'
1622  - added new declaration `unsafe-specialized-arithmetic' which allows
1623    optimizing unboxed floating-point arithmetic in safe mode
1624  - removed `scrutinize' declaration
1625  - the warning shown when unimported identifiers are used in compiled
1626    modules now also shows the name of the procedure where the
1627    identifier is referenced (suggested by Alaric Snell-Pym)
1628
1629
1630- Documentation
1631  - Added list of installed files to README
1632  - Documented remaining "c...r" standard procedures (thanks to
1633    Juergen Lorenz)
1634  - The manual is now installed in HTML format in
1635    PREFIX/share/chicken/doc, many thanks to Jim Ursetto for
1636    contributing is excellent `manual-labor' extension which made
1637    this possible
1638
1639
1640- Foreign function interface
1641  - Added support for missing "(const [XXX-]c-string)" foreign type
1642    (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp)
1643  - removed deprecated `pointer', `nonnull-pointer', `byte-vector'
1644    and `nonnull-byte-vector' types
1645  - added missing result-type handling for `unsigned-integer64'
1646    (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp)
1647  - added `foreign-type-size' macro
1648  - added the new foreign type `size_t' (suggested by Moritz
1649    Heidkamp)
1650  - added the missing `unsigned-integer64' foreign type (thanks
1651    to Moritz for catching this)
1652  - added new foreign type `pointer-vector' which maps to `void **'
1653    and provided a low-level API in the `lolevel' library unit for
1654    manipulating pointer vectors
1655
1656
1657- Runtime system
1658  - Fixed typo in "runtime.c" (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1659  - Little-endian detection on MIPS systems was not correct (thanks
1660    to Christian Kellermann)
1661  - Fixed bug in handling of runtime-options with arguments (also
1662    reported by Christian Kellermann)
1663  - `equal?' does not compare procedures recursively anymore
1664  - fixed incorrect use of alloca.h on OpenBSD (thanks to
1665    Christian Kellermann and Alan Post)
1666  - checks for NaN and infinity are now done using ISO C99
1667    operations, which required various changes to `chicken.h'
1668    to make the code compile in ISO C99 mode
1669  - remaining debris regarding MSVC builds has been removed
1670  - fixed bug in argument-type check for 64-bit integer (thanks
1671    to Kon Lovett)
1672  - increased default trace-buffer size from 10 to 16
1673  - fixed bug in low-level termination routine (thanks to
1674    Jeronimo Pellegrini)
1675  - the scheduler handles violations of internal invariants
1676    regarding threads slightly more gracefully (thanks to Jim
1677    Ursetto)
1678  - fixed broken sleep-time conversion (thanks to Karel Miklav)
1679  - repaired broken handling of multiple finalizers that referred
1680    to the same object (reported by Moritz Heidkamp)
1681  - fixed problem with reader and escaping of single-char symbols
1682
1683
1684- Syntax expander
1685  - For-syntax syntax definitions where not correctly retained inside
1686    modules
1687  - Peter Bex fixed various critical bugs in the expander
1688  - The simplification for quasiquote expressions was unable
1689    to handle certain circular data (reported by Moritz Heidkamp)
1690  - `syntax-rules' now supports tail-patterns and is now fully
1691    SRFI-46 compatible - many thanks to Peter Bex for implementing
1692    this
1693  - Peter Bex provided a bugfix for resolution of primitive imports
1694  - handling of internal definitions with shadowed defining
1695    forms is now done correctly - fix once again from Peter Bex
1696  - corrected non-standard behaviour of quasiquote with respect
1697    to nested quasiquotations - another bugfix by our mighty macro
1698    master
1699  - removed stub-implementation of `define-macro'
1700  - handled case where a global redefinition of `cons' influenced
1701    a non-inlined internal use in the expander (thanks to David
1702    Steiner)
1703  - `define-record' now allows defining SRFI-17 setter procedures
1704    for accessing slots
1705  - the expansion of DSSSL lambda-lists uses now `let-optionals*'
1706    internally instead of `let-optionals' and so allows
1707    back-references to earlier formal variables; this also results in
1708    faster and more compact code for argument-list destructuring
1709    (thanks to Alan Post)
1710  - new "implicit renaming" macro facility contributed by Peter Bex
1711    (see `ir-macro-transformer')
1712  - parameters are now settable and can be modified using `set!'
1713    (SRFI-17)
1714  - added a SRFI-17 setter to `list-ref'
1715  - added literal blob syntax ("#{ ... }")
1716
1717
1718- Tools
1719  - chicken-install
1720    - option "-deploy" does not compile deployed extensions with
1721      "-setup-mode" anymore to avoid problems with dynamic loading on
1722      some platforms (specifically Mac OS X)
1723    - option "-deploy" option did not copy the correct library
1724      (including the version-number) (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1725    - added support for proxy-authentification (thanks to Iruata Souza)
1726    - when installing from a local directory `chicken-install' now
1727      removes existing `*.so' files in that location to avoid stale
1728      binaries when the `make' syntax is used in setup scripts
1729  - chicken-bug
1730    - removed disabled e-mail support
1731  - csc
1732    - removed `-static-extension' option
1733    - removed deprecated `-windows' option
1734    - fixed incorrect use of `chicken.rc' on non-Windows platforms
1735      in `-gui' mode (thanks to "ddp")
1736    - when compiling in C++ mode, the compiler will be called with the
1737      `-Wno-write-strings' option
1738    - `-frwapv' has been added to the default C compiler options
1739  - csi
1740    - the ",m" toplevel command now accepts "#f" to switch back to
1741      the initial empty module context (suggested by Christian Kellermann)
1742    - fixed broken `,g' toplevel command
1743    - deprecated `script' feature identifier (use `chicken-script'
1744      instead)
1745    - options `-p' and `-P' and `-e' imply `-no-init'
1746    - the call-trace reported will not include exception-handler code
1747      anymore (suggested by Christian Kellermann)
1748
1749
1750
17514.6.0
1752
1753- the licenses used in all components of the core system have
1754  been collected in the LICENSE file (Thanks to Peter Bex)
1755- Added new compiler option `-no-module-registration' which
1756  omits generation of module registration code, even when
1757  generation of import libraries has not been enabled
1758- running `chicken' without arguments now hints at the
1759  existence of `csi' and `csc'
1760- `caar', `cdar' and `cddr' generate faster code
1761- calls to `list', `vector' and the internal structure
1762  allocation primitive that take 1 to 8 arguments generate
1763  faster code
1764- `chicken-install' now checks the version of the setup
1765  configuration file `setup.defaults'
1766- added option `-exact' to `chicken-status' and `chicken-uninstall',
1767  which treats the pattern argument as the literal name of the
1768  extension to be listed/deinstalled
1769- `assert' shows line-number information, if available
1770  (suggested by Alejandro Forero Cuervo)
1771- interpreted code records the lexical-environment at call-
1772  sites, which can in case of an error be inspected with the
1773  new `,c', `,f' and `,g' csi toplevel commands
1774- the evaluation-result history in `csi' can be inspected and
1775  cleared (to reduce memory load) with the toplevel commands
1776  `,h' and `,ch'
1777- unit `data-structures': deprecated `left-section' and
1778  `right-section'
1779- fixed bug that caused the static syntax-environment of
1780  syntax exported by a module to be incomplete
1781- module `setup-api': Documented the `version>=?' and
1782  `extension-name-and-version' proceedures
1783- unit `posix': `utc-time->seconds' is considerably
1784  faster on Mac OS X (thanks to Jim Ursetto);
1785  added new procedure `file-type'
1786- the `time' macro now shows the correct number of minor
1787  garbage collections
1788- the immediate-object check inside the marking procedure
1789  of the garbage collector has been manually inlined which
1790  results in a significant GC speedup, depending on memory
1791  load
1792- unit `srfi-18' and `scheduler': various bugfixes (thanks
1793  to Joerg Wittenberger)
1794- unit `srfi-4': bugfix in 8-bit vector allocation routines
1795  (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1796- added `-:H' runtime option to dump heap state on exit
1797- fixed missing change in Makefile.cygwin (thanks to John Cowan)
1798- fixed bug in `let-optionals' macro that caused problems when the
1799  rest-variable was actually named `rest' (thanks to Alejandro
1800  Forero Cuervo)
1801- when Scheme files are translated to C++ or Objective-C, `csc'
1802  will register the feature-identifiers `chicken-scheme-to-c++'/
1803  `chicken-scheme-to-objc' ar compile-time
1804- fixed bug in expansion of `#!key' parameters in lambda-lists
1805- debug-output for forcing finalizers on exit goes to stderr now
1806  (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
1807- the installation routines for extensions automatically add
1808  version-number information if none is given in the extension
1809  property list (suggested by Alejandro Forero Cuervo)
1810- `standard-extension' accepts `#f' now for the version number
1811  and will use the version that has been obtained via
1812  `chicken-install'
1813- `fifo?', `symbolic-link?', `directory?', `regular-file?', `socket?',
1814  `character-device?' and `block-device?' now accepts file-descriptors
1815  or filenames
1816- `find-files' takes keyword arguments, now (including the options
1817  to process dotfiles and ignore symbolic links); the old argument
1818  signature is still supported but deprecated
1819- removed dependency on `symbol-append' in some macros used in
1820  srfi-4.scm to be able to compile the system with older chickens
1821- fixed bug in script that generates development snapshot
1822- added build-variable `TARGET_FEATURES', which can be used to pass
1823  extra options enabling or disabling fetures for a system configured
1824  for cross-compilation
1825- added compiler and interpreter option `-no-feature FEATURENAME' that
1826  disables predefined feature identifiers
1827- code compiled with interrupts disabled will not emit inline files
1828  for global inlining since they may execute in a context where
1829  interrupts are enabled
1830- the `setup.defaults' file that holds download sources for
1831  `chicken-install' now allows aliases for locations
1832- CHICKEN systems build from cross-compilation now by default
1833  transparently build and install extensions for both the host
1834  and target parts of the cross-compilation setup; the options
1835  `-host' and `-target' can now be used to selectively build
1836  an extensions for the host- and the target system, respectively
1837- also added `-host' and `-target' options to `chicken-status' and
1838  `chicken-uninstall'
1839- `chicken-install' now respects the `http_proxy' environment variable
1840  (contributed by Stephen Eilert)
1841- the `srfi-4' library unit has been heavily cleaned up and optimized
1842- optimization-level 3 now enables global inlining
1843- fixed the case that declarations listing global identifiers did not
1844  correctly rename them
1845- deprecated `-N' option shortcut for `-no-usual-integrations' option in
1846  `csc'
1847- `csi' now offers a toplevel command `,e' for invoking an external
1848  editor (suggested by Oivind Binde)
1849- the `describe' command in `csi' now detects many circular lists
1850  (contributed by Christian Kellermann)
1851- `csi' doesn't depend on the `srfi-69' library unit anymore
1852- when a closing sequence delimiter is missing or incorrect, the
1853  reader also reports the starting line of the sequence
1854- the reader signals an error when a file contains certain characters
1855  that indicate that it is a binary file
1856- procedure-information shown by the printer for procedures is now
1857  corrected for some library procedures that where missing the correct
1858  information; `getter-with-setter' copies procedure-information objects
1859  into the newly created accessor procedure, if available
1860- calls to some known pure standard- or extended procedures are removed, if
1861  the procedures are called with side-effect free arguments and the
1862  result is not used (this can also by enabled for user procedures with
1863  the `constant' declaration)
1864- fixed some build-system bugs related to installation
1865- fixed a problem in the C runtime code that prevented it to be compileable
1866  without a configuration header-file
1867- the makefile-target to build a bootstrapping `chicken' executable
1868  performs multi-stage build now
1869- changed error message when required extension is out of date (thanks to
1870  Mario Goulart)
1871- documented library units loaded by default in `csi' (thanks to Moritz
1872  Heidkamp)
1873- added `boot-chicken' makefile target to simplify bootstrapping
1874  the system from sources and documented this in the README
1875  (suggested by Jim Ursetto)
1876- CHICKEN can now be built on haiku (contributed by Chris Roberts)
1877- on Solaris, the system can be compiled with the SunPro C compiler
1878  (thanks to Semih Cemiloglu)
1879- removed the `-disable-warnings' compiler option and `disable-warnings'
1880  declaration specifier
1881- `fx/' and `fxmod' generate now faster code in safe mode
1882- cleaned up manual pages
1883- slightly optimized variable- and procedure-access
1884- in the compiler `-debug-level 2' implies `-scrutinize'
1885- internal compiler-transformation for `for-each' and `map'
1886  apply now with any expression as the procedure argument
1887- the compiler warns about non-intrinsic exported toplevel variables
1888  which are declared to be safe
1889- `csc' didn't handle the `-verbose' option (thanks to Mario Goulart)
1890- the `,d' command in `csi' now detects circular lists (thanks to
1891  Christian Kellermann)
1892- strings passed to C runtime functions and which are converted to
1893  0-terminated C strings are now checked for not containing embedded
1894  `\0' characters (thanks to Peter Bex)
1895- errors in user-defined record printers are caught and shown in the
1896  output instead of throwing an error to avoid endless recursion when
1897  an error message is printed
1898- a feature identifier named `chicken-MAJOR.MINOR' is now defined
1899  to simplify conditionalization of code on the CHICKEN version
1900- `getter-with-setter' copies the lambda-information (if available) from
1901  the getter to the generated procedure
1902- `time' uses a somewhat more concise output format and outputs timing
1903  information to stderr instead of stdout
1904- added a new chapter on cross-development to the manual
1905- added the `safe-globals' declaration specifier
1906- split up manual chapter `Modules and macros' into two chapters
1907  (named `Modules' and `Macros', respectively - suggested by
1908  Mario Goulart)
1909- the last 5 non-precompiled regular expressions are now internally
1910  cached in compiled form, which speeds up repeated matching of
1911  the same uncompiled regular expression dramatically
1912- added the new procedure `yes-or-no?' to the `utils' library unit
1913- added a `bench' makefile target that runs some non-trivial
1914  benchmark programs
1915- added `install-target' and `install-dev' makefile target for
1916  installing only target system libraries in cross-mode and
1917  development files (static libraries and headers)
1918- added `[-]no-procedure-checks-for-toplevel-bindings' compiler
1919  option and declaration
1920- usage of unimported syntax in modules gives more usable
1921  error messages; in particular, used but unimported FFI forms are
1922  now detected
1923- invalid syntactic forms (mostly `()') encountered by the compiler
1924  or interpreter show the contextual form containing the expression,
1925  or, if indicated by the context warns about missing imports
1926- simplified manual pages of all core tools - they now refer to
1927  the output shown by invoking `<tool> -help'
1928- added new option `-feature FEATURE' to `chicken-install' tool
1929  to pass feature-identifiers to invocations of `csc'
1930- removed deprecated `-host-extension' option from `chicken-install'
1931- `chicken-status' in a system built for cross-compilation now
1932  lists extensions installed in the target prefix, unless the
1933  new `-host' option is given on the command line
1934- `chicken-uninstall' in a system built for cross-compilation now
1935  removes extensions installed in the target prefix, unless the
1936  new `-host' option is given on the command line
1937- added missing entry for `finite?' to the `chicken' module
1938  exports
1939- added new procedure `port-closed?' to the `library' unit
1940  (contributed by Peter Bex)
1941- added new procedure `symbol-append' to the library unit
1942- the compiler-option `-optimize-level 0' is equivalent to
1943  `-no-compiler-syntax -no-usual-integrations`
1944- internal rewritings of `map' and `for-each' ensure correct
1945  evaluation order of the arguments and does a better job
1946  at detecting non-list arguments (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
1947- `void' now takes arbitrary arguments and ignores them
1948- deprecated `noop' (from the `data-structures' unit) which
1949  is now replaced by `void'
1950- the `time' macro now performs a major garbage collection
1951  before executing the contained expressions and writes
1952  the timings in a more compact format to the port given
1953  by `(current-error-port)' instead of the standard output
1954  port
1955- definitions of the form `(define define ...)' and
1956  `(define-syntax define-syntax ...)' now trigger an error,
1957  as required by R5RS (thanks to Jeronimo Pellegrini and Alex
1958  Shinn)
1959- deprecated `random-seed' from the `extras' unit, since it
1960  is identical to `randomize'
1961- added new procedure `create-temporary-directory' to the
1962  `files' unit
1963- deprecated the optional path separator argument to
1964  `make-pathname'
1965- slightly improved the performance of keyword argument
1966  processing
1967- removed the deprecated `canonical-path' and `current-environment'
1968  procedures from the `posix' unit
1969- warnings that mostly refer to programming style issues are
1970  now coined `notes' and are only shown in the interpreter
1971  or when debug-mode is enabled or when scrutiny is enabled
1972  when compiling
1973
19744.5.0
1975
1976- internal fixes of handling of alternative installation-prefix
1977  in setup-api
1978- certain compiler-warnings that are in really just notes
1979  and don't indicate a possible error (like reimport of
1980  identifiers) are only shown with -S or in verbose mode
1981- fixed handling of VARDIR in `chicken-install' (thanks to
1982  Davide Puricelli)
1983- `chicken-install -test' doesn't runs tests for dependencies
1984- when a non-else clause follows an else-clause in `cond',
1985  `case' or `select' a warning (note) is shown in verbose
1986  mode
1987- removed the deprecated `define-extension' and
1988  `define-compiled-syntax'
1989- `chicken-uninstall' now always asks before removing
1990  extensions, unless `-force' is given
1991- improved performance of keyword-argument processing slightly
1992- `export' outside of a module definition has no effect
1993- `number->string' now accepts arbitrary bases between 2 and 16
1994  (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1995- fixed `standard-extension' in `setup-api' module
1996- literal constants keep their identity, even when inlined
1997- Unit library: added `fxodd?' and `fxeven?'
1998- All hardcoded special forms have been replaced with
1999  syntax definitions that expand into internal forms, this
2000  allows redefinition and shadowing of all Scheme core forms
2001- faster implementations of `get' and `put!'
2002- faster implementation of `assq' in unsafe mode
2003- the `-sx' option prefixes each output line with `;'
2004- slightly better expansion performance
2005- more documentation of the C API (thanks to Peter Bex)
2006- `module' supports a shorthand form that refers directly
2007  to a file to be included as the module body
2008- added runtime option `-:G' to force GUI mode (on platforms
2009  that distinguish between GUI and non-GUI applications)
2010- removed the unsafe runtime library (`libuchicken'), this
2011  simplifies and speeds up the build and reduces the risk
2012  of executables loading library units from different
2013  variants of the runtime system
2014- removed the `-unsafe-libraries' option from `chicken'
2015  and `csc'
2016- removed bootstrapping target and bootstrapping files from
2017  development repository; to bootstrap the system, either
2018  use a release or development-snapshot tarball or fetch
2019  a statically linked precompiled `chicken' binary from
2020  http://chicken.wiki.br/chicken-projects/bootstrap/
2021- Jim Ursetto provided some fixes for building universal
2022  binaries on Mac OS X
2023- `csc' now compiles and links Windows resource (.rc) files
2024  when given on the command line
2025- `chicken-install' and `chicken-uninstall' have an embedded
2026  manifest that suppresses the elevation dialog on Windows
2027  Vista and later when UAC is activated (Thanks to Thomas Chust)
2028- the `install' program is not used in the build on mingw
2029  and mingw/MSYS platforms, since this is broken on older
2030  mingw versions
2031- line-number-information is now properly handled (in the
2032  few places where it is used) correctly for included files;
2033  the source file is given in trace-output in addition to
2034  the line number
2035- removed compiler warning for shared objects compiled in
2036  unsafe mode
2037- unboxing is now only done in unsafe mode
2038- in unsafe mode, pointer-accessors from the `lolevel' unit
2039  are now handled intrinsically by the compiler
2040- `chicken-install' accepts now relative pathnames for the
2041  `-prefix' option
2042- `define-record-type' now optionally allows using SRFI-17
2043  setters as record-field modifiers
2044- `integer?' returns `#f' for NaN and infinite numbers
2045- `csc' now has an `-no-elevation' option for embedding a
2046  manifest that prevents the elevation dialog on Windows
2047  Vista and later when IAC is activated
2048- the `,d' csi command displays qualified symbols properly
2049- symbols starting with the `#\#' character trigger an
2050  error when encountered by the reader
2051- Unit posix: `glob->regexp' now always returns a regular
2052  expression object or optionally an SRE
2053- Unit posix: `terminal-port?' and `terminal-size' have been
2054   implemented for Windows, the latter always returns `0 0',
2055  though (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
2056- Unit regex: `regexp' now accepts a regular expression
2057  object as argument
2058- Unit regex: removed `glob?'
2059- fixed bug in `chicken-install'/`chicken-uninstall' and
2060  `chicken-status' that prevented collapsed command-line
2061  options to be handled correctly.
2062- disabled runpath-fix for deployed applications for netbsd
2063  (but resurrected providing a runpath at all, thanks to
2064  Peter Bex)
2065- Peter Bex provided documentation for the `C_closure' C API
2066  function
2067
20684.4.0
2069
2070- the system can now be built with llvm-gcc and/or "clang" (the
2071  LLVM C compiler which doesn't use the GNU C frontend)
2072- added new option `-trunk' to `chicken-install', which forces
2073  building and installing the development version of extensions
2074  in combination with `-t local'
2075- added new option `-deploy' to `chicken-install', which builds
2076  extension for use in "deployed" applications (see below)
2077- added option `-deploy' to `csc', the compiler driver. With this
2078  option `csc' can build fully self-contained application bundles
2079  and double-clickable Macintosh GUI apps; see the "Deployment"
2080  manual chapter for more information
2081- the directory given to the `-prefix' option of `chicken-install'
2082  may now be a relative pathname.
2083- removed GUI-specific runtime library (`libchicken-gui') from
2084  Windows build - GUI- and non-GUI applications now use the same
2085  runtime library
2086- special forms of the foreign-function interface have been replaced
2087  with an internal form and syntax to allow renaming and shadowing of
2088  these forms
2089- the new `-private-repository' option in `csc' compiles executables
2090  with the extension-repository path set to the directory from which
2091  the program was started
2092- `csc': deprecated the `-W' and `-windows' options, added `-gui' as
2093  a platform-independent replacement
2094- `require-extension'/`use' accepts now import-specifications
2095- user-defined extension-specifiers and `set-extension-specifier!'
2096  have been removed
2097- `delete-file[*]', `rename-file', `create-directory', `file-copy',
2098  `file-move', `delete-directory' and `change-directory' return their
2099  argument/destination filename on success
2100- added the missing procedure `condition-variable-name' to the
2101  srfi-18 library unit (Thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
2102- the `glob?' function from the `regex' unit has been deprecated
2103- added the procedure `scan-input-lines' to the `utils' library unit
2104- added new runtime option `-:g' which enables GC debugging output
2105- reclamation of unused symbols in "symbol-gc" mode (`-:w') now only
2106  takes place for symbols with an empty property-list
2107- on Windows loading of code compiled with [non-]GUI runtime libraries
2108  will fail and produce an error message when the loading executable
2109  is linked with a different runtime system
2110- on Windows, GUI libraries were not correctly linked by `csc'
2111- unit posix: added setter for `file-modification-time'
2112- the banner shows the branchname of the build, unless it's "master"
2113- the `-no-install' option to `chicken-install' is ignored when
2114  building/installing dependencies
2115- `chicken-uninstall' takes a glob instead of a regular expression as
2116  argument
2117- the rename and compare functions for low-level macro-definitions
2118  accept now arbitrary s-expressions and renames/compares them recursively
2119- `number->string' handles negative-numbers with bases different from 10
2120  correctly (thanks to Peter Danenberg)
2121- removed deprecated `setup-install-flag' and `setup-verbose-flag' from
2122  the `setup-api' module
2123- added new option `-repository' to `chicken-install' (Thanks to Christian
2124  Kellermann)
2125- removed `chicken-setup' stub program
2126- fix to `csc' to use the correct library when fixing dynamic load paths
2127  (Thanks to Derrell Piper)
2128- removed html documentation from distribution (the wiki manual will
2129  now be installed)
2130- fixed bug in `reexport' which caused syntax not to be correctly
2131  reexported
2132- previous assignments to a toplevel variable that are separated by
2133  side effect free expressions are removed
2134- fixed windows version of `find-files' (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
2135- documentation for extensions is not installed automatically by
2136  `chicken-install' anymore
2137- changed binary version from "4" to "5", because the new runtime
2138  libraries are not binary-compatible with previous releases; this
2139  means all eggs have to be reinstalled and existing programs be
2140  recompiled!
2141- added unboxing pass to compiler which results in partially dramatical
2142  performance improvements for unsafe floating-point-intensive code;
2143  unboxing is enabled on optimization levels 4 and 5
2144- removed rest-argument-vector optimization as it could conflict
2145  with inlining (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
2146- renamed `pointer-offset' to `pointer+' and deprecated `pointer-offset'
2147- toplevel assignments that have no other side-effects can be eliminated
2148  if it can be shown that the value is not used (the compiler will
2149  generate a warning in this case)
2150- removed deprecated `-quiet' option in `chicken' program
2151- removed deprecated `run-time-macros' declaration
2152- removed deprecated `-v2' and `-v3' options in `csc' program
2153- removed deprecated `list-of' function (it is exclusively available
2154  as `list-of?' now)
2155- removed deprecated `stat-...' functions in posix library unit
2156- removed deprecated `for-each-line' and `for-each-argv-line' procedures
2157  in utils library unit
2158- added `fpinteger?' and `fpabs'
2159- deprecated `define-compiled-syntax'
2160- added new floating-point primitives `fpsin', `fpcos', `fptan',
2161  `fpasin', `fpacos', `fpatan', `fpatan2', `fpexp', `fplog',
2162  `fpexpt' and `fpsqrt'
2163- heavy cleanup of floating math functions which gives much better performance,
2164  especially for code compiled in unsafe mode
2165- calling `assert' with a single argument shows the tested expression
2166  on failure
2167- various bugfixes and cleaning up
2168
21694.3.0
2170
2171- fixed bug in `move-memory!' that caused negative offsets to be accepted
2172  (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
2173- removed tracing facility and apply-hook (see the "trace" egg
2174  for a replacement for tracing and breakpoints)
2175- chicken-install(1): renamed `-host-extension' option to `-host'
2176- added support for a make(1) configuration file ("config.make")
2177- `chicken-install' now allows specifiying a proxy for retrieving
2178  extensions over HTTP (thanks to Nicolas Pelletier)
2179- fixed bug in `cond-expand' that incorrectly renamed feature-identifiers
2180  if the form was the product of a syntax expansion (reported by Thomas
2181  Bushnell)
2182- import-libraries are only generated by the compiler if they don't exist
2183  yet and if the content has actually changed (this simplifies makefile-
2184  rules in some cases)
2185- it is now possible to pass a config-file to `make(1)' instead of specifying
2186  all build-options as variables on the command-line (see README)
2187- removed compiler options for "benchmark-mode" and replaced them with a
2188  new optimization level (5) (note that `-O5' does not imply fixnum mode
2189  anymore)
2190- `hen.el' and `scheme-complete.el' are not bundled with the core system
2191  anymore - `hen.el' is currently not maintained, and `scheme-complete.el'
2192  has its own release cycle; both files are available, see
2193  http://chicken.wiki.br/emacs
2194- removed meaningless benchmark suite and cleaned up
2195- added optional argument to `grep' that allows applying a function
2196  to each matched item (contributed by Tony Sidaway)
2197- added extension-property `import-only', which makes it possible to
2198  create extensions that have no runtime part
2199- the argument to `seconds->string', `seconds->utc-time' and
2200  `seconds->local-time' is now optional and defaults to the value
2201  of `(current-seconds)' (suggested by Mario Goulart)
2202- removed read-syntax for `syntax' form
2203- fixed bug in `get-condition-property'
2204- fixed bug in windows version of `process-execute'
2205- TCP timeouts throw exception of kind `timeout' to allow
2206  distinguishing between timeouts and other errors
2207- removed some internal functions that manipulate environments
2208- fixed bugs in `standard-extension' (`setup-api' module) and added keyword
2209  arguments for building static extensions and adding custom properties
2210- when cross-compiling, `chicken-install(1)' doesn't pass `-setup-mode'
2211  (the host tools should not attempt to load target binaries)
2212- `installation-prefix' in the `setup-api' module was not always correctly
2213  set
2214- the `-force' option in `chicken-install(1)' overrides the CHICKEN version
2215  check
2216- disabled e-mail feature in `chicken-bug(1)', since it doesn't work
2217  anyway, in the moment
2218- fixed bug in `reexport' that made it impossible to reexport core library
2219  definitions
2220- fix in optimizer that sometimes caused C functions for inlined
2221  procedures to be emitted multiple times (Thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
2222- documented `define-compiler-syntax' and `let-compiler-syntax'
2223- printer for hash-tables shows current number of stores items
2224- when upgrading during installation of a dependency `chicken-install'
2225  shows the version to upgrade to (Thanks to Christian Kellermann)
2226- Updated scheme-complete (Thanks to Alex Shinn)
2227- fix for pathnames with whitespace in 'runtests.sh' on Windows
2228- fix for 'normalize-pathname' with absolute pathname argument
2229- added 'decompose-directory' to unit files
2230- fix for 'local-timezone-abbreviation' - wasn't using the current time
2231  so tz-name constant
2232- deprecated 'make-pathname' separator argument
2233
22344.2.0
2235
2236- added compiler option `-emit-all-import-libraries'
2237- added `reexport'
2238- added compiler and interpreter option `-setup-mode'
2239- various minor performance improvements
2240- fix for 'create-directory' when parents wanted
2241- `for-each-line' and `for-each-argv-line' have been deprecated
2242- chicken-install tries alternative servers if server responds with error
2243- fixed load bug (ticket #72)
2244- new library procedure `get-condition-property'
2245- many mingw build fixes (thanks tp Fadi Moukayed)
2246- setup-api: deprecated `cross-chicken' (use `cond-expand' or
2247  `feature?' instead)
2248- added topological-sort to data-structures unit; chicken-install
2249  sorts dependencies before installing them
2250- "-optimize-level 2" enables inlining by default
2251- disable executable stack in assembly code modules (patch by
2252  Zbigniew, reported by Marijn Schouten)
2253- csc now always exits with a status code of 1 on errors (patch by Zbigniew)
2254
22554.1.0
2256
2257- The new parameter "parantheses-synonyms" and the command-line
2258  option "-no-parantheses-synonyms" allow disabling list-like behaviour
2259  of "{ ... }" and "[ ... ]" tokens
2260- The new parameter "symbol-escape" and the command-line
2261  option "-no-symbol-escape" allows disabling "| ... |" symbol escape
2262  syntax
2263- Added command-line option "-r5rs-syntax" to disable CHICKEN-specific
2264  read-syntax
2265- Removed "macro?" and "undefine-macro!"
2266- Support for Microsoft Visual Studio / MSVC has been dropped
2267- The compiler provides now a simple flow-analysis pass that does
2268  basic checking of argument-counts and -types for core library procedure
2269  calls (new option "-scrutinize")
2270- New compiler-options "-no-argc-checks", "-no-bound-checks",
2271  "-no-procedure checks", "-no-procedure-checks-for-usual-bindings",
2272  "-types TYPEFILE" and "-consult-inline-file FILENAME"
2273- Added a "chicken-setup" stub-application to catch incorrect use of
2274  this tool (which has been replaced in 4.0.0 with "chicken-install")
2275- Changed "setup-install-flag" and "setup-verbose-flag" to
2276  "setup-install-mode" and "setup-verbose-mode" in "setup-api" module,
2277  the old names are still available but deprecated
2278- Posix unit:
2279  added "socket?", "block-device?" and "character-device?", deprecated
2280  redundant "stat-..." procedures
2281- Added "directory-exists?"
2282- "(for-each (lambda ...) X)" is compiled as a loop
2283- The argument-count check for format-strings for "[sf]printf" with a constant
2284  string argument is done at compile-time
2285
22864.0.0
2287
2288- removed `apropos' and `apropos-list' from the "utils" library unit;
2289  available as an extension
2290- removed texinfo and PDF documentation - this will possible be added back
2291  later
2292- replaced PCRE regex engine with Alex Shinn's "irregex" regular expression
2293  package
2294- removed `-extension' option
2295- removed `-static-extensions' csc option and added `-static-extension NAME'
2296- `regex' unit: removed `regexp*' and `regex-optimize'
2297- added `CHICKEN_new_finalizable_gc_root()'
2298- `length' checks its argument for being cyclic
2299- removed custom declarations and "link-options" and "c-options" declarations
2300- deprecated "-quiet" option to "chicken" program
2301- added "-update-db" option to chicken-install
2302- the compiler now suggests possibly required module-imports
2303- moved non-standard syntax-definitions into "chicken-syntax" library unit
2304- the pretty-printer prints the end-of-file object readably now
2305- alternative conditional execution paths have separate allocation computation
2306  (previously the allocation of all alternatives was coalesced)
2307- removed unused "%kmp-search" from "srfi-13" library unit
2308- expander handles syntax-reexports and makes unexported syntax available
2309  for exported expanders in import libraries
2310- added checks in some procedures in the "tcp" library unit
2311- the macro system has been completely overhauled and converted
2312  to hygienic macros
2313- a macro-aware module system has been added
2314- added "-sx" option to csi
2315- removed the following deprecated functions:
2316   [un]shift!
2317   andmap ormap
2318   byte-vector? byte-vector-fill!
2319   make-byte-vector byte-vector
2320   byte-vector-set! byte-vector-ref
2321   byte-vector->list list->byte-vector
2322   string->byte-vector byte-vector->string
2323   byte-vector-length
2324   make-static-byte-vector static-byte-vector->pointer
2325   byte-vector-move! byte-vector-append!
2326   set-file-position! set-user-id! set-group-id!
2327   set-process-group-id!
2328   macro? undefine-macro!
2329- the situation-identifiers "run-time" and "compile-time" have
2330  been removed
2331- the compiler options "-check-imports", "-import" and "-emit-exports"
2332  have been removed
2333- new procedures:
2334  strip-syntax
2335  expand
2336- new macros
2337  define-syntax
2338  module
2339  export
2340- the following macros have been removed:
2341    define-foreign-record
2342    define-foreign-enum
2343    define-macro
2344    define-extension
2345- "local" mode, in which locally defined exported toplevel variables can
2346  be inlined
2347- new options and declarations "[-]local", "[-]inline-global" and "-emit-inline-file"
2348- optimization levels changed to use inlining:
2349  -optimize-level 3: enables -inline -local (but *not* -unsafe)
2350  -optimize-level 4: enables -inline -local -unsafe
2351- increased default inlining-limit to 20
2352- support for cross-module inlining
2353- "make <VARIABLES> bench" runs the benchmark suite
2354- "chicken-setup" has been replaced by new command line tools
2355  "chicken-install", "chicken-uninstall" and "chicken-status", which are
2356  more flexible and allow greater freedom when creating local or application-
2357  specific repositories
2358- extension-installation can be done directly from SVN repositories or a local
2359  file tree
2360- enabled chicken mirror site as alternative download location
Trap