~ chicken-core (master) /NEWS


   16.0.0
   2
   3- Core libraries
   4  - All modules specified by the R7RS small language are now available in
   5    the core system.
   6  - The internal string representation has been converted to UTF-8,
   7    making strings fully UNICODE capable.
   8  - The (chicken blob) module has been replaced with (chicken bytevector),
   9    containing R7RS compatible bytevector operations. Bytevectors are
  10    now fully equivalent to SRFI-4 u8vectors.
  11  - The read-syntax for blobs (`#${...}') has been removed. Bytevectors
  12    can be read using `#u8(...)' or `#u8"..."'.
  13  - `open-input-file' and `open-output-file' accept a file encoding,
  14    supported are currently UTF-8 (the default) and Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1).
  15  - `file-read', `file-write', 'set-pseudo-random-seed!' and `random-bytes'
  16    require a bytevector argument and do not accept strings.
  17  - `process-fork', `process-run', `process' and `process*' return now
  18    a process-object instead of a PID, use process record accessors to
  19    retrieve exit-status and input/output ports. `process-wait' and
  20    `process-signal' accept either a PID or a process object as
  21    argument.
  22  - File-locking operations in the (chicken file posix) module now use the
  23    flock(2) system call, operator over whole files, are thread-safe and
  24    use a simpler interface. `file-test-lock' has been removed.
  25  - `read-u8vector', `read-u8vector!' and `write-u8vector' have been
  26    removed, use the equivalent operations from the (chicken io)
  27    module instead.
  28  - Added `read-bytevector', `read-bytevector!' and `write-bytevector'
  29    to the (chicken io) module.
  30  - Removed `set-port-name!', use the SRFI-17 setter for `port-name'
  31    instead.
  32  - Added `port-encoding' to the (chicken port) module.
  33  - `make-input-port' and `make-output-port' take their optional
  34    port methods as keyword arguments now.
  35  - Locatives on strings are now indexed by code-point, not byte.
  36  - `symbol-escape' now also controls whether symbols are printed in
  37    escaped ("|...|") mode or not.
  38  - Symbol printing is stricter in deciding when symbols should be escaped
  39    or not.
  40  - The following primitives have been moved from (chicken base)
  41    to R7RS modules:
  42    - `exact-integer?`, `exact-integer-sqrt?', `vector-copy!',
  43      `make-parameter', `call/cc', `open-input-string',
  44      `open-output-string', `get-output-string', `input-port-open?',
  45      `output-port-open?', `parameterize' and `port?' moved from the
  46      (chicken base) to the (scheme base) module.
  47    - `case-lambda' moved from (chicken base) to (scheme case-lambda).
  48    - `features' moved from (chicken platform) to (scheme base).
  49    - `write-string' moved from (chicken io) to (scheme base) and its
  50      signature changed to the R7RS one.
  51    - `define-record-type' moved to (scheme base) and is generative,
  52      to be compliant with R7RS.
  53  - `syntax-error' has been removed from (chicken syntax) and is now a
  54    macro and part of (scheme base).
  55  - `record-instance?' and `make-record-instance' accept non-symbolic
  56    type specifiers to support generative record types.
  57  - The new (chicken number-vector) module now provides a superset of
  58    SRFI-4, including 64 and 128-bit complex number vectors, the `srfi-4'
  59    module is still available but exports only those procedures as are
  60    specified in SRFI-4.
  61  - The second (optional) parameter for `load' and `load-relative' may be
  62    either an environment or an evaluation procedure.
  63  - The module aliases `srfi-0', `srfi-6', `srfi-9', `srfi-11', `srfi-23',
  64    `srfi-39' and `srfi-98' have been removed (all of these are covered by
  65    R7RS).
  66  - The modules `r4rs', `r5rs', `r4rs-null' and `r5rs-null' have been
  67    renamed to `(scheme XXX)'.
  68  - Hexadecimal escape sequences in strings and extended symbols must be
  69    terminated by the `;' character, following R7RS.
  70  - The `#ci'/`#cs' read syntaxes have been removed, use
  71    `#![no-]fold-case'
  72    markers instead.
  73  - `include' and `include-relative' accept multiple filenames,
  74    `include-ci'
  75    has been added.
  76  - Added `include-path' to (chicken platform) module.
  77  - Added `number-vector-data' to (chicken memory representation) module.
  78  - The platform-identifier "mingw32" has been renamed to "mingw".
  79  - Library procedures that return paths now always convert them to
  80    contain forward slashes, 'make-pathname' always uses "/" for path
  81    separation.
  82  - Added `expand1' to (chicken syntax) module for expanding a macro
  83    only once, also added the ",x1" command to "csi" for this.
  84  - Added the (chicken version) module.
  85
  86- Syntax expander:
  87  - `syntax-rules' attempts to better support tail patterns with ellipses
  88     (#1736).
  89
  90- FFI changes:
  91  - Strings and symbols passed to foreign code are not copied, they are
  92    passed directly, any mutations done by external code will be visible on the
  93    Scheme side.
  94  - Complex numbers, C structs and unions can now be passed directly as
  95    arguments and returned as results when interfacing to C code.
  96
  97- Tools
  98  - The compiler and interpreter option `-r5rs-syntax' has been renamed to
  99    `-r7rs-syntax' and does not disable extended symbol syntax ("|...|")
 100    anymore.
 101  - The "feathers" debugger has been removed from the core and is now
 102    available as an egg.
 103  - The `set-describer!' procedure has been removed from the `csi' module.
 104  - The "csc" program now accepts tool flags (e.g. -compiler, -cc etc)
 105    which have paths with spaces in them without requiring the user to
 106    double-quote them.  As a consequence, it no longer accepts programs
 107    with space separated flags for tool arguments (e.g.
 108    "csc -cc 'gcc -debug'" etc).  If this is desired, write a short
 109    shell script which calls the tool with your flags.
 110  - `chicken-install' now locks the cache directory during
 111    egg-installation.
 112  - Added component type `installed-c-object' to egg format.
 113  - The `csc-options' and `link-options' configuration clauses in egg
 114    specifications now allow `custom-config' forms to produce arbitrary
 115    computed compiler and linker options.
 116
 117- Build system
 118  - A "configure" script is now used to prepare the sources for building
 119    everything. This simplifies the use of "make", allows more elaborate
 120    platform sanity checks and follows conventions.
 121  - On Windows the minimal "mingw" build is not supported anymore, a POSIX
 122    shell and the basic sete of command-line utilities is now required
 123    (formerly the "mingw-msys" build). Chris Wellons "w64devkit" is now
 124    the recommended toolchain. The platform identifier "mingw-msys" has
 125    been renamed to "mingw".
 126  - The system can now be built with "zig cc" as a C compiler/linker
 127    replacement.
 128
 1295.4.0
 130
 131- Security fixes
 132  - CVE-2022-45145: Neutralize possible escape characters in egg metadata
 133    to avoid arbitrary OS command injection during egg installation,
 134    reported by Vasilij Schneidermann who also provided the necessary
 135    patches to mitigate this problem.
 136  - The runtime option "-:b" has been removed, as it was deemed too
 137    insecure to be able to drop to a REPL from the CLI of any program.
 138  - Runtime option processing has been hardened: processing now stops on
 139    the first non-runtime option or after "-:", whichever comes first.
 140
 141- Core libraries
 142  - Fix type declarations for `file-select` (reported by Anton Idukov).
 143  - Change `create-temporary-{file,directory}` fallback code on Windows to
 144    use %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Local/Temp if that environment variable is set.
 145  - Added new thread-safe API for POSIX signals ("make-signal-handler",
 146    "signal-ignore" and "signal-default") and deprecated the existing one.
 147  - Added "make-finalizer" to execute finalizers in a thread-safe
 148    manner.
 149  - Added weak pairs to (chicken base), with similar behaviour to Chez Scheme.
 150  - Added "locative-index", kindly contributed by John Croisant.
 151  - Added "fp*+" (fused multiply-add) to "chicken.flonum" module
 152    (suggested by Christian Himpe).
 153  - Added flonum-specific hyperbolic functions and their inverse to
 154    "chicken.flonum" module (suggested by Christian Himpe).
 155  - The `process-execute` procedure now sets argv[0] to the unmodified
 156    filename. Previously, the directory part would be stripped.
 157  - Added support for embedded strings and characters in SRFI-4 vector
 158    literals.
 159  - read-with-source-info is now documented and officially supported,
 160    from the (chicken syntax) module.  read/source-info is still exported
 161    from the undocumented internal (chicken compiler support) module, but
 162    using it from there is deprecated.
 163  - Added "export/rename" to (chicken module) for renaming identifiers on
 164    export.
 165  - The values of the TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP environment variables are no
 166    longer memoized (fixes #1830).
 167  - Condition objects produced by procedures that change errno now have
 168    an `errno' property.
 169  - Deprecated "chicken-home" and added "include-path" in the
 170    chicken.platform module.
 171  - Irregex has been updated to upstream 0.9.11 plus an additional fix
 172    for sre->string.  The 0.9.11 release fixes a few problems related to
 173    utf-8 handling (which should not affect CHICKEN) and expands the
 174    definition for the 'whitespace character set to include vertical tab,
 175    carriage return and form feed.
 176
 177- Tools
 178  - Fix scripts generated by `chicken-install` on Windows to not quote `>>`
 179    when echoing into files which would result in empty egg-info files
 180    (reported and fixed by Jani Hakala).
 181  - The -R option for csi and csc now accepts list-notation like
 182    e.g. (srfi 1).  Fixes #1809, reported by Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe.
 183  - Fix shell quotation in options passed from csc to other tools.
 184    Fixes #1302, reported by Xin Wang.
 185  - The -prelude and -postlude options for csc work properly again.
 186  - chicken-install now retrieves the latest egg version when
 187    instructed to install an egg that's already installed (#1802).
 188  - When `location' is specified in setup.defaults, chicken-install
 189    will consider two location layouts when looking for eggs:
 190    <location>/<egg> and <location>/<egg>/<version>.
 191  - chicken-install: Fix #1684 (programs that specify
 192    component-dependencies should build-depend on their import
 193    libraries).
 194  - chicken-install now caches eggs installed from local locations.
 195  - chicken-install now accepts the -location command line option
 196    (short: -l) to specify local directories where to get egg sources
 197    from.
 198  - chicken-install now gives a warning on unexpected properties (#1492).
 199  - chicken-install now uses a directory specific for cache metadata
 200    (VERSION, STATUS and TIMESTAMP files) to avoid collisions with source
 201    files on case-insensitive file systems like on MacOS (#1753, reported
 202    by Kon Lovett).
 203
 204- Syntax expander
 205  - When passing a module as an environment to eval, correctly resolve
 206    identifiers in macro expansions (#1295 reported by Caolan McMahon).
 207  - Internal definitions honor rebindings of core special forms (#1132).
 208  - Globally defining an identifier previously bound to a macro now fully
 209    shadows the macro (#1166, reported by Michele La Monaca).
 210
 211- Compiler
 212  - When emitting types files, the output list is now sorted, to ensure
 213    deterministic build output (fixes #1783, reported by "ss2").
 214
 215- Build system
 216  - Fix compiler warnings about zero-sized `memset` (reported by Claude Marinier).
 217  - Disable broken test-create-temporary-file on Windows (reported by "jjhoo").
 218  - Drop use of XCODE_... environment variables on MacOS.
 219  - Add build directory to rpath on MacOS so that the test suite picks up correct
 220    libchicken, even if CHICKEN is already installed (thanks to Christian Himpe).
 221  - Default "cc" on BSD systems for building CHICKEN to avoid ABI problems
 222    when linking with C++ code.
 223
 224- Runtime system
 225  - Make line numbers available for error output and during syntax expansion
 226    in the interpreter as well as the compiler.
 227
 2285.3.0
 229
 230- Core libraries
 231  - In (chicken process-context posix), the setters for current-user-id,
 232    current-effective-user-id and current-group-id now check that the
 233    new user/group value is a fixnum instead of blindly passing it on
 234    to the C implementation (which would cause bogus user ids to be set).
 235    Fixes #1787, thanks to Christopher Brannon.
 236  - The srfi-17 module now exports the `getter-with-setter` and `setter`
 237    procedures, not just the set! macro (thanks to Lassi Kortela)
 238  - Fix hang in chicken-install -update-db on Windows (thanks to Mark
 239    Fisher for reporting and Jani Hakala for debugging and patch).
 240  - Fixed an inadvertant error during error reporting in the `numerator`
 241    and `denominator` procedures when passed non-finite flonums (#1730).
 242  - Fixed a bug where optimisations for `irregex-match?` would cause
 243    runtime errors due to the inlined specialisations not being
 244    fully-expanded (see #1690).
 245  - Irregex has been updated to upstream 0.9.10, which fixes behaviour
 246    of irregex-replace/all with positive lookbehind so all matches are
 247    replaced instead of only the first (reported by Kay Rhodes), and
 248    a regression regarding replacing empty matches which was introduced
 249    by the fixes in 0.9.7 (reported by Sandra Snan).  Also, the
 250    http-url shorthand now allows any top-level domain and the old
 251    "top-level-domain" now also supports "edu" (fixed by Sandra Snan).
 252    Also, a problem was fixed with capturing groups inside a kleene
 253    star, which could sometimes return incorrect parts of the match.
 254    Finally, "bol" handling was fixed to handle newlines consistently
 255    so that multiple matches don't overlap (reported by Sandra Snan).
 256  - current-milliseconds has been deprecated in favor of the name
 257    current-process-milliseconds, to avoid confusion due to naming
 258    of current-milliseconds versus current-seconds, which do something
 259    quite different.  Also, its definition has been tweaked to
 260    guarantee that it returns the time since process startup.  On
 261    Windows, it will now return sane values after 24 days of uptime.
 262    On UNIX, the values returned will be precise to the millisecond
 263    instead of rounded down to the nearest second at startup (which
 264    would result in erratic startup times).
 265  - The default mode for files created by `file-open' has been changed
 266    to 0666 (plus whatever change the effective umask applies), rather
 267    than 0744 (see #1698).
 268  - Fixed type database entry for "log" with second arg (fixes #1725).
 269  - Made topological-sort behave better when dependency target is listed
 270    multiple times by concatenating dependencies (fixes #1185).
 271
 272- Module system
 273  - Reexported macros now work when the reexporting module redefines
 274    identifiers from the original (fixes #1757, reported by Sandra Snan).
 275  - When using "except" in "import" to omit reexported macros,
 276    they are really not imported (#1771, reported by Sandra Snan).
 277
 278- Runtime system
 279  - Sleeping primordial thread doesn't forget mutations made to
 280    parameters in interrupt handlers anymore. (See #1638. Fix
 281    contributed by Sebastien Marie)
 282  - A feature corresponding to the word size is available
 283    regardless of the word size (#1693)
 284  - The default maximum heap size on 64-bit platforms is now the
 285    theoretical maximum addressable memory size (#1675).  Use -:m
 286    if you would like to override this at run-time.
 287  - Deprecated C_(a_i_current_)milliseconds in favor of
 288    C_(a_i_)current_process_milliseconds to match the Scheme-level
 289    deprecation of current-milliseconds.
 290  - Officially deprecated C_pair() in favor of C_a_pair(); it has
 291    been deprecated for years.
 292  - At program cleanup, finalizers are only forced when the live
 293    finalizer count is non-zero
 294  - The symbol `srfi-87` has been added to the list of built-in
 295    feature identifiers.
 296  - Garbage collection algorithm has been changed to reduce thrashing
 297    when heap is almost full, by growing the heap sooner.  A new -:hf
 298    option was added to tweak when heap growth should occur.
 299  - Added `-:R' runtime option to initialize rand() state
 300    deterministically (should help with #1650 and benchmarking).
 301
 302- Compiler
 303  - Statically linked programs using built-in libraries are supported
 304    again (fixes #1788, a regression from 5.2.0).
 305  - Avoid re-using argvector when inline rest operations are being
 306    used in CPS calls (#1703, thanks to Jakob L. Keuze).
 307  - An `emit-types-file` declaration has been added, which corresponds
 308    to the compiler flag of the same name (#1644, thanks to Marco Maggi
 309    for the suggestion).
 310  - Fixed a bug caused by a bad interaction between two optimizations:
 311    argvector rest ops would be applied even if a procedure already got
 312    its rest arg consed at the call site (#1756, thanks to Sandra Snan).
 313
 314- Build system
 315  - Fix build with tcc.
 316  - Fix a few tests on Windows so the suite passes once again.
 317  - Auto-configure at build time on most platforms. Cross-compilation
 318    still requires PLATFORM to be set, and it can still be provided
 319    manually, but it is no longer required in the common case.
 320  - Fix Linux to MingW cross-compilation (#1768, thanks to Théo Cavignac)
 321  - The `clean' target for make now also removes build configuration files.
 322  - The `distclean' target for make has been removed (now `clean' does what
 323    `distclean' used to do).
 324
 325- Tools
 326  - Fix a problem with egg installation scripts on Windows, where the
 327    platform was not correctly identified, depending on the shell used
 328    during installation of the core system (thanks again to Mark Fisher
 329    for reporting and helping in finding the culprit).
 330  - Fixed a bug in chicken-install (#1744) that would cause
 331    `Error: (string->number) bad argument type: #!eof` in some cases.
 332  - If chicken-install has a program prefix/suffix, it now writes to a
 333    cache directory matching its program name (#1713, thanks to Alice Maz)
 334  - Fixed bug in chicken-install regarding variable quotation on UNIX-like
 335    systems which prevented installation into paths with spaces (#1685).
 336  - Fixed a similar bug in chicken-install for paths with spaces on mingw
 337    and mingw-msys (#1727, thanks to Josh Helzer for reporting and Vasilij
 338    Schneidermann for the patch).
 339
 340- Module system
 341  - Fixed a memory leak when calling (import) multiple times in a row
 342    on the same module (#1772; reported by "plugd" on IRC).
 343
 3445.2.0
 345
 346- Core libraries
 347  - Fix `memory-statistics` by returning semi-space bytes and used
 348    semi-space bytes like the documentation says. Old implementation
 349    returned full-heap size and (full-heap - used-semi-space).
 350  - for-each and map now behave consistently in compiled and interpreted
 351    mode, like in SRFI-1.  They now stop when the shortest list is
 352    exhausted instead of raising an exception (fixes #1422).
 353  - There is now a srfi-88 module which contains just the three
 354    procedures from the (chicken keyword) module defined by the SRFI.
 355  - A feature identifier named "srfi-88" is now registered.
 356  - The procedures `record-printer` and `set-record-printer!` and a
 357    corresponding SRFI-17 setter have been added. These deprecate
 358    `define-record-printer` which isn't a "real" definition (see #1294).
 359  - On Windows, `decompose-directory` no longer crashes when a drive
 360    letter is present in the supplied path string.
 361  - irregex-replace[/all] have been fixed for empty matches, so they
 362    will no longer drop characters and ignore the replacement (#1661).
 363  - Irregex has been updated to upstream 0.9.7, which also improves
 364    how empty matches are treated in irregex-fold and irregex-split.
 365
 366- Runtime system
 367  - Quoted empty keywords like ||: and :|| are now read like prescribed
 368    by SRFI-88 in the corresponding keyword mode.  Symbols containing
 369    quoted empty prefixes or suffixes like ||:abc and abc:|| will be
 370    read correctly as symbols now (fixes #1625, thanks to Andy Bennett).
 371  - IEEE floating point negative zero is now properly handled: it can
 372    be read, written and distinguished by eqv? and equal?, but not =
 373    (fixes #1627, thanks to John Cowan).
 374  - ##sys#check-exact and its C implementations C_i_check_exact and
 375    C_i_check_exact_2 have been deprecated (see also #1631).
 376  - When garbage collector is manually invoked from a finalizer, raise
 377    an error instead of hanging forever (fixes #1586).
 378  - define-record-type will now give an error if the constructor
 379    definition refers to field that's not listed elsewhere (see #1633)
 380  - Added new -:hu option to set the memory usage low watermark
 381    percentage at which the heap should be shrunk, and changed the
 382    calculation to actually reflect this (see #1379).
 383
 384- Compiler
 385  - Fixed a bug in lfa2 pass which caused "if" or "cond" nodes to be
 386    incorrectly unboxed if the "else" branch had a flonum result type
 387    (#1624, thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
 388  - Inline files no longer refer to unexported foreign stub functions
 389    (fixes #1440, thanks to "megane").
 390  - In some cases, rest argument lists do not need to be reified, which
 391    should make using optional arguments and case-lambda faster (#1623).
 392  - Values from foreign types which have an argument or return value
 393    converter are no longer inferred to have the Scheme type which
 394    corresponds to the raw foreign type, which was incorrect (#1649).
 395
 396- Module system
 397  - Trying to export a foreign variable, define-inlined procedure or
 398    define-constant variable gives a friendly error instead of saying
 399    the variable doesn't exist (fixes #1346).
 400  - When modules are registered, they no longer pollute the global
 401    environment with imports made in that module (fixes #1548)
 402
 403- Tools
 404  - The new "-module-registration" options causes module registration
 405    code to always be included in the program, even when it has also
 406    been emitted as a separate file (for example with "-J").
 407  - chicken-install now correctly checks server response code to avoid
 408    interpreting error response bodies (like 404, 500) as Scheme code.
 409  - chicken-install now follows HTTP redirects when downloading eggs.
 410  - chicken-install will now change to the correct drive before
 411    attempting to change to the egg directory (fixes #1647).
 412
 413
 4145.1.0
 415
 416- Core libraries
 417  - Symbols ending or starting with a colon are now always pipe-quoted
 418    when written by `write` to ensure they can be read back with a
 419    different keyword-style setting.
 420  - Read-write invariance of special symbols starting with #! other
 421    than #!key, #!rest or #!optional is now preserved (#1572).
 422  - When using (set-file-position!) on a port, its EOF status will now
 423    be reset.
 424  - In (chicken file posix), the values of perm/irgrp, perm/iwgrp,
 425    perm/ixgrp, perm/iroth, perm/iwoth and perm/ixoth are now correctly
 426    defined (they were all for "usr"; #1602, thanks to Eric Hoffman).
 427  - In (chicken file posix), `file-truncate` now accepts also accepts
 428    port objects, for consistency with other file procedures.
 429    All such procedures from (chicken file posix) now have the correct
 430    types in types.db (fixes #1609, thanks to Robert Jensen).
 431  - Add the system-config-directory and system-cache-directory procedures
 432    in the chicken.platform module. These procedures follow the XDG
 433    specification and also give sensible results on Windows.
 434  - Fix get-environment from (chicken process-context) to raise an
 435    error when passed #f instead of segfaulting.
 436  - Qualified symbols (##foo#bar style) are no longer encoded by a
 437    byte prefix inside the symbol name.  This ensures read-write
 438    invariance of symbols which start with a low-byte character
 439    (fixes #1077, except for keywords, which start with NUL bytes).
 440  - Fix a missing export (list->s64vector) in SRFI-4.
 441
 442- Runtime system
 443  - Keywords are now distinct types; they are not a subtype of symbols.
 444  - Use arc4random on FreeBSD (thanks to Tobias Kortkamp and gahr)
 445  - Removed the unused, undocumented (and incorrect!) C functions
 446    C_delete_symbol_table and C_set_symbol_table.
 447  - Continuations which discard additional values beyond the first no
 448    longer accept multiple values via direct invocation after being
 449    captured through `call/cc`, only via `values` (revert of #1390,
 450    due to #1601)
 451  - SRFI-4 vector predicates, reference, set and length procedures
 452    should now be faster in tight loops as they're inlineable (#757).
 453  - Keywords are now interned in a separate keyword table, not in the
 454    standard symbol table.  This brings full read-write invariance
 455    for symbols (they can now also start with NUL bytes).  Keywords
 456    no longer have plists.  Fixes #1576.
 457  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 11.
 458
 459- Compiler
 460  - Restored optimized implementations of =, +, -, /, * and quotient in
 461    fixnum-arithmetic mode (fixes #1604 mostly; thanks to "chickendan").
 462  - Added an optimization pass for reducing the amount of boxing of
 463    intermediate floating point values, enabled by the "-lfa2" compiler
 464    option.
 465  - The "lfa2" pass is now enabled at optimization levels 2 or higher.
 466
 467- Module system
 468  - When you try to import the module you are currently defining into
 469    itself, an error will be raised. This prevents an infinite loop in
 470    the compiler when later trying to import that same module (fixes
 471    #1506, thanks to Kristian Lein-Mathisen).
 472
 473- Foreign function interface
 474  - Improved hygiene in FFI macro expansions, which means you don't
 475     have to import "scheme" or "(chicken base)" for them to work.
 476
 477- Type system
 478  - It is now possible to quote free variables in type declarations,
 479     which acts as shorthand for `forall' (thanks to "megane")
 480
 481- Tools
 482  - csi now uses (system-config-directory) to find csirc and falls back to
 483    $HOME/.csirc when needed.
 484  - chicken-install now uses (system-config-directory) to find a user
 485    defined setup.defaults file ; it also uses (system-cache-directory)
 486    for its egg cache directory when the CHICKEN_EGG_CACHE environment
 487    variable is not defined.
 488
 489- Egg specifications
 490  - Allows "cond-expand" and "error" forms in egg specification files.
 491  - Add "c-object" and "object" properties to link separately compiled
 492     C objects into CHICKEN code.
 493
 494
 4955.0.0
 496
 497- Runtime system
 498  - Added support for the full numeric tower, including various new
 499    procedures taken from the "numbers" egg.  All calculations will
 500    now return exact numbers where possible, so code relying on flonums
 501    being returned may need to be changed if rational numbers do not
 502    provide the desired performance.
 503  - Port directionality has been generalized from a simple input/output
 504    flag to a bitmap, to allow for multidirectional ports.
 505  - Weak symbol GC is faster, simpler, and can now collect all
 506    unreferenced symbols instead of a maximum of 997 per major GC.
 507  - The -:w option has been removed; symbols are now always collected.
 508  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 9.
 509  - Continuations which discard additional values beyond the first now
 510    also accept multiple values via direct invocation after being
 511    captured through `call/cc`, not just via `values` (#1390)
 512  - Removed the deprecated C_locative_ref and C_mutate2 C functions.
 513  - The trace buffer no longer holds on to thread objects, allowing them to
 514    be garbage collected sooner (#1356, thanks to Kristian Lein-Mathisen)
 515  - On Cygwin and MinGW, the "build-platform" now corresponds to the
 516    tool chain used (gnu, clang, unknown) like on *nix, while the
 517    software-version is now "cygwin" or "mingw32" instead of "unknown".
 518    This also means the features list will now contain the tool chain
 519    on all platforms.
 520  - Symbols starting with #% are no longer treated specially and need
 521    to be quoted with pipes. This makes the "%" sign available for use
 522    in custom/user-defined sharp-sign read syntax.
 523
 524- Compiler
 525  - Fixed an off by one allocation problem in generated C code for (list ...).
 526  - The "-scrutinize" compiler option has been removed.
 527  - The "-module" compiler option (aliased as "-m") now expects a module name.
 528  - The generated C output of the compiler is now deterministic: it
 529    will be bit-for-bit identical when compiling the same Scheme file
 530    with the same version of the compiler.
 531  - the "-consult-type-file" and "-emit-type-file" options have been renamed
 532    to "-consult-types-file" and "-emit-types-file", respectively.
 533
 534- Tools
 535  - The new "-link" option to csc allows linking with objects from extensions.
 536  - The new "-libdir" option to csc allows overriding the runtime library
 537    directory.
 538  - The ambiguous "-l<libname>" option for csc has been removed (#1193).
 539  - Removed deprecated "-n" shorthand for "-emit-inline-file" from csc.
 540  - Removed "chicken-bug" tool.
 541
 542- Core libraries
 543  - Removed support for memory-mapped files (posix), queues
 544    (data-structures), binary-search (data-structures), scan-input-lines
 545    (utils), group-information (posix) object-eviction (lolevel), and
 546    compile-file (utils). These are now available as eggs.
 547  - Removed the srfi-1, srfi-13, srfi-14, srfi-18, srfi-69, and utils
 548    units. These are now available as eggs.
 549  - Added the `executable-pathname` procedure for retrieving a path to
 550    the currently-running executable.
 551  - Removed all support for SWIG.
 552  - Removed interrupts-enabled declaration specifier.
 553  - `sleep` now suspends the current thread when threading is enabled,
 554    otherwise it sleeps the process. The new `process-sleep` procedure
 555    in unit posix can be used to sleep the process unconditionally.
 556  - `with-error-output-to-port' from the ports module has been renamed
 557    to the more common `with-error-to-port', and `with-error-to-string'
 558    has been added for completeness (thanks to Michael Silver).
 559  - A new `make-bidirectional-port' procedure has been added to the
 560    ports unit that will combine separate input- and output- ports into
 561    a single bidirectional port.
 562  - New `input-port-open?` and `output-port-open?` procedures have been
 563    added for testing whether a port is open in a specific direction.
 564  - An `include-relative` form has been added to the (chicken base) module.
 565    This works like `load-relative` but for textual inclusion.
 566  - Keywords are now always written in "portable" style by WRITE, so
 567    that the reader's keyword style doesn't need to match the writer's.
 568  - The environment variable `CHICKEN_PREFIX` has been removed.
 569  - Added the `glob->sre` procedure to the irregex library.
 570  - Removed the `get-host-name' and `system-information' procedures.
 571    These are available in the "system-information" egg.
 572  - Removed the `eval-when`, `select` and `ensure` macros.  These are
 573    available in the "miscmacros" egg.
 574  - Removed the require-extension-for-syntax macro.
 575  - Renamed bit-set? to bit->boolean because of swapped argument order
 576    with respect to SRFI-33 and SRFI-60, which was confusing (fixes
 577    #1385, thanks to Lemonboy).
 578  - file-{read,write,execute}-access will now raise an exception when
 579    the file doesn't exist or some other non-access related problem is
 580    detected (fixes #1386, thanks to Vasilij Schneidermann).
 581  - `change-file-mode` was renamed to set-file-permissions! and SRFI-17
 582    generalized set! support has been added for `file-permissions`.
 583    This procedure now also accepts a file descriptor or a port.
 584  - `file-permissions` now returns one value: the permission integer.
 585  - `read-file` has been renamed to `read-list`.
 586  - `read-all` was dropped, as `read-string` with #f as its NUM argument
 587     is equivalent.
 588  - `read-lines` and `read-all` no longer accept a string naming a file,
 589     only ports.
 590  - The procedures for random numbers have been reimplemented;
 591    access to system-specific entropy is available, together with a reasonably
 592    good pseudo random number generator (WELL512).
 593  - `glob` now returns an empty list for non-existent or inaccessible
 594    directories, instead of erroring out.
 595  - `file-copy' and `file-move' have been renamed to `copy-file' and
 596    `move-file', for consistency with `delete-file' and `rename-file'.
 597  - `rename-file' now refuses to overwrite an existing file unless an
 598    optional "clobber" argument is provided.
 599  - The `r4rs` module no longer exports `eval`, which was not in R4RS.
 600  - `process`, `process*` and `process-execute` now expect lists of the form
 601    (("NAME" . "VALUE") ...) instead of the previous (("NAME=VALUE") ...)
 602    as their environment argument.
 603  - `repository-path` is now a parameter containing a list of strings instead
 604    of a string, as the search path for libraries can now contain multiple
 605    directories.
 606  - `file-read-access?`, `file-write-access?` and `file-execute-access?` have
 607    been renamed `file-readable?`, `file-writable?` and `file-executable?`
 608    into the (chicken file) module.
 609
 610- Module system
 611  - The compiler has been modularised, for improved namespacing.  This
 612    means names from the compiler should not leak out into the compiled
 613    program's (macro) namespace anymore.
 614  - The core units have been converted to modules under the "chicken"
 615    namespace.
 616  - Added support for list-style library names.
 617  - The "use" and "use-for-syntax" special forms have been removed
 618    in favor of "import" and "import-for-syntax" to reduce confusion.
 619  - Module imports are now lexically scoped: identifiers provided by
 620    an (import ...) inside (let ...) won't be visible outside that let.
 621  - Modules implementing an interface can now correctly export extra
 622    identifiers (bug reported by Martin Schneeweis, fix by "megane").
 623
 624- Syntax expander
 625  - Removed support for (define-syntax (foo e r c) ...), which was
 626    undocumented and not officially supported anyway.
 627  - Removed support for normal "lambda" forms as syntax transformers,
 628    which has been deprecated since 4.8.0.
 629  - define and friends are now aggressively rejected in "expression
 630    contexts" (i.e., anywhere but toplevel or as internal defines).
 631  - define-record and define-record-type now create record types
 632    which are tagged with the module in which they're defined, so
 633    predicates no longer return #t for records with the same tag
 634    defined in another module. This tag is now also available under
 635    an identifier that matches the record type name (fixes #1342).
 636  - `include` now splices included expressions in the context in which
 637    the inclusion appears and does not treat the expressions as toplevel
 638    expressions by default.
 639
 640- Eggs management
 641  - Egg-installation and building has been completely overhauled.
 642  - .meta + .setup files have been merged into a single declarative
 643    ".egg" file.
 644  - More static checks for egg descriptions, simplified generation
 645    of OS-specific build + install commands that is (hopefully)
 646    more practical for package maintainers.
 647  - Egg sources are cached locally to reduce download and rebuild
 648    times.
 649  - Dropped many obscure or unimportant options and features from
 650    `chicken-install`: (`-keep-installed`, `-reinstall`, `-proxy`,
 651    `-no-install`, `-username`, `-password`, `-init`, `-deploy`,
 652    `-keep-going`, `-scan`, `-csi`, `-show-depends`, `-show-foreign-depends`,
 653    `-prefix`.
 654  - Added new "-from-list" option to chicken-install.
 655  - Eggs can now be installed and located in multiple directories,
 656    using the `CHICKEN_REPOSITORY_PATH` +
 657    `CHICKEN_INSTALL_REPOSITORY`
 658    environment variables.
 659  - Static compilation of eggs is now fully supported and static
 660    versions of compiled eggs are available by default.
 661  - In a statically built chicken, the egg-tools ("chicken-install", "...-status",
 662    "...-uninstall") are still available, but only support static compilation
 663    of eggs.
 664
 665- Foreign function interface
 666  - The foreign type specifier "ssize_t" is now accepted, and "size_t"
 667    arguments now only accept positive integers.  Return values of
 668    type size_t are no longer truncated on 32-bit platforms.
 669
 670
 6714.13.0
 672
 673- Security fixes
 674  - CVE-2017-6949: Remove unchecked malloc() call in SRFI-4 constructors
 675    when allocating in non-GC memory, resulting in potential 1-word
 676    buffer overrun and/or segfault (thanks to Lemonboy).
 677  - CVE-2017-9334: `length' no longer crashes on improper lists (fixes
 678    #1375, thanks to "megane").
 679  - CVE-2017-11343: The randomization factor of the symbol table was
 680    set before the random seed was set, causing it to have a fixed value
 681    on many platforms.
 682
 683- Core Libraries
 684  - Unit "posix": If file-lock, file-lock/blocking or file-unlock are
 685    interrupted by a signal, we now retry (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 686  - char-ready? on string ports now also returns #t at EOF, as per R5RS;
 687    in other words, it always returns #t (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp)
 688  - Unit srfi-4: Fixed typo that broke SRFI-17 generalised set! syntax
 689    on s8vectors (thanks to Kristian Lein-Mathisen).
 690  - Large literals no longer crash with "invalid encoded numeric literal"
 691    on mingw-64 (#1344, thanks to Lemonboy).
 692  - Unit irregex: Fix bug that prevented multibyte UTF-8 character sets
 693    from being matched correctly (Thanks to Lemonboy and Chunyang Xu).
 694
 695- Runtime system:
 696  - The profiler no longer uses malloc from a signal handler which may
 697    cause deadlocks (#1414, thanks to Lemonboy).
 698  - The scheduler no longer indirectly hangs on to the old thread
 699    when switching to a new one, which caused excessive memory
 700    consumption (#1367, thanks to "megane").
 701  - C++ programs no longer fail with a symbol lookup error when
 702    compiled with debugger support (-d3 or -debug-info).
 703
 704- Syntax expander
 705  - Renaming an identifier twice no longer results in an undo of the
 706    rename (fixes #1362, thanks to "megane").
 707
 708- Build system
 709  - Fixed broken compilation on NetBSD, due to missing _NETBSD_SOURCE.
 710  - Fixed compilation on DragonflyBSD due to no feature macro support
 711    in its standard C library (thanks to Markus Pfeiffer).
 712
 713- Compiler
 714  - The scrutinizer no longer uses 'fixnum as the type for fixnums
 715    that might not fit into a fixnum on 32-bit architectures.
 716
 717- Foreign function interface
 718  - Correctly calculate memory requirements of Scheme objects produced
 719    from foreign types with "const" qualifiers, avoiding memory
 720    corruption (#1424, thanks to Vasilij Schneidermann and Lemonboy)
 721  - Do not read beyond temporary stack buffer, which could lead to
 722    a crash when returning from a foreign callback (#1428).
 723
 7244.12.0
 725
 726- Security fixes
 727  - CVE-2016-6830: Fix buffer overrun due to excessively long argument
 728    or environment lists in process-execute and process-spawn (#1308).
 729    This also removes unnecessary limitations on the length of
 730    these lists (thanks to Vasilij Schneidermann).
 731  - CVE-2016-6831: Fix memory leak in process-execute and
 732    process-spawn.  If, during argument and environment list
 733    processing, a list item isn't a string, an exception is thrown,
 734    in which case previously malloc()ed strings weren't freed.
 735  - CVE-2016-9954: Irregex has been updated to 0.9.6, which fixes
 736    an exponential explosion in compilation of nested "+" patterns.
 737
 738- Compiler:
 739  - define-constant now correctly keeps symbol values quoted.
 740  - Warnings are now emitted when using vector-{ref,set!} or one
 741    of take, drop, list-ref or list-tail with an out of range index
 742    for vectors and proper lists of a definitely known length.
 743  - The scrutinizer will no longer drop knowledge of the length of a
 744    vector.  It still drops types of its contents (which may be mutated).
 745  - Fixed incorrect argvector restoration after GC in directly
 746    recursive functions (#1317).
 747  - "Direct" procedure invocations now also maintain debug info (#894).
 748
 749- Syntax expander
 750  - DSSSL lambda lists have improved hygiene, so they don't need
 751    the chicken or scheme modules to be imported in full (#806).
 752  - The let-optionals* macro no longer needs "quote", "car" and "cdr"
 753    to be imported and bound to their default values (#806).
 754
 755- Runtime system:
 756  - C_locative_ref has been deprecated in favor of C_a_i_locative_ref,
 757    which is faster because it is inlined (#1260, thanks to Kooda).
 758  - The default error handler now truncates very long condition
 759    messages (thanks to Lemonboy).
 760  - Weak symbol GC (-:w) no longer drops random symbols (#1173).
 761  - The number of arguments to procedures, both via "apply" and direct
 762    invocation, are now limited only by the C stack size (#1098).
 763  - "time" macro now shows peak memory usage (#1318, thanks to Kooda).
 764  - Avoid crashes in ffi callbacks after GC (#1337, thanks to cosarara).
 765
 766- Core libraries:
 767  - Irregex has been updated to 0.9.5, which fixes matching of all "bow"
 768    occurrances beyond the first with irregex-fold (upstream issue #14).
 769  - Keywords are more consistently read/written, like symbols (#1332).
 770  - SRFI-39: When jumping out of a parameterized dynamic extent,
 771    "parameterize" now remember the actual values, so when jumping back
 772    in, they are restored (fixes #1336, thanks to Joo ChurlSoo).
 773    This was a regression caused by the fix for #1227.
 774
 775- Tools:
 776  - "chicken-install"
 777    - When installing eggs in deploy mode with "-keep-installed", eggs
 778      under the prefix won't unnecessarily be reinstalled (#1144).
 779    - Added new option "-no-install-deps" which inhibits automatic
 780      installation of dependencies, useful with "-prefix" (#1298).
 781
 782
 7834.11.0
 784
 785- Security fixes
 786  - Specialisation rules for string-{ref,set!}, bit-set?
 787    and move-memory no longer use unchecked C functions which could
 788    result in undefined behaviour, including buffer overruns (#1216).
 789
 790- Platform support
 791  - CHICKEN now supports the Linux X32 ABI (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf).
 792
 793- Tools
 794  - Feathers now has a more neutral color scheme and larger font size.
 795  - With the -dir option, feathers can now correctly find source code.
 796
 797- Runtime system:
 798  - The calling convention of CPS procedures has been changed to
 799    use "argument vectors" instead of C calling convention.
 800  - The C API of C_values(), C_do_apply() and how to invoke CPS
 801    functions has changed.  The C_procN() macros have disappeared.
 802    The manual example in "Accessing external objects" for C_values
 803    has been updated.  See also the "numbers" egg for examples on
 804    how to support pre- and post-4.10.1 CHICKENs simultaneously.
 805  - Apply hack is no longer used; the limitation of 128 arguments
 806    has been lifted for platforms which had no apply hack.
 807  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 8.
 808  - Delivery of signals in other OS-level threads is now dealt with
 809    in a more robust way (#1232) (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 810  - Compiled programs with large literals won't crash on startup (#1221).
 811  - Comparisons of closures now behave in a stable way, whether or not
 812    the code was compiled with the -no-lambda-info option (#1041).
 813  - The signal handling code can no longer trigger "stack overflow" or
 814    "recursion too deep or circular data encountered" errors (#1283).
 815
 816- Compiler:
 817  - Specializations on implicit "or" types like "number" or "boolean" now
 818    work, removing the requirement for the inferred types to match
 819    declared types exactly.  Specializations are matched from first to
 820    last to resolve ambiguities (#1214).
 821  - Compiler rewrites for char{<,>,<=,>=,=}? are now safe (#1122).
 822  - When requesting to emit import libraries that don't exist, the
 823     compiler now gives an error instead of quietly continuing (#1188).
 824  - Don't silently truncate huge literals (thanks to Claude Marinier).
 825
 826- Core libraries
 827  - try-compile from setup-api cleans up temporary output files (#1213).
 828  - SRFI-18: thread-join! no longer gives an error when passed a
 829    thread in the "sleeping" state (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
 830  - SRFI-18: mutex-lock! will not set ownership of mutexes when
 831    passed #f as the owner (#1231), not disown a mutex from owner if
 832    locking fails for timeout and not keep the last thread which held
 833    a mutex until the next lock (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 834  - SRFI-39: When a parameter's "guard" procedure raises an exception,
 835    "parameterize" now correctly resets the original values of all
 836    parameters (fixes #1227, thanks to Joo ChurlSoo).
 837  - Irregex has been updated to 0.9.4, which fixes severe performance
 838    problems with {n,m} repeating patterns (thanks to Caolan McMahon).
 839  - Unit "posix": The following posix procedures now work on port
 840    objects: file-stat, file-size, file-owner, file-permissions,
 841    file-modification-time, file-access-time, file-change-time,
 842    file-type and all procedures using file-type. These are:
 843    regular-file?, symbolic-link?, block-device?, character-device?
 844    fifo? and socket?.
 845  - Unit "posix": When "file-close" is interrupted it will retry,
 846    to avoid leaking descriptors (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 847  - Unit "data-structures": alist-{update[!],ref} were made consistent
 848    with srfi-1 in the argument order of comparison procedures.
 849  - Unit "lolevel": locative-ref has been fixed for locatives of u32
 850    and s32vectors (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger for pointing this out).
 851  - string->number now signals exceptions if passed a bad base instead
 852    of segfaulting (#1272; reported by "Tilpner" on IRC).
 853
 854- Tools
 855  - A debugger is now available, known as "feathers", which allows
 856    basic source-level debugging of compiled Scheme code.
 857  - A statistical profiler has been added, enabling sampling-based
 858    runtime profiling of compiled programs.
 859  - "chicken-install"
 860    - When installing eggs in deploy mode, already satisfied
 861      dependencies aren't reinstalled every time (#1106).
 862  - "chicken-uninstall"
 863    - -prefix and -deploy options were added, matching chicken-install.
 864  - "chicken-status"
 865    - -prefix and -deploy options were added, matching chicken-install.
 866  - The -sudo and -s options for chicken-install and chicken-uninstall
 867    now honor a "SUDO" environment variable (thanks to Timo Myyrä).
 868
 869- Syntax expander
 870  - Mixed internal define/define-values are now correctly ordered, so
 871    later defines can refer to earlier define-values (#1274).
 872
 8734.10.0
 874
 875- Security fixes
 876  - CVE-2014-6310: Use POSIX poll() on Android platform to avoid
 877    potential select() buffer overrun.
 878  - CVE-2014-9651: substring-index[-ci] no longer scans beyond string
 879    boundaries.
 880  - CVE-2015-4556: string-translate* no longer scans beyond string
 881    boundaries.
 882
 883- Core libraries
 884  - alist-ref from unit data-structures now gives an error when passed
 885    a non-list, for consistency with assv/assq/assoc.
 886  - Unit tcp now implicitly depends on ports instead of extras.
 887     This may break programs which don't use modules and forgot to
 888     require extras but use procedures from it.
 889  - SRFI-13: fix string-copy! in cases source and destination strings'
 890    memory areas overlap (#1135).
 891  - SRFI-1: Check argument types in lset and list= procedures (#1085).
 892  - Fixed another, similar bug in move-memory! for overlapping memory.
 893  - Fixed broken specialisation for move-memory! on pointer types.
 894  - Fixed broken specialisation for irregex-match-num-submatches.
 895  - Fixed bug in make-kmp-restart-vector from SRFI-13.
 896  - Removed deprecated implicit expansion of $VAR- and ~ in pathnames.
 897     The ~-expansion functionality is now available in the
 898     "pathname-expand" egg (#1001, #1079) (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl).
 899  - normalize-pathname has been simplified to avoid adding trailing
 900     slashes or dots (#1153, thanks to Michele La Monaca and Mario Goulart).
 901
 902- Unit srfi-4:
 903   - write-u8vector has been made more efficient (thanks to Thomas Hintz).
 904   - read-u8vector has been made more efficient (thanks to Andy Bennett
 905      for pointing this out and testing an improvement).
 906
 907- Unit lolevel:
 908  - Restore long-lost but still documented "vector-like?" procedure (#983)
 909
 910- Unit "files":
 911  - normalize-pathname no longer considers paths starting with ".//"
 912    as absolute (#1202, reported by Haochi Kiang).
 913
 914- Unit "posix":
 915  - set-file-position! now allows negative positions for seek/cur (thanks
 916    to Seth Alves).
 917  - file-mkstemp now works correctly on Windows, it now returns valid
 918    file descriptors (#819, thanks to Michele La Monaca).
 919  - create-directory on Windows now creates all intermediate
 920    directories when passed #t as second parameter.
 921
 922- Runtime system:
 923  - Removed several deprecated, undocumented parts of the C interface:
 924    C_zap_strings, C_stack_check, C_retrieve, C_retrieve_proc,
 925    C_retrieve_symbol_proc, C_i_foreign_number_vector_argumentp,
 926    C_display_flonum, C_enumerate_symbols
 927  - Removed several deprecated and undocumented internal procedures:
 928    ##sys#zap-strings, ##sys#round, ##sys#foreign-number-vector-argument,
 929    ##sys#check-port-mode, ##sys#check-port*
 930  - SIGBUS, SIGILL and SIGFPE will now cause proper exceptions instead
 931    of panicking (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger).
 932
 933- Module system
 934  - Allow functor arguments to be optional, with default implementations.
 935  - Fixed a bug that prevented functors from being instantiated with
 936     built-in modules.
 937  - Fixed generation of import libraries for instantiated functors
 938     (#1149, thanks to Juergen Lorenz).
 939
 940- Syntax expander
 941  - define-values, set!-values and letrec-values now support full lambda
 942    lists as binding forms
 943  - cond expands correctly when a constant is used in combination with =>
 944     (thanks to Michele La Monaca)
 945
 946- C API
 947  - Removed deprecated C_get_argument[_2] and
 948    C_get_environment_variable[_2] functions.
 949  - C_mutate2 has been deprecated in favor of C_mutate
 950  - chicken.h can be included in C++ programs in strict C++11 mode
 951     without compiler errors on Linux (thanks to "Izaak").
 952
 953- Foreign function interface
 954  - The foreign type specifier "scheme-pointer" now accepts an optional
 955    C pointer type (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp and Kristian Lein-Mathisen).
 956  - Type hinting for foreign-primitives now allows returning multiple
 957    values when no return type has been specified.
 958
 959- Compiler
 960  - Fixed an off by one allocation problem in generated C code for (list ...).
 961
 962- Build system
 963  - MANDIR was renamed to MAN1DIR and TOPMANDIR was renamed to MANDIR
 964     in order to comply with standard Makefile practice in UNIX.
 965  - INCDIR was renamed to CHICKENINCDIR, and now derives from
 966     INCLUDEDIR, which defaults to $(PREFIX)/include
 967  - BINDIR, LIBDIR, SHAREDIR, INCLUDEDIR, MANDIR, MAN1DIR, DOCDIR,
 968     CHICKENINCDIR and CHICKENLIBDIR will now also be taken from
 969     the environment, if present (like PLATFORM, DESTDIR and PREFIX).
 970
 971- Tools
 972  - "csc"
 973    - On Cygwin, -static now works again (thanks to Michele La Monaca)
 974  - "chicken-install"
 975    - When using chicken-install -retrieve, and an error occurs during
 976       retrieval (or the egg doesn't exist), the egg's directory is
 977       now properly cleaned up (#1109, thanks to Alex Charlton)
 978  - "chicken"
 979    - The -r5rs-syntax option did nothing; this has been fixed.
 980
 9814.9.0
 982
 983- Security fixes
 984  - CVE-2014-3776: read-u8vector! no longer reads beyond its buffer when
 985    length is #f (thanks to Seth Alves).
 986  - CVE-2013-4385: read-string! no longer reads beyond its buffer when
 987    length is #f.
 988  - CVE-2013-1874: ./.csirc is no longer loaded from the current directory
 989    upon startup of csi, which could lead to untrusted code execution.
 990    (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl)
 991  - CVE-2013-2024: On *nix, the qs procedure now single-quotes everything
 992    instead of relying on a blacklist of shell characters to be escaped.
 993    On Windows, it properly duplicates double-quote characters.  (thanks
 994    to Florian Zumbiehl)
 995  - CVE-2013-2075: Use POSIX poll() in other places where select() was
 996    still being used.  (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl and Joerg Wittenberger)
 997  - CVE-2012-6122: Use POSIX poll() on systems where available.  This avoids a
 998    design flaw in select(); it supports no more than FD_SETSIZE descriptors.
 999
 1000- Core libraries
1001  - Fix subvector when the TO optional argument equals the given vector
1002    length (#1097)
1003  - Unit extras now implicitly depends on ports.  ports no longer
1004     implicitly depends on extras.  This may break programs which don't
1005     use modules and forgot to require ports but use procedures from it.
1006  - Support has been added for the space-safe R7RS macro "delay-force".
1007  - Export file-type from the posix unit (thanks to Alan Post).
1008  - SRFI-4 s8vectors now work correctly in compiled code on PowerPC and ARM.
1009  - thread-join! now works correctly even if the waiting thread was
1010     prematurely woken up by a signal.
1011  - unsetenv has been fixed on Windows.
1012  - The process procedure has been fixed on Windows.
1013  - Nonblocking behaviour on sockets has been fixed on Windows.
1014  - Possible race condition while handling TCP errors has been fixed.
1015  - The posix unit will no longer hang upon any error in Windows.
1016  - resize-vector no longer crashes when reducing the size of the vector.
1017  - Distinct types for boolean true and false have been added to the
1018    scrutinizer.
1019  - Fixed bugs in string-trim-right, string-index-right and
1020    string-skip-right, from SRFI-13
1021  - read-line no longer returns trailing CRs in rare cases on TCP ports (#568)
1022  - write and pp now correctly use escape sequences for control characters
1023     (thanks to Florian Zumbiehl)
1024  - posix: memory-mapped file support for Windows (thanks to "rivo")
1025  - posix: find-file's test argument now also accepts SRE forms.
1026  - numerator and denominator now accept inexact numbers, as per R5RS
1027    (reported by John Cowan).
1028  - Implicit $VAR- and ~-expansion in pathnames have been deprecated (#1001)
1029  - Fixed EINTR handling in process-wait and when reading from file ports.
1030  - Irregex is updated to 0.9.2, which includes bugfixes and faster submatches.
1031  - Compile-time expansions for "[sf]printf" are slightly more efficient.
1032  - Removed the deprecated "always?", "never?", "shuffle" and "none?" procedures.
1033  - Fixed problem "make-pathname" that returned an absolute path if given
1034    a relative one without a directory argument.
1035  - The implementation of promises has been made more efficient.
1036  - Removed the deprecated "c-runtime", "null-pointer?" and "pointer-offset"
1037    procedures.
1038  - The deprecated alias "mutate-procedure" for "mutate-procedure!" has
1039    been removed.
1040  - On 64-bit systems the feature identifier "64bit" is registered.
1041  - "process-fork" accepts an optional argument that specifies
1042    wether other threads should be terminated in the child process.
1043  - The "signal/bus" signal identifier was missing.
1044  - Added setter-procedure for "signal-mask".
1045  - Added "recursive-hash-max-length" and "recursive-hash-max-depth"
1046    parameters (srfi-69).
1047
1048- Platform support
1049  - CHICKEN can now be built on AIX (contributed by Erik Falor)
1050  - CHICKEN can now be built on GNU Hurd (contributed by Christian Kellermann)
1051  - Basic support has been added for building Android and iOS binaries (see
1052    the "README" file for caveats and pitfalls) (contributed by Felix Winkelmann
1053    from bevuta IT GmbH)
1054  - Added support for 64-bit Windows (consult the "README" file for more
1055    information).
1056
1057- Runtime system
1058  - finalizers on constants are ignored in compiled code because compiled
1059    constants are never GCed (before, the finalizer would be incorrectly
1060    invoked after the first GC).  (Reported by "Pluijzer")
1061  - The call trace buffer is now also resizable at runtime via ##sys#resize-trace-buffer.
1062  - C_zap_strings and ##sys#zap-strings (undocumented) have been deprecated.
1063  - Special events in poll() are now handled, avoiding hangs in threaded apps.
1064  - When invoking procedures with many rest arguments directly (not via APPLY),
1065    raise an error when argument count limit was reached instead of crashing.
1066  - When the maximum allowed heap size is reached, panic instead of crashing.
1067  - The code generated for mutating data destructively is partially inlined
1068    and thus slightly more efficient.
1069  - Fixed incorrect code in the foreign argument conversion for
1070    "unsigned-integer64" (#955).  For unsigned-integer, integer64 and
1071    unsigned-integer64, disallow floating-point numbers.  Fix behavior
1072    on 32-bit systems.
1073  - On systems that provide sigprocmask(2), segmentation violations, illegal
1074    instruction signals, bus errors and floating-point exceptions are now caught
1075    and trigger normal error-processing (including a backtrace). The handling
1076    of these so called "serious" signals can be disabled by passing the
1077    "-:S" runtime option to executables.
1078  - Reclamation of unused interned symbols (enabled with the "-:w" runtime option)
1079    works much better now.
1080
1081- Build system
1082  - The tests can now be run without having to first install CHICKEN.
1083  - Fixed a dependency problem that made it impossible to build the distribution
1084    tarball on Windows with the mingw compiler.
1085  - Increased the "binary compatibility version" to 7.
1086
1087- Tools
1088  - "csc"
1089    - "-z origin" is now passed as a linker option on FreeBSD when
1090      compiling for deployment (thanks to Jules Altfas & Vitaly Magerya)
1091    - "-deploy" works now on FreeBSD (thanks to Jules Altfas and
1092      Vitaly Magerya), OpenBSD and NetBSD (see README for NetBSD).
1093    - added "-oi"/"-ot" options as alternatives to "-emit-inline-file"
1094       and "-emit-type-file", respectively; "-n" has been deprecated.
1095    - .c/.o files are no longer overwritten when they have the same basename
1096      as a Scheme source file (i.e. "csc foo.scm foo.c -o foo" works now).
1097  - "chicken-install"
1098    - "-deploy" now correctly installs dependencies of
1099      deployed eggs under the deployment directory instead of globally.
1100    - Full URI syntax is now supported for proxy environment variables
1101      (thanks to Michele La Monaca)
1102  - "chicken-status"
1103    - Added -eggs command line option to list installed eggs
1104  - misc
1105    - Removed the deprecated "-v" options (use "-version" instead) in various
1106      core programs.
1107    - The runtime linker path for compiled executables was not set correctly
1108      on FreeBSD systems.  This has now been fixed.
1109    - Removed the deprecated "make" and "make/proc" facility from the
1110      "setup-api" module; also removed the deprecated "required-extension-version"
1111      and "required-chicken-version" procedures.
1112
1113- Syntax
1114  - Added the aliases "&optional" and "&rest" as alternatives to "#!optional"
1115    and "#!rest" in type-declarations (suggested by Joerg Wittenberger).
1116  - Vectors, SRFI-4 number vectors and blobs are now self-evaluating for
1117     R7RS compatibility.  Being literal constants, they are implicitly quoted.
1118  - For R7RS compatibility, named character literals #\escape and #\null are
1119     supported as aliases for #\esc and #\nul.  WRITE will output R7RS names.
1120  - The CASE form accepts => proc syntax, like COND (as specified by R7RS).
1121  - letrec* was added for R7RS compatibility.  Plain letrec no longer behaves
1122    like letrec*.
1123
1124- Compiler
1125  - the "inline" declaration does not force inlining anymore as recursive
1126    inlining could lead to non-termination of the compiler (thanks to
1127    Andrei Barbu).
1128  - Type-analysis ("scrutiny") is enabled by default now, unless
1129    "-optimize-level 0" or "-no-usual-integrations" is given.
1130  - The "-scrutinize" compiler option has been deprecated.
1131  - A new lightweight flow-analysis pass ("lfa2") has been added.
1132    Enable by passing the "-lfa2" option to the compiler.
1133  - The deprecated options "-disable-warning", "-heap-growth", "-heap-shrinkage"
1134    and "-heap-initial-size" have been removed.
1135  - Removed the deprecated "constant" declaration.
1136  - Removed the deprecated "-lambda-lift" and "-unboxing" compiler options.
1137  - Removed the deprecated "-V" compiler option.
1138  - Generated names for formal parameters of foreign functions are slightly
1139    more informative.
1140  - Unused references to variables that name intrinsics can be removed.
1141  - In the flow-analysis pass, matching of combinations of "list"/"list-of" and
1142    "or" types with has been made more reliable.
1143  - Fixed various bugs in the type database.
1144
1145- Syntax expander
1146  - added "require-extension-for-syntax" and "use-for-syntax".
1147  - Extended syntactic definitions are now available by default in all
1148    evaluated code, particularly in code evaluated at runtime in compiled
1149    applications.
1150  - Removed the deprecated variant "(define-compiler-syntax (NAME . LLIST) BODY ...)"
1151    of "define-compiler-syntax".
1152
1153- C API
1154  - Deprecated C_get_argument[_2] and C_get_environment_variable[_2] functions.
1155  - Removed the deprecated "__byte_vector" type.
1156
1157
11584.8.0
1159
1160- Security fixes
1161  - CVE-2012-6125: Improved hash table collision resistance and added
1162    randomization to prevent malicious external causes of collisions.
1163    All SRFI-69 procedures accept extra arguments to control randomization
1164    for testing/debugging.
1165  - CVE-2012-6124: On 64-bit machines the "random" procedure no longer
1166    truncates result values (which caused very nonrandom results for very
1167    large values). Note that random shouldn't be used for
1168    security-critical code.
1169  - CVE-2012-6123: Added checks for embedded '\0' characters in strings
1170    passed to some C functions on a lower level than CHICKEN's FFI.
1171
1172- Build system
1173  - version information has been moved into a separate unit to make the
1174    build-version shown in the banner and accessible through library
1175    procedures more accurate, this also speeds up the build on version-
1176    changes (thanks to Jim Ursetto for contributing this)
1177  - the build was made more reliable with respect to cross-compilation
1178    and custom installation names
1179  - the test-suite is now working on the mingw32 platform (with
1180    a few tests disabled due to missing functionality)
1181  - the version and branch of the sources are now properly compiled
1182    into the core libraries and shown in the "csi" and "chicken"
1183    version headers
1184  - The default target library name for an installation configured for cross-
1185    compilation is now "libchicken" and independent on any particular
1186    setting of PROGRAM_PREFIX/PROGRAM_SUFFIX (thanks to Otavio Salvador)
1187
1188- Compiler
1189  - Fixed bug in handling of symbols in constant-definitions (thanks to Peter
1190    Bex)
1191  - Stricter check for value-part of constant definition (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1192  - Fixed bug that caused argument-signatures of external definitions to be
1193    incorrectly modified during optimization (thanks to Peter Bex)
1194  - Failing constant-folding expressions now produce a compile-time warning
1195  - Fixed various bugs in the internal type-database (thanks to Kon Lovett and
1196    Peter Bex)
1197  - Fixed incorrect optimization rules for some fp-rounding and fixnum operators
1198  - added "-specialize" option and "specialize" declaration which enables
1199    optimizations of uses of core library procedures based on type-
1200    information gathered during flow analysis
1201  - "-optimize-level 3" and higher now implies "-specialize"
1202  - added option "-strict-types" and "-emit-type-file"
1203  - progress-information is now only shown with "-debug p"; the "-verbose"
1204    option only shows informational but noncritical messages
1205  - added optimizations for some library procedures
1206  - variable propagation for global variable accesses is now done in certain
1207    situations
1208  - the algorithmic complexity of the closure-conversion pass has been
1209    reduced which speeds up compilation noticably for large files
1210  - the "-uses" option handles whitespace in unit lists given on the
1211    command line (thanks to Santosh Rajan)
1212  - the alternative branch in a conditional is dropped when the condition
1213    is known to be a non-boolean value (suggested by Joerg Wittenberger)
1214  - implemented numerous fixes and improvements for flow analysis
1215  - fixed a bug in the compiler that could cause some variable bindings
1216    to be optimized away in certain situations involving inlining
1217  - added an experimental optimization called "clustering" (enable
1218    with the compiler option of the same name)
1219  - the optimizations done by the compiler are now listed as a comment
1220    in the generated C file
1221  - the type-information obtained during flow-analysis ("scrutiny") is
1222    now used for performing type-sensitive optimizations of calls to
1223    most of the core-library procedures
1224  - deprecated the "constant" declaration specifier
1225  - "unboxing" optimization has been completely removed - the implementation
1226    was unreliable and unmaintainable; the "-unboxing" compiler option will
1227    still be accepted but will produce a warning
1228  - Peter Bex contributed an optimization to the analysis pass that
1229    greatly reduces compile time for source code containing deeply nested
1230    lexical bindings
1231  - procedures that are known to have the value of a core library procedure
1232    that is a "standard" or "extended binding" will be inlined
1233  - enhanced line number tracking to get better error messages from
1234    the scrutinizer.
1235  - hygiene bugs related to compiler-syntax were fixed.
1236  - the local flow-analysis was sometimes reporting multiple warnings
1237    for the same type-conflict.
1238  - the time/space-complexity of some algorithms used in the compiler
1239    were reduced resulting in much better compile-times especially
1240    for large source files.
1241
1242- Interpreter
1243  - ",q" leaves the currently active REPL invocation instead of
1244    terminating the process (as suggested by John Cowan)
1245  - ",m" properly switches between modules (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1246
1247- Core libraries
1248  - Cleaned up the set of available internal SRFI-feature-identifiers
1249  - Fixed bugs in "make-pathname" and "normalize-pathname" (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
1250  - The reader is now more consistent when parsing symbol- and keyword names
1251    that are fully or partially escaped (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1252  - The printer now does a better job at escaping certain single-character
1253    symbol names
1254  - Unit "lolevel"
1255    - deprecated "null-pointer" and "null-pointer?"
1256  - Fixed a bug in the Windows implementation of "file-type" (thanks to
1257    Jim Ursetto)
1258  - Fixed a bug in the implementation of "current-milliseconds" that could
1259    result in integer-overflow
1260  - Fixed an incorrect type-check in "list-ref" (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1261  - Disabled "-setup-mode" when compiling extensions for deployment (thanks
1262    to Ivan Raikov)
1263  - Got rid of some warnings in the C runtime system that were triggered on
1264    the SunPro C compiler (thanks to Joe Python)
1265  - Fixed bug in "string->number" that caused out-of-range characters to
1266    be accepted for base > 10 (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
1267  - added "foldl" and "foldr" procedures, which are more efficient and
1268    have a more consistent argument order than the corresponding
1269    SRFI-1 procedures
1270  - "shuffle" has been deprecated
1271  - added "queue-length"
1272  - "queue->list" allocates and returns a fresh list now
1273  - invoking a parameter-procedure with an argument will return the new
1274    value
1275  - added new procedure "quit"
1276  - port-procedures now check correctly for argument-ports being open
1277    (thanks to Peter Bex)
1278  - "repl" accepts an optional evaluator procedure (suggested by John
1279    Cowan)
1280  - added a setter procedure to "signal-handler" ("posix" unit)
1281  - EINTR is properly handled for input routines that may block
1282    waiting for input
1283  - the implementation of R5RS evaluation environments is now fully
1284    standards compliant
1285  - "file-exists?" and "directory-exists?" work now properly for files
1286    > 2GB (EOVERFLOW handling in stat(3) system call)
1287  - fixed bug in implementation of "fifo?"
1288  - the procedure returned by "condition-predicate" accepts any type
1289    of argument now
1290  - blobs have a readable textual representation ("#{...}")
1291  - "find-files" does not follow symlinks by default (as it did previously)
1292  - also, the old non-keyword argument signature for "find-files" is not
1293    supported anymore
1294  - added "alist-update" ("data-structures" unit)
1295  - "irregex-replace" returns the original string instead of #f when the
1296    regex does not match
1297  - irregex "real" built-in utility pattern now accepts a leading sign
1298  - added "change-directory*" ("posix" unit)
1299  - number parsing has been made more reliable and standards compliant
1300  - deprecated "none?", "always?" and "never?"
1301  - library procedures that take ports as arguments now all perform checks
1302    on port-direction and open/closed state
1303  - "mutate-procedure" has been renamed to "mutate-procedure!" - the old
1304    name is still available but deprecated
1305  - deprecated C_hash_string and C_hash_string_ci functions in the C API in
1306    favor of the more secure versions C_u_i_string_hash, C_u_i_string_ci_hash
1307  - a number of bugs in the irregex regular expression engine have been
1308    fixed; it has been updated to upstream release 0.8.3
1309  - "with-input-from-file", "with-output-to-file", "with-input-from-pipe" and
1310    "with-output-to-pipe" now properly restore the standard input/output
1311    ports in case the body thunk escapes
1312  - symbols with a single-char print-name where not always properly escaped
1313    when printed readably
1314  - the "make" facility of the "setup-api" module has been deprecated,
1315    please use the "make" extension when your egg requires this during
1316    setup.
1317
1318- Core tools
1319  - "csc"
1320    - The environment-variables "CHICKEN_C_INCLUDE_PATH" and
1321      "CHICKEN_C_LIBRARY_PATH" can now be used to add default include-
1322      and link-directories to C-compiler invocations
1323    - "-O5" passed expensive optimization flags to the C compiler which
1324      could expose C-Compiler bugs, depending on the compiler version
1325      (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf for pointing this out).
1326    - "-rpath" is ignored on OS X (thanks to Kon Lovett).
1327    - Fixed handling of "-output-file" (it was being ignored)
1328  - "chicken-install"
1329    - Added option "-override", which allows retrieving extension-
1330      versions from a file - this may be useful to ensure specific
1331      versions of a complete set of eggs are installed
1332    - Added option "-keep-installed"/"-x" that only installs explicitly
1333      named extensions given on the command line, if they are not
1334      already installed
1335    - Added option "-list" that lists all extensions available
1336    - Added option "-csi" to specify what interpreter should be used
1337      to execute the setup-script of an installed extension
1338    - Added option "-scan" that scans a local directory for the highest
1339      available extension versions available
1340    - Added option "-reinstall" that reinstalls all currently installed
1341      eggs, keeping their versions, if possible
1342    - Fixed bug with "chicken-install -test" when multiple extensions where
1343      given on the command line (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1344    - installing subdirectories works now on Windows.
1345    - fixed handling of "-force" when a "chicken" dependency version did
1346      not match
1347    - added new option "-show-foreign-depends" which lists foreign egg
1348      dependencies (if available)
1349    - added new option "-show-depends" which lists egg dependencies
1350    - added support for "or"-dependencies where a dependency is considered
1351      installed if one of a set of candidates is available
1352  - "chicken-profile"
1353    - fixed some bugs in the profiler and the runtime support code for
1354      profiling (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1355    - fixed broken percentage calculation (thanks to "megane")
1356  - "chicken-status"
1357    - Added option "-list" that dumps versions of installed extensions
1358      in a format suitable for "chicken-install -override ..."
1359    - the "pattern" argument is now actually treated as a pattern and not
1360      as a regex
1361
1362- Core syntax
1363  - "assert" shows the line number of the form when a second argument
1364    is not given or is a literal string
1365  - "parameterize" now correctly omits invoking the guard procedure when
1366    the old value is restored (thanks to Joo ChurlSoo)
1367  - added ":", "the" and "assume" syntax for declaring types
1368  - added "define-specialization" form to declare type-driven procedure
1369    call rewrites in compiled code
1370
1371- Syntax expander
1372  - Fixed a bug that caused imported identifiers to leak into the
1373    macroexpansion/compile-time environment (reported by Christian Kellermann)
1374  - Fixed a bug in the processing of extended lambda-lists (thanks to Peter Bex)
1375  - Peter Bex fixed a bug that caused bound variables to be incorrectly
1376    renamed in quoted literals (thanks to Matthew Flatt)
1377  - fixed devious bug in the invocation and generation of transformer
1378    procedures
1379  - using normal "lambda" forms as transformers for local or global
1380    syntax definitions is deprecated - one should use "syntax-rules",
1381    "er-macro-transformer" or "ir-macro-transformer" from now on
1382
1383- Runtime system
1384  - fixed handling of "inf" and nan" floating-point predicates for Solaris
1385    (thanks to Claude Marinier)
1386  - support for re-loading of compiled files has now been completely
1387    removed
1388  - the maximum length of strings is no longer limited to a 24-bit
1389    number on 64-bit architectures but can be 56 bits.
1390  - string-comparison handles embedded '\0' characters.
1391  - numerical predicates handle infinity and NaN correctly.
1392  - deprecated "[+-]nan", "[+-]inf" and other notations "accidentally"
1393    accepted by CHICKEN due to the underlying C library's strtod() function,
1394    standardizing on "[+-]nan.0" and "[+-]inf.0" from R6RS (and soon R7RS),
1395    when displaying numbers only these forms are generated now.
1396  - signals are queued to some extent and the interrupt handling has
1397    been cleaned up somewhat
1398  - the interpreter handles SIGINT directly - loading the "posix" unit
1399    is not needed anymore to handle this feature
1400  - changed default nursery size slightly and fixed a bug that caused
1401    incorrect (too small) nursery sizes on 64-bit platforms
1402  - deprecated the compiler option "-heap-initial-size", "-heap-growth"
1403    and "-heap-shrinkage"
1404  - the assembly-language stub routine for the implementation of "apply"
1405    was broken for Sparc64 systems and has been disabled for this platform
1406  - signal masks were accidentally reset upon GC for some platforms; use
1407    sigsetjmp/siglongjmp on BSD, Linux, MacOS X and Haiku
1408
1409- Type system
1410  - added new type-specifiers "input-port", "output-port", "(list-of T)"
1411    and "(vector-of T)"
1412  - the type-specifiers "(vector T ...)" and "(list T ...)" represent
1413    fixed size lists and vectors now
1414  - added qualified types ("forall"), optionally with type constrains
1415  - added the "define-type" special form and type-abbreviations
1416  - added "compiler-typecase", a compile-time typematching form
1417
1418- Module system
1419  - Added "interfaces", which are named groups of exports
1420  - Added "functors", which are parameterized modules
1421  - Modules can now be aliased
1422  - New syntax:
1423    (define-interface NAME EXPORTS)
1424    (functor (NAME ...) EXPORTS ...)
1425  - Extended syntax of "module" for aliasing and functor-instantiation
1426  - the "scheme" module has been integrated into the core library and
1427    is not installed as a separate import library anymore
1428  - added core module "r4rs" containing only bindings for R4RS identifiers
1429  - added core module alias "r5rs" for "scheme" module
1430  - added "module-environment" which returns an evaluation environment
1431    for the bindings of a module
1432  - fixed bugs related to using "export"/"reexport" in combination with
1433    wildcard ("*") module export lists (thanks to "megane")
1434
1435- Foreign function interface
1436  - locatives are allowed as arguments declared "c-pointer"
1437  - "int32" was not properly detected as a valid foreign type (thanks
1438    to Jim Ursetto)
1439
1440
14414.7.0
1442
1443- Build system
1444  - On BSD, libchicken.so is linked with -lpthread, as this seems
1445    to be required for linking libraries that require pthreads
1446  - The C header-files are now installed in a subdirectory below
1447    the "PRFIX/include" directory to allow installation of multiple
1448    chickens with different PROGRAM_PREFIX/PROGRAM_SUFFIX settings
1449    in the same prefix; to avoid conflicts with existing CHICKEN
1450    headers, it is recommended to completely remove any old
1451    installation before installing the new version
1452  - the PROGRAM_PREFIX and PROGRAM_SUFFIX configuration settings
1453    are applied to generated files and directories which allows
1454    perform differently named installations into the same PREFIX
1455  - increaded binary-compatibility version from 5 to 6, which
1456    means installed extensions in an existing installations will
1457    have to be re-installed
1458  - bugfixes in mingw/msys makefiles
1459  - Sven Hartrumpf contributed a bugfix to the internal helper
1460    script for creating distribution directories
1461  - Peter Bex has cleaned up the makefiles heavily, making the
1462    build more maintainable and easier to modify; thanks to all
1463    who helped testing this new build
1464  - renamed the makefile to `GNUmakefile' to catch using the
1465    a make(3) other than GNU make
1466  - configuration-header fix for BSD systems (thanks to Peter Bex
1467    and Christian Kellermann)
1468
1469
1470- Core libraries
1471  - the `regex' library unit has been removed and is separately
1472    available as an extension which should be fully backwards-
1473    compatible
1474  - `irregex' is now a core library unit and replaces the  `regex' API
1475  - "extras" unit
1476    - fixed pretty-printer output of certain escaped character
1477      sequences inside strings (thanks to Mario Domenech Goulart,
1478      thanks to Kon Lovett for pointing out a missing test-file)
1479    - The pretty printer did not escape some control characters correctly
1480      (reported by Alan Post)
1481    - control-characters in symbol-names are now properly escaped if
1482     the symbol is printed readably (thanks to Alaric Snell-Pym
1483     for pointing this out)
1484    - the deprecated `random-seed' function has been removed
1485  - "files" unit
1486    - fixed bug in `normalize-pathname'
1487    - `file-copy' and `file-move' check whether the source-file is a
1488      directory
1489    - `delete-directory' now optionally deletes directories recursively
1490  - "irregex" unit
1491    - Peter Bex has contributed various bugfixes and performance
1492      enhancements
1493  - "library" unit
1494    - Added "condition->list" (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1495    - The reader accepts now escaped octal character codes in string
1496      literals
1497    - Read-syntax can return zero values to indicate ignored objects
1498    - R5RS output output routines now always return a "void" result
1499    - "\|" was not correctly escaped when occurring inside
1500      symbol print names
1501    - added `condition->list', contributed by Christian Kellermann
1502    - added `equal=?'
1503    - removed deprecated `getenv', `left-section', `right-section',
1504      `project', `c-runtime' and `noop'
1505    - added missing import-library entry for `vector-copy!' (thanks
1506      to Jules Altfas)
1507    - circular or excessively deeply nested data generates a more
1508      useful error message when encountered by `equal?'
1509    - `list-tail' gives now a better error message when passed a
1510      non-list argument
1511    - fixed bug in `getter-with-setter' that modified the first
1512      argument if it already had a setter procedure attached
1513    - fixed incorrect size of internal data vector used in `time'
1514      (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1515  - "lolevel" unit
1516    - removed deprecated `global-bound?', `global-make-unbound',
1517      `global-ref' and `global-set!' procedures
1518    - added support for `pointer-vectors':
1519      -  make-pointer-vector
1520      -  pointer-vector?
1521      -  pointer-vector-length
1522      -  pointer-vector-ref
1523      -  pointer-vector-set!
1524  - "posix" unit
1525    - "close-input-pipe" did not return the status code of a
1526      terminated process on Windows (reported by Mario Domenech Goulart)
1527    - added `file-creation-mode' (suggested by Mario Domenech Goulart)
1528  - "setup-api" unit
1529    - `required-extension-version' and `required-chicken-version' have
1530       been deprecated
1531  - "srfi-18" unit
1532    - removed deprecated `milliseconds->time' and `time->milliseconds'
1533      procedures
1534    - `make-mutex' incorrectly created mutexes as initially owned by
1535      the current threads (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
1536    - the file-descriptor handling in the scheduler has been simplified
1537      and performs some sanity checks
1538    - deadlock in the scheduler now terminates the process instead of
1539      attempting to throw an error
1540    - added some sanity checks to the scheduler
1541  - "tcp" unit
1542    - Fixed bug in "tcp-abandon-port" (reported by Jim Ursetto)
1543  - "utils" unit
1544    - `compile-file' now returns `#f' when the compilation fails,
1545       instead of raising an error
1546
1547
1548- Compiler
1549  - Removed unreliable lambda-lifting optimization (now, really!);
1550    the "-lambda-lift" option is still accepted but produces a
1551    warning
1552  - When "-scrutinize" is given, installed ".types" files will be
1553    automatically consulted for extensions and used units
1554  - Fixed optimizer bug in handling of "let" forms with multiple
1555    bindings which could result in toplevel assignments being
1556    silently dropped (reported by Moritz Heidkamp)
1557  - the `-accumulate-profile' option did not provide a way to
1558    specify the target profile data file - now `-profile-name'
1559    must always be given when accumulated profiling is done
1560    (thanks to Taylor Venable)
1561  - added `-module' option, which wraps the code into an implicit
1562    module
1563  - removed check for unsafe toplevel calls in safe mode
1564  - intrinsic handling of `exact->inexact' and `string->number' is
1565    now more efficient
1566  - fixed bug in leaf-routine optimization (thanks to David
1567    Dreisigmeyer)
1568  - unit-toplevel entry-points are now named differently, which
1569    may break binary-compatibility with existing compiled Scheme
1570    code modules
1571  - fixed invalid dropping of unused external entry-points in
1572    block-mode
1573  - fixed incorrect lambda-list check in scrutinizer (thanks to
1574    Alan Post)
1575  - Kon Lovett reported numerous bugs in the type-database used
1576    by the scrutinizer
1577  - `-fwrapv' is disabled on OpenBSD, since the default compiler
1578     does not support this option (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1579  - on Solaris `gcc' is used by default, override `C_COMPILER'
1580    to use the Sun compiler instead
1581  - declaring a function `notinline' will prevent direct-call
1582    optimization for known procedure calls
1583  - the implementation of overflow-detection for arithmetic operations
1584    on fixnums have been replaced and now allow using the full 63-bit
1585    range of fixnums on 64-bit systems
1586  - fixed serious inlining-bug (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1587  - constant-folding in the compiler has been simplified and
1588    is more reliable (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1589  - optimization-levels 3 and higher imply `-unboxing -inline-global'
1590  - added new declaration `unsafe-specialized-arithmetic' which allows
1591    optimizing unboxed floating-point arithmetic in safe mode
1592  - removed `scrutinize' declaration
1593  - the warning shown when unimported identifiers are used in compiled
1594    modules now also shows the name of the procedure where the
1595    identifier is referenced (suggested by Alaric Snell-Pym)
1596
1597
1598- Documentation
1599  - Added list of installed files to README
1600  - Documented remaining "c...r" standard procedures (thanks to
1601    Juergen Lorenz)
1602  - The manual is now installed in HTML format in
1603    PREFIX/share/chicken/doc, many thanks to Jim Ursetto for
1604    contributing is excellent `manual-labor' extension which made
1605    this possible
1606
1607
1608- Foreign function interface
1609  - Added support for missing "(const [XXX-]c-string)" foreign type
1610    (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp)
1611  - removed deprecated `pointer', `nonnull-pointer', `byte-vector'
1612    and `nonnull-byte-vector' types
1613  - added missing result-type handling for `unsigned-integer64'
1614    (thanks to Moritz Heidkamp)
1615  - added `foreign-type-size' macro
1616  - added the new foreign type `size_t' (suggested by Moritz
1617    Heidkamp)
1618  - added the missing `unsigned-integer64' foreign type (thanks
1619    to Moritz for catching this)
1620  - added new foreign type `pointer-vector' which maps to `void **'
1621    and provided a low-level API in the `lolevel' library unit for
1622    manipulating pointer vectors
1623
1624
1625- Runtime system
1626  - Fixed typo in "runtime.c" (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
1627  - Little-endian detection on MIPS systems was not correct (thanks
1628    to Christian Kellermann)
1629  - Fixed bug in handling of runtime-options with arguments (also
1630    reported by Christian Kellermann)
1631  - `equal?' does not compare procedures recursively anymore
1632  - fixed incorrect use of alloca.h on OpenBSD (thanks to
1633    Christian Kellermann and Alan Post)
1634  - checks for NaN and infinity are now done using ISO C99
1635    operations, which required various changes to `chicken.h'
1636    to make the code compile in ISO C99 mode
1637  - remaining debris regarding MSVC builds has been removed
1638  - fixed bug in argument-type check for 64-bit integer (thanks
1639    to Kon Lovett)
1640  - increased default trace-buffer size from 10 to 16
1641  - fixed bug in low-level termination routine (thanks to
1642    Jeronimo Pellegrini)
1643  - the scheduler handles violations of internal invariants
1644    regarding threads slightly more gracefully (thanks to Jim
1645    Ursetto)
1646  - fixed broken sleep-time conversion (thanks to Karel Miklav)
1647  - repaired broken handling of multiple finalizers that referred
1648    to the same object (reported by Moritz Heidkamp)
1649  - fixed problem with reader and escaping of single-char symbols
1650
1651
1652- Syntax expander
1653  - For-syntax syntax definitions where not correctly retained inside
1654    modules
1655  - Peter Bex fixed various critical bugs in the expander
1656  - The simplification for quasiquote expressions was unable
1657    to handle certain circular data (reported by Moritz Heidkamp)
1658  - `syntax-rules' now supports tail-patterns and is now fully
1659    SRFI-46 compatible - many thanks to Peter Bex for implementing
1660    this
1661  - Peter Bex provided a bugfix for resolution of primitive imports
1662  - handling of internal definitions with shadowed defining
1663    forms is now done correctly - fix once again from Peter Bex
1664  - corrected non-standard behaviour of quasiquote with respect
1665    to nested quasiquotations - another bugfix by our mighty macro
1666    master
1667  - removed stub-implementation of `define-macro'
1668  - handled case where a global redefinition of `cons' influenced
1669    a non-inlined internal use in the expander (thanks to David
1670    Steiner)
1671  - `define-record' now allows defining SRFI-17 setter procedures
1672    for accessing slots
1673  - the expansion of DSSSL lambda-lists uses now `let-optionals*'
1674    internally instead of `let-optionals' and so allows
1675    back-references to earlier formal variables; this also results in
1676    faster and more compact code for argument-list destructuring
1677    (thanks to Alan Post)
1678  - new "implicit renaming" macro facility contributed by Peter Bex
1679    (see `ir-macro-transformer')
1680  - parameters are now settable and can be modified using `set!'
1681    (SRFI-17)
1682  - added a SRFI-17 setter to `list-ref'
1683  - added literal blob syntax ("#{ ... }")
1684
1685
1686- Tools
1687  - chicken-install
1688    - option "-deploy" does not compile deployed extensions with
1689      "-setup-mode" anymore to avoid problems with dynamic loading on
1690      some platforms (specifically Mac OS X)
1691    - option "-deploy" option did not copy the correct library
1692      (including the version-number) (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1693    - added support for proxy-authentification (thanks to Iruata Souza)
1694    - when installing from a local directory `chicken-install' now
1695      removes existing `*.so' files in that location to avoid stale
1696      binaries when the `make' syntax is used in setup scripts
1697  - chicken-bug
1698    - removed disabled e-mail support
1699  - csc
1700    - removed `-static-extension' option
1701    - removed deprecated `-windows' option
1702    - fixed incorrect use of `chicken.rc' on non-Windows platforms
1703      in `-gui' mode (thanks to "ddp")
1704    - when compiling in C++ mode, the compiler will be called with the
1705      `-Wno-write-strings' option
1706    - `-frwapv' has been added to the default C compiler options
1707  - csi
1708    - the ",m" toplevel command now accepts "#f" to switch back to
1709      the initial empty module context (suggested by Christian Kellermann)
1710    - fixed broken `,g' toplevel command
1711    - deprecated `script' feature identifier (use `chicken-script'
1712      instead)
1713    - options `-p' and `-P' and `-e' imply `-no-init'
1714    - the call-trace reported will not include exception-handler code
1715      anymore (suggested by Christian Kellermann)
1716
1717
1718
17194.6.0
1720
1721- the licenses used in all components of the core system have
1722  been collected in the LICENSE file (Thanks to Peter Bex)
1723- Added new compiler option `-no-module-registration' which
1724  omits generation of module registration code, even when
1725  generation of import libraries has not been enabled
1726- running `chicken' without arguments now hints at the
1727  existence of `csi' and `csc'
1728- `caar', `cdar' and `cddr' generate faster code
1729- calls to `list', `vector' and the internal structure
1730  allocation primitive that take 1 to 8 arguments generate
1731  faster code
1732- `chicken-install' now checks the version of the setup
1733  configuration file `setup.defaults'
1734- added option `-exact' to `chicken-status' and `chicken-uninstall',
1735  which treats the pattern argument as the literal name of the
1736  extension to be listed/deinstalled
1737- `assert' shows line-number information, if available
1738  (suggested by Alejandro Forero Cuervo)
1739- interpreted code records the lexical-environment at call-
1740  sites, which can in case of an error be inspected with the
1741  new `,c', `,f' and `,g' csi toplevel commands
1742- the evaluation-result history in `csi' can be inspected and
1743  cleared (to reduce memory load) with the toplevel commands
1744  `,h' and `,ch'
1745- unit `data-structures': deprecated `left-section' and
1746  `right-section'
1747- fixed bug that caused the static syntax-environment of
1748  syntax exported by a module to be incomplete
1749- module `setup-api': Documented the `version>=?' and
1750  `extension-name-and-version' proceedures
1751- unit `posix': `utc-time->seconds' is considerably
1752  faster on Mac OS X (thanks to Jim Ursetto);
1753  added new procedure `file-type'
1754- the `time' macro now shows the correct number of minor
1755  garbage collections
1756- the immediate-object check inside the marking procedure
1757  of the garbage collector has been manually inlined which
1758  results in a significant GC speedup, depending on memory
1759  load
1760- unit `srfi-18' and `scheduler': various bugfixes (thanks
1761  to Joerg Wittenberger)
1762- unit `srfi-4': bugfix in 8-bit vector allocation routines
1763  (thanks to Kon Lovett)
1764- added `-:H' runtime option to dump heap state on exit
1765- fixed missing change in Makefile.cygwin (thanks to John Cowan)
1766- fixed bug in `let-optionals' macro that caused problems when the
1767  rest-variable was actually named `rest' (thanks to Alejandro
1768  Forero Cuervo)
1769- when Scheme files are translated to C++ or Objective-C, `csc'
1770  will register the feature-identifiers `chicken-scheme-to-c++'/
1771  `chicken-scheme-to-objc' ar compile-time
1772- fixed bug in expansion of `#!key' parameters in lambda-lists
1773- debug-output for forcing finalizers on exit goes to stderr now
1774  (thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
1775- the installation routines for extensions automatically add
1776  version-number information if none is given in the extension
1777  property list (suggested by Alejandro Forero Cuervo)
1778- `standard-extension' accepts `#f' now for the version number
1779  and will use the version that has been obtained via
1780  `chicken-install'
1781- `fifo?', `symbolic-link?', `directory?', `regular-file?', `socket?',
1782  `character-device?' and `block-device?' now accepts file-descriptors
1783  or filenames
1784- `find-files' takes keyword arguments, now (including the options
1785  to process dotfiles and ignore symbolic links); the old argument
1786  signature is still supported but deprecated
1787- removed dependency on `symbol-append' in some macros used in
1788  srfi-4.scm to be able to compile the system with older chickens
1789- fixed bug in script that generates development snapshot
1790- added build-variable `TARGET_FEATURES', which can be used to pass
1791  extra options enabling or disabling fetures for a system configured
1792  for cross-compilation
1793- added compiler and interpreter option `-no-feature FEATURENAME' that
1794  disables predefined feature identifiers
1795- code compiled with interrupts disabled will not emit inline files
1796  for global inlining since they may execute in a context where
1797  interrupts are enabled
1798- the `setup.defaults' file that holds download sources for
1799  `chicken-install' now allows aliases for locations
1800- CHICKEN systems build from cross-compilation now by default
1801  transparently build and install extensions for both the host
1802  and target parts of the cross-compilation setup; the options
1803  `-host' and `-target' can now be used to selectively build
1804  an extensions for the host- and the target system, respectively
1805- also added `-host' and `-target' options to `chicken-status' and
1806  `chicken-uninstall'
1807- `chicken-install' now respects the `http_proxy' environment variable
1808  (contributed by Stephen Eilert)
1809- the `srfi-4' library unit has been heavily cleaned up and optimized
1810- optimization-level 3 now enables global inlining
1811- fixed the case that declarations listing global identifiers did not
1812  correctly rename them
1813- deprecated `-N' option shortcut for `-no-usual-integrations' option in
1814  `csc'
1815- `csi' now offers a toplevel command `,e' for invoking an external
1816  editor (suggested by Oivind Binde)
1817- the `describe' command in `csi' now detects many circular lists
1818  (contributed by Christian Kellermann)
1819- `csi' doesn't depend on the `srfi-69' library unit anymore
1820- when a closing sequence delimiter is missing or incorrect, the
1821  reader also reports the starting line of the sequence
1822- the reader signals an error when a file contains certain characters
1823  that indicate that it is a binary file
1824- procedure-information shown by the printer for procedures is now
1825  corrected for some library procedures that where missing the correct
1826  information; `getter-with-setter' copies procedure-information objects
1827  into the newly created accessor procedure, if available
1828- calls to some known pure standard- or extended procedures are removed, if
1829  the procedures are called with side-effect free arguments and the
1830  result is not used (this can also by enabled for user procedures with
1831  the `constant' declaration)
1832- fixed some build-system bugs related to installation
1833- fixed a problem in the C runtime code that prevented it to be compileable
1834  without a configuration header-file
1835- the makefile-target to build a bootstrapping `chicken' executable
1836  performs multi-stage build now
1837- changed error message when required extension is out of date (thanks to
1838  Mario Goulart)
1839- documented library units loaded by default in `csi' (thanks to Moritz
1840  Heidkamp)
1841- added `boot-chicken' makefile target to simplify bootstrapping
1842  the system from sources and documented this in the README
1843  (suggested by Jim Ursetto)
1844- CHICKEN can now be built on haiku (contributed by Chris Roberts)
1845- on Solaris, the system can be compiled with the SunPro C compiler
1846  (thanks to Semih Cemiloglu)
1847- removed the `-disable-warnings' compiler option and `disable-warnings'
1848  declaration specifier
1849- `fx/' and `fxmod' generate now faster code in safe mode
1850- cleaned up manual pages
1851- slightly optimized variable- and procedure-access
1852- in the compiler `-debug-level 2' implies `-scrutinize'
1853- internal compiler-transformation for `for-each' and `map'
1854  apply now with any expression as the procedure argument
1855- the compiler warns about non-intrinsic exported toplevel variables
1856  which are declared to be safe
1857- `csc' didn't handle the `-verbose' option (thanks to Mario Goulart)
1858- the `,d' command in `csi' now detects circular lists (thanks to
1859  Christian Kellermann)
1860- strings passed to C runtime functions and which are converted to
1861  0-terminated C strings are now checked for not containing embedded
1862  `\0' characters (thanks to Peter Bex)
1863- errors in user-defined record printers are caught and shown in the
1864  output instead of throwing an error to avoid endless recursion when
1865  an error message is printed
1866- a feature identifier named `chicken-MAJOR.MINOR' is now defined
1867  to simplify conditionalization of code on the CHICKEN version
1868- `getter-with-setter' copies the lambda-information (if available) from
1869  the getter to the generated procedure
1870- `time' uses a somewhat more concise output format and outputs timing
1871  information to stderr instead of stdout
1872- added a new chapter on cross-development to the manual
1873- added the `safe-globals' declaration specifier
1874- split up manual chapter `Modules and macros' into two chapters
1875  (named `Modules' and `Macros', respectively - suggested by
1876  Mario Goulart)
1877- the last 5 non-precompiled regular expressions are now internally
1878  cached in compiled form, which speeds up repeated matching of
1879  the same uncompiled regular expression dramatically
1880- added the new procedure `yes-or-no?' to the `utils' library unit
1881- added a `bench' makefile target that runs some non-trivial
1882  benchmark programs
1883- added `install-target' and `install-dev' makefile target for
1884  installing only target system libraries in cross-mode and
1885  development files (static libraries and headers)
1886- added `[-]no-procedure-checks-for-toplevel-bindings' compiler
1887  option and declaration
1888- usage of unimported syntax in modules gives more usable
1889  error messages; in particular, used but unimported FFI forms are
1890  now detected
1891- invalid syntactic forms (mostly `()') encountered by the compiler
1892  or interpreter show the contextual form containing the expression,
1893  or, if indicated by the context warns about missing imports
1894- simplified manual pages of all core tools - they now refer to
1895  the output shown by invoking `<tool> -help'
1896- added new option `-feature FEATURE' to `chicken-install' tool
1897  to pass feature-identifiers to invocations of `csc'
1898- removed deprecated `-host-extension' option from `chicken-install'
1899- `chicken-status' in a system built for cross-compilation now
1900  lists extensions installed in the target prefix, unless the
1901  new `-host' option is given on the command line
1902- `chicken-uninstall' in a system built for cross-compilation now
1903  removes extensions installed in the target prefix, unless the
1904  new `-host' option is given on the command line
1905- added missing entry for `finite?' to the `chicken' module
1906  exports
1907- added new procedure `port-closed?' to the `library' unit
1908  (contributed by Peter Bex)
1909- added new procedure `symbol-append' to the library unit
1910- the compiler-option `-optimize-level 0' is equivalent to
1911  `-no-compiler-syntax -no-usual-integrations`
1912- internal rewritings of `map' and `for-each' ensure correct
1913  evaluation order of the arguments and does a better job
1914  at detecting non-list arguments (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
1915- `void' now takes arbitrary arguments and ignores them
1916- deprecated `noop' (from the `data-structures' unit) which
1917  is now replaced by `void'
1918- the `time' macro now performs a major garbage collection
1919  before executing the contained expressions and writes
1920  the timings in a more compact format to the port given
1921  by `(current-error-port)' instead of the standard output
1922  port
1923- definitions of the form `(define define ...)' and
1924  `(define-syntax define-syntax ...)' now trigger an error,
1925  as required by R5RS (thanks to Jeronimo Pellegrini and Alex
1926  Shinn)
1927- deprecated `random-seed' from the `extras' unit, since it
1928  is identical to `randomize'
1929- added new procedure `create-temporary-directory' to the
1930  `files' unit
1931- deprecated the optional path separator argument to
1932  `make-pathname'
1933- slightly improved the performance of keyword argument
1934  processing
1935- removed the deprecated `canonical-path' and `current-environment'
1936  procedures from the `posix' unit
1937- warnings that mostly refer to programming style issues are
1938  now coined `notes' and are only shown in the interpreter
1939  or when debug-mode is enabled or when scrutiny is enabled
1940  when compiling
1941
19424.5.0
1943
1944- internal fixes of handling of alternative installation-prefix
1945  in setup-api
1946- certain compiler-warnings that are in really just notes
1947  and don't indicate a possible error (like reimport of
1948  identifiers) are only shown with -S or in verbose mode
1949- fixed handling of VARDIR in `chicken-install' (thanks to
1950  Davide Puricelli)
1951- `chicken-install -test' doesn't runs tests for dependencies
1952- when a non-else clause follows an else-clause in `cond',
1953  `case' or `select' a warning (note) is shown in verbose
1954  mode
1955- removed the deprecated `define-extension' and
1956  `define-compiled-syntax'
1957- `chicken-uninstall' now always asks before removing
1958  extensions, unless `-force' is given
1959- improved performance of keyword-argument processing slightly
1960- `export' outside of a module definition has no effect
1961- `number->string' now accepts arbitrary bases between 2 and 16
1962  (thanks to Christian Kellermann)
1963- fixed `standard-extension' in `setup-api' module
1964- literal constants keep their identity, even when inlined
1965- Unit library: added `fxodd?' and `fxeven?'
1966- All hardcoded special forms have been replaced with
1967  syntax definitions that expand into internal forms, this
1968  allows redefinition and shadowing of all Scheme core forms
1969- faster implementations of `get' and `put!'
1970- faster implementation of `assq' in unsafe mode
1971- the `-sx' option prefixes each output line with `;'
1972- slightly better expansion performance
1973- more documentation of the C API (thanks to Peter Bex)
1974- `module' supports a shorthand form that refers directly
1975  to a file to be included as the module body
1976- added runtime option `-:G' to force GUI mode (on platforms
1977  that distinguish between GUI and non-GUI applications)
1978- removed the unsafe runtime library (`libuchicken'), this
1979  simplifies and speeds up the build and reduces the risk
1980  of executables loading library units from different
1981  variants of the runtime system
1982- removed the `-unsafe-libraries' option from `chicken'
1983  and `csc'
1984- removed bootstrapping target and bootstrapping files from
1985  development repository; to bootstrap the system, either
1986  use a release or development-snapshot tarball or fetch
1987  a statically linked precompiled `chicken' binary from
1988  http://chicken.wiki.br/chicken-projects/bootstrap/
1989- Jim Ursetto provided some fixes for building universal
1990  binaries on Mac OS X
1991- `csc' now compiles and links Windows resource (.rc) files
1992  when given on the command line
1993- `chicken-install' and `chicken-uninstall' have an embedded
1994  manifest that suppresses the elevation dialog on Windows
1995  Vista and later when UAC is activated (Thanks to Thomas Chust)
1996- the `install' program is not used in the build on mingw
1997  and mingw/MSYS platforms, since this is broken on older
1998  mingw versions
1999- line-number-information is now properly handled (in the
2000  few places where it is used) correctly for included files;
2001  the source file is given in trace-output in addition to
2002  the line number
2003- removed compiler warning for shared objects compiled in
2004  unsafe mode
2005- unboxing is now only done in unsafe mode
2006- in unsafe mode, pointer-accessors from the `lolevel' unit
2007  are now handled intrinsically by the compiler
2008- `chicken-install' accepts now relative pathnames for the
2009  `-prefix' option
2010- `define-record-type' now optionally allows using SRFI-17
2011  setters as record-field modifiers
2012- `integer?' returns `#f' for NaN and infinite numbers
2013- `csc' now has an `-no-elevation' option for embedding a
2014  manifest that prevents the elevation dialog on Windows
2015  Vista and later when IAC is activated
2016- the `,d' csi command displays qualified symbols properly
2017- symbols starting with the `#\#' character trigger an
2018  error when encountered by the reader
2019- Unit posix: `glob->regexp' now always returns a regular
2020  expression object or optionally an SRE
2021- Unit posix: `terminal-port?' and `terminal-size' have been
2022   implemented for Windows, the latter always returns `0 0',
2023  though (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
2024- Unit regex: `regexp' now accepts a regular expression
2025  object as argument
2026- Unit regex: removed `glob?'
2027- fixed bug in `chicken-install'/`chicken-uninstall' and
2028  `chicken-status' that prevented collapsed command-line
2029  options to be handled correctly.
2030- disabled runpath-fix for deployed applications for netbsd
2031  (but resurrected providing a runpath at all, thanks to
2032  Peter Bex)
2033- Peter Bex provided documentation for the `C_closure' C API
2034  function
2035
20364.4.0
2037
2038- the system can now be built with llvm-gcc and/or "clang" (the
2039  LLVM C compiler which doesn't use the GNU C frontend)
2040- added new option `-trunk' to `chicken-install', which forces
2041  building and installing the development version of extensions
2042  in combination with `-t local'
2043- added new option `-deploy' to `chicken-install', which builds
2044  extension for use in "deployed" applications (see below)
2045- added option `-deploy' to `csc', the compiler driver. With this
2046  option `csc' can build fully self-contained application bundles
2047  and double-clickable Macintosh GUI apps; see the "Deployment"
2048  manual chapter for more information
2049- the directory given to the `-prefix' option of `chicken-install'
2050  may now be a relative pathname.
2051- removed GUI-specific runtime library (`libchicken-gui') from
2052  Windows build - GUI- and non-GUI applications now use the same
2053  runtime library
2054- special forms of the foreign-function interface have been replaced
2055  with an internal form and syntax to allow renaming and shadowing of
2056  these forms
2057- the new `-private-repository' option in `csc' compiles executables
2058  with the extension-repository path set to the directory from which
2059  the program was started
2060- `csc': deprecated the `-W' and `-windows' options, added `-gui' as
2061  a platform-independent replacement
2062- `require-extension'/`use' accepts now import-specifications
2063- user-defined extension-specifiers and `set-extension-specifier!'
2064  have been removed
2065- `delete-file[*]', `rename-file', `create-directory', `file-copy',
2066  `file-move', `delete-directory' and `change-directory' return their
2067  argument/destination filename on success
2068- added the missing procedure `condition-variable-name' to the
2069  srfi-18 library unit (Thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
2070- the `glob?' function from the `regex' unit has been deprecated
2071- added the procedure `scan-input-lines' to the `utils' library unit
2072- added new runtime option `-:g' which enables GC debugging output
2073- reclamation of unused symbols in "symbol-gc" mode (`-:w') now only
2074  takes place for symbols with an empty property-list
2075- on Windows loading of code compiled with [non-]GUI runtime libraries
2076  will fail and produce an error message when the loading executable
2077  is linked with a different runtime system
2078- on Windows, GUI libraries were not correctly linked by `csc'
2079- unit posix: added setter for `file-modification-time'
2080- the banner shows the branchname of the build, unless it's "master"
2081- the `-no-install' option to `chicken-install' is ignored when
2082  building/installing dependencies
2083- `chicken-uninstall' takes a glob instead of a regular expression as
2084  argument
2085- the rename and compare functions for low-level macro-definitions
2086  accept now arbitrary s-expressions and renames/compares them recursively
2087- `number->string' handles negative-numbers with bases different from 10
2088  correctly (thanks to Peter Danenberg)
2089- removed deprecated `setup-install-flag' and `setup-verbose-flag' from
2090  the `setup-api' module
2091- added new option `-repository' to `chicken-install' (Thanks to Christian
2092  Kellermann)
2093- removed `chicken-setup' stub program
2094- fix to `csc' to use the correct library when fixing dynamic load paths
2095  (Thanks to Derrell Piper)
2096- removed html documentation from distribution (the wiki manual will
2097  now be installed)
2098- fixed bug in `reexport' which caused syntax not to be correctly
2099  reexported
2100- previous assignments to a toplevel variable that are separated by
2101  side effect free expressions are removed
2102- fixed windows version of `find-files' (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
2103- documentation for extensions is not installed automatically by
2104  `chicken-install' anymore
2105- changed binary version from "4" to "5", because the new runtime
2106  libraries are not binary-compatible with previous releases; this
2107  means all eggs have to be reinstalled and existing programs be
2108  recompiled!
2109- added unboxing pass to compiler which results in partially dramatical
2110  performance improvements for unsafe floating-point-intensive code;
2111  unboxing is enabled on optimization levels 4 and 5
2112- removed rest-argument-vector optimization as it could conflict
2113  with inlining (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
2114- renamed `pointer-offset' to `pointer+' and deprecated `pointer-offset'
2115- toplevel assignments that have no other side-effects can be eliminated
2116  if it can be shown that the value is not used (the compiler will
2117  generate a warning in this case)
2118- removed deprecated `-quiet' option in `chicken' program
2119- removed deprecated `run-time-macros' declaration
2120- removed deprecated `-v2' and `-v3' options in `csc' program
2121- removed deprecated `list-of' function (it is exclusively available
2122  as `list-of?' now)
2123- removed deprecated `stat-...' functions in posix library unit
2124- removed deprecated `for-each-line' and `for-each-argv-line' procedures
2125  in utils library unit
2126- added `fpinteger?' and `fpabs'
2127- deprecated `define-compiled-syntax'
2128- added new floating-point primitives `fpsin', `fpcos', `fptan',
2129  `fpasin', `fpacos', `fpatan', `fpatan2', `fpexp', `fplog',
2130  `fpexpt' and `fpsqrt'
2131- heavy cleanup of floating math functions which gives much better performance,
2132  especially for code compiled in unsafe mode
2133- calling `assert' with a single argument shows the tested expression
2134  on failure
2135- various bugfixes and cleaning up
2136
21374.3.0
2138
2139- fixed bug in `move-memory!' that caused negative offsets to be accepted
2140  (thanks to Jim Ursetto)
2141- removed tracing facility and apply-hook (see the "trace" egg
2142  for a replacement for tracing and breakpoints)
2143- chicken-install(1): renamed `-host-extension' option to `-host'
2144- added support for a make(1) configuration file ("config.make")
2145- `chicken-install' now allows specifiying a proxy for retrieving
2146  extensions over HTTP (thanks to Nicolas Pelletier)
2147- fixed bug in `cond-expand' that incorrectly renamed feature-identifiers
2148  if the form was the product of a syntax expansion (reported by Thomas
2149  Bushnell)
2150- import-libraries are only generated by the compiler if they don't exist
2151  yet and if the content has actually changed (this simplifies makefile-
2152  rules in some cases)
2153- it is now possible to pass a config-file to `make(1)' instead of specifying
2154  all build-options as variables on the command-line (see README)
2155- removed compiler options for "benchmark-mode" and replaced them with a
2156  new optimization level (5) (note that `-O5' does not imply fixnum mode
2157  anymore)
2158- `hen.el' and `scheme-complete.el' are not bundled with the core system
2159  anymore - `hen.el' is currently not maintained, and `scheme-complete.el'
2160  has its own release cycle; both files are available, see
2161  http://chicken.wiki.br/emacs
2162- removed meaningless benchmark suite and cleaned up
2163- added optional argument to `grep' that allows applying a function
2164  to each matched item (contributed by Tony Sidaway)
2165- added extension-property `import-only', which makes it possible to
2166  create extensions that have no runtime part
2167- the argument to `seconds->string', `seconds->utc-time' and
2168  `seconds->local-time' is now optional and defaults to the value
2169  of `(current-seconds)' (suggested by Mario Goulart)
2170- removed read-syntax for `syntax' form
2171- fixed bug in `get-condition-property'
2172- fixed bug in windows version of `process-execute'
2173- TCP timeouts throw exception of kind `timeout' to allow
2174  distinguishing between timeouts and other errors
2175- removed some internal functions that manipulate environments
2176- fixed bugs in `standard-extension' (`setup-api' module) and added keyword
2177  arguments for building static extensions and adding custom properties
2178- when cross-compiling, `chicken-install(1)' doesn't pass `-setup-mode'
2179  (the host tools should not attempt to load target binaries)
2180- `installation-prefix' in the `setup-api' module was not always correctly
2181  set
2182- the `-force' option in `chicken-install(1)' overrides the CHICKEN version
2183  check
2184- disabled e-mail feature in `chicken-bug(1)', since it doesn't work
2185  anyway, in the moment
2186- fixed bug in `reexport' that made it impossible to reexport core library
2187  definitions
2188- fix in optimizer that sometimes caused C functions for inlined
2189  procedures to be emitted multiple times (Thanks to Joerg Wittenberger)
2190- documented `define-compiler-syntax' and `let-compiler-syntax'
2191- printer for hash-tables shows current number of stores items
2192- when upgrading during installation of a dependency `chicken-install'
2193  shows the version to upgrade to (Thanks to Christian Kellermann)
2194- Updated scheme-complete (Thanks to Alex Shinn)
2195- fix for pathnames with whitespace in 'runtests.sh' on Windows
2196- fix for 'normalize-pathname' with absolute pathname argument
2197- added 'decompose-directory' to unit files
2198- fix for 'local-timezone-abbreviation' - wasn't using the current time
2199  so tz-name constant
2200- deprecated 'make-pathname' separator argument
2201
22024.2.0
2203
2204- added compiler option `-emit-all-import-libraries'
2205- added `reexport'
2206- added compiler and interpreter option `-setup-mode'
2207- various minor performance improvements
2208- fix for 'create-directory' when parents wanted
2209- `for-each-line' and `for-each-argv-line' have been deprecated
2210- chicken-install tries alternative servers if server responds with error
2211- fixed load bug (ticket #72)
2212- new library procedure `get-condition-property'
2213- many mingw build fixes (thanks tp Fadi Moukayed)
2214- setup-api: deprecated `cross-chicken' (use `cond-expand' or
2215  `feature?' instead)
2216- added topological-sort to data-structures unit; chicken-install
2217  sorts dependencies before installing them
2218- "-optimize-level 2" enables inlining by default
2219- disable executable stack in assembly code modules (patch by
2220  Zbigniew, reported by Marijn Schouten)
2221- csc now always exits with a status code of 1 on errors (patch by Zbigniew)
2222
22234.1.0
2224
2225- The new parameter "parantheses-synonyms" and the command-line
2226  option "-no-parantheses-synonyms" allow disabling list-like behaviour
2227  of "{ ... }" and "[ ... ]" tokens
2228- The new parameter "symbol-escape" and the command-line
2229  option "-no-symbol-escape" allows disabling "| ... |" symbol escape
2230  syntax
2231- Added command-line option "-r5rs-syntax" to disable CHICKEN-specific
2232  read-syntax
2233- Removed "macro?" and "undefine-macro!"
2234- Support for Microsoft Visual Studio / MSVC has been dropped
2235- The compiler provides now a simple flow-analysis pass that does
2236  basic checking of argument-counts and -types for core library procedure
2237  calls (new option "-scrutinize")
2238- New compiler-options "-no-argc-checks", "-no-bound-checks",
2239  "-no-procedure checks", "-no-procedure-checks-for-usual-bindings",
2240  "-types TYPEFILE" and "-consult-inline-file FILENAME"
2241- Added a "chicken-setup" stub-application to catch incorrect use of
2242  this tool (which has been replaced in 4.0.0 with "chicken-install")
2243- Changed "setup-install-flag" and "setup-verbose-flag" to
2244  "setup-install-mode" and "setup-verbose-mode" in "setup-api" module,
2245  the old names are still available but deprecated
2246- Posix unit:
2247  added "socket?", "block-device?" and "character-device?", deprecated
2248  redundant "stat-..." procedures
2249- Added "directory-exists?"
2250- "(for-each (lambda ...) X)" is compiled as a loop
2251- The argument-count check for format-strings for "[sf]printf" with a constant
2252  string argument is done at compile-time
2253
22544.0.0
2255
2256- removed `apropos' and `apropos-list' from the "utils" library unit;
2257  available as an extension
2258- removed texinfo and PDF documentation - this will possible be added back
2259  later
2260- replaced PCRE regex engine with Alex Shinn's "irregex" regular expression
2261  package
2262- removed `-extension' option
2263- removed `-static-extensions' csc option and added `-static-extension NAME'
2264- `regex' unit: removed `regexp*' and `regex-optimize'
2265- added `CHICKEN_new_finalizable_gc_root()'
2266- `length' checks its argument for being cyclic
2267- removed custom declarations and "link-options" and "c-options" declarations
2268- deprecated "-quiet" option to "chicken" program
2269- added "-update-db" option to chicken-install
2270- the compiler now suggests possibly required module-imports
2271- moved non-standard syntax-definitions into "chicken-syntax" library unit
2272- the pretty-printer prints the end-of-file object readably now
2273- alternative conditional execution paths have separate allocation computation
2274  (previously the allocation of all alternatives was coalesced)
2275- removed unused "%kmp-search" from "srfi-13" library unit
2276- expander handles syntax-reexports and makes unexported syntax available
2277  for exported expanders in import libraries
2278- added checks in some procedures in the "tcp" library unit
2279- the macro system has been completely overhauled and converted
2280  to hygienic macros
2281- a macro-aware module system has been added
2282- added "-sx" option to csi
2283- removed the following deprecated functions:
2284   [un]shift!
2285   andmap ormap
2286   byte-vector? byte-vector-fill!
2287   make-byte-vector byte-vector
2288   byte-vector-set! byte-vector-ref
2289   byte-vector->list list->byte-vector
2290   string->byte-vector byte-vector->string
2291   byte-vector-length
2292   make-static-byte-vector static-byte-vector->pointer
2293   byte-vector-move! byte-vector-append!
2294   set-file-position! set-user-id! set-group-id!
2295   set-process-group-id!
2296   macro? undefine-macro!
2297- the situation-identifiers "run-time" and "compile-time" have
2298  been removed
2299- the compiler options "-check-imports", "-import" and "-emit-exports"
2300  have been removed
2301- new procedures:
2302  strip-syntax
2303  expand
2304- new macros
2305  define-syntax
2306  module
2307  export
2308- the following macros have been removed:
2309    define-foreign-record
2310    define-foreign-enum
2311    define-macro
2312    define-extension
2313- "local" mode, in which locally defined exported toplevel variables can
2314  be inlined
2315- new options and declarations "[-]local", "[-]inline-global" and "-emit-inline-file"
2316- optimization levels changed to use inlining:
2317  -optimize-level 3: enables -inline -local (but *not* -unsafe)
2318  -optimize-level 4: enables -inline -local -unsafe
2319- increased default inlining-limit to 20
2320- support for cross-module inlining
2321- "make <VARIABLES> bench" runs the benchmark suite
2322- "chicken-setup" has been replaced by new command line tools
2323  "chicken-install", "chicken-uninstall" and "chicken-status", which are
2324  more flexible and allow greater freedom when creating local or application-
2325  specific repositories
2326- extension-installation can be done directly from SVN repositories or a local
2327  file tree
2328- enabled chicken mirror site as alternative download location
Trap