planned incompatible changes in 0.8.x: * (not done yet, but planned:) When the profiling interface settles down, it might impact TRACE. They both encapsulate functions, and it's not clear yet how e.g. UNPROFILE will interact with TRACE and UNTRACE. (This shouldn't matter, though, unless you are using profiling. If you never profile anything, TRACE should continue to behave as before.) * (not done yet, but planned:) Inlining can now be controlled the ANSI way, without MAYBE-INLINE, since the idiom (DECLAIM (INLINE FOO)) (DEFUN FOO (..) ..) (DECLAIM (NOTINLINE FOO)) (DEFUN BAR (..) (FOO ..)) (DEFUN BLETCH (..) (DECLARE (INLINE FOO)) (FOO ..)) now does what ANSI says it should. The CMU-CL-style SB-EXT:MAYBE-INLINE declaration is now deprecated and ignored. for early 0.8.x: * test file reworking ** ports with less than 256Mb of heap (sparc, ppc and mips) now don't fail bit-vector.impure-cload.lisp * faster bootstrapping (both make.sh and slam.sh) ** added mechanisms for automatically finding dead code, and used them to remove dead code ** moved stuff from warm init into cold init where possible (so that slam.sh will run faster and also just because ideally everything would be in cold init) ** profiled and tweaked * fixed (TRACE :REPORT PROFILE ...) interface to profiling * more EVAL/EVAL-WHEN/%COMPILE/DEFUN/DEFSTRUCT cleanup: ** made %COMPILE understand magicality of DEFUN FOO w.r.t. e.g. preexisting inlineness of FOO ** used %COMPILE where COMPILE-TOP-LEVEL used to be used ** removed now-redundant COMPILE-TOP-LEVEL and FUNCTIONAL-KIND=:TOP-LEVEL stuff from the compiler ** (ideally, but perhaps too hard, given what I've discovered about the godawful internals of function debug names): made FUNCTION-NAME logic work on closures, so that various public functions like CL:PACKAGEP which are now implemented as closures (because they're structure slot accessors) won't be so nasty in the debugger * outstanding embarrassments ** :IGNORE-ERRORS-P cruft in stems-and-flags.lisp-expr. (It's reasonable to support this as a crutch when initially bootstrapping from balky xc hosts with their own idiosyncratic ideas of what merits FAILURE-P, but it's embarrassing to have to use it when bootstrapping under SBCL!), * fixups now feasible because of pre7 changes ** ANSIfied DECLAIM INLINE stuff (deprecating MAYBE-INLINE, including e.g. on the man page) ** (maybe) allow INLINE of a recursive function, so that the body is inlined once * miscellaneous simple refactoring * belated renaming: ** renamed %PRIMITIVE to %VOP ** A few hundred things named FN and FCN should be named FUN (but maybe not while drichards is working on a Windows port). * These days ANSI C has inline functions, so.. ** redid many cpp macros as inline functions: HeaderValue, Pointerp, CEILING, ALIGNED_SIZE, GET_FREE_POINTER, SET_FREE_POINTER, GET_GC_TRIGGER, SET_GC_TRIGGER, GetBSP, SetBSP, os_trunc_foo(), os_round_up_foo() ** removed various avoid-evaluating-C-macro-arg-twice cruft * Either get rid of or at least rework the fdefinition/encapsulation system so that (SYMBOL-FUNCTION 'FOO) is identically equal to (FDEFINITION 'FOO). * Make the system sources understandable to the system, so that searching for sources doesn't error out quite so often (e.g. in error handlers) ** provided a suitable readtable for reading in the source files when necessary, and a mechanism for activating this readtable rather than the standard one. * Some work on conditions emitted by the system ** eliminated COMPILER-WARN and COMPILER-STYLE-WARN, which were simply limited versions of WARN and STYLE-WARN. ** made STYLE-WARN parallel WARN more closely (by accepting a condition type, which should be a subtype of STYLE-WARNING, and initargs, as well as a format string and format arguments for SIMPLE-STYLE-WARNING. (WARN can also be used to signal STYLE-WARNINGs, but STYLE-WARN helps to document the code) ** eliminated use of INHIBIT-WARNINGS by code emitted by the system from user code. ** caused use of INHIBIT-WARNINGS to signal a STYLE-WARNING. ** eliminated use of INHIBIT-WARNINGS within the system ** deprecated INHIBIT-WARNINGS, causing its use to signal a full WARNING. ** began work on developing a class hierarchy of conditions along semantic lines. ** annotated conditions emitted by the system to have references to documentation where applicable, so that users can easily find an explanation for the conditions they're seeing. ======================================================================= for 0.9: [ note: much of the below refers to preparation for merging SB-PCL:FOO and CL:FOO. However, it turned out to be surprisingly straightforward to do this notional end goal without doing many of the preparatory operations. That doesn't mean that plenty of the goals below aren't worthwhile, but the motivation is somewhat different. ] * refactored in preparation for moving CLOS into cold init and merging SB-PCL:FOO with CL:FOO (for FOO=CLASS, FOO=CLASS-OF, etc.) ** systematized support for MOP (more regression tests, maybe) to try to make sure things don't get mislaid in the upcoming CLOS restructuring ** extracted type system (and maybe CLASSOIDs) from SB-KERNEL into new SB-TYPE package ** reimplemented GENERIC-FUNCTION as a primitive object (or maybe made SB-MOP:FUNCALLABLE-STANDARD-OBJECT the primitive object, and then let GENERIC-FUNCTIONs inherit from that) instead of structures with :ALTERNATE-METACLASS and funcallableness. Now FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE can go away. (And now the new funcallable primitive objects need to go into collections like *FUN-HEADER-WIDETAGS* where FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE objects used to be.) ** reimplemented CONDITIONs as primitive objects instead of structures with :ALTERNATE-METACLASS. Now (between this and the change to GENERIC-FUNCTIONs) DEFSTRUCT :ALTERNATE-METACLASS can go away. ** (maybe) Now INSTANCE_POINTER_LOWTAG can become just STRUCTURE_POINTER_LOWTAG, and the concept of SB-KERNEL:INSTANCE (including INSTANCEP, (SPECIFIER-TYPE 'INSTANCE), etc.) can go away. * moved CLOS into cold init, in order to allow CLOS to be used in the implementation of the core system (e.g. the type system and the compiler) and in order to support merger of CL:CLASS with SB-PCL:CLASS * (maybe) eliminated warm init altogether in favor of cold init * (maybe, especially if warm init can be eliminated) rationalized the build process, fixing miscellaneous pre-0.5.0 stuff that's transparently not the right thing ** removed separate build directories, now just building in place with .sbclcoldfasl extensions * (maybe) more refactoring in preparation for merging SB-PCL:FOO into CL:FOO: reimplemented type system OO dispatch (!DEFINE-TYPE-METHOD, etc.) in terms of CLOS OO dispatch * added some automatic tests for basic binary compatibility, in hopes that it might be practical to maintain binary compatibility between minor maintenance releases on the stable branch (but no promises, sorry, since I've never tried to do this before, and have no idea how much of a pain this'll be) ======================================================================== for 1.0 (fixes of lower priority which I'd nonetheless be embarrassed to leave unfixed in 1.0): * all too many BUGS entries and FIXMEs ======================================================================= other priorities, no particular time: * bug fixes, especially really annoying bugs (ANSI or not) and any ANSI bugs (i.e. not just bugs in extras like the debugger or "declarations are assertions", but violations of the standard) * better communication with the outside world (scratching WHN's personal itch): I don't want socket-level stuff so much as I want RPC-level or higher (CORBA?) interfaces and (possibly through RPC or CORBA) GUI support * Especially when ldb is not compiled in, the default "assertion failed" behaviour in many parts of the runtime is unfriendly. It may be appropriate to look at some of these and see if they can be handled in some less abrupt way than aborting ======================================================================= important but out of scope (for WHN, anyway: Patches from other people are still welcome!) until after 1.0: * DYNAMIC-EXTENT * sadly deteriorated support for ANSI-style block compilation (static linking of DEFUNs within a single file or WITH-COMPILATION-UNIT) * various GC issues (exuberant cut-and-paste coding, possibly dangerously over-conservative handling of neighbors of function objects, general GC efficiency) * package issues other than SB!TYPE, SB!MOP, and dead exported symbols * Any systematic effort to fix compiler consistency checks is out of scope. (However, it still might be possible to determine that some or all of them are hopelessly stale and delete them.) ======================================================================= other known issues with no particular target date: bugs listed on the man page hundreds of FIXME notes in the sources from WHN various other unfinished business from CMU CL and before, marked with "XX" or "XXX" or "###" or "***" or "???" or "pfw" or "@@@@" or "zzzzz" or probably also other codes that I haven't noticed or have forgotten. (Things marked as KLUDGE are in general things which are ugly or confusing, but that, for whatever reason, may stay that way indefinitely.) ======================================================================= "There's nothing an agnostic can't do as long as he doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not." -- Monty Python. "God grant me serenity to accept the code I cannot change, courage to change the code I can, and wisdom to know the difference." -- Erik Naggum "Accumulation of half-understood design decisions eventually chokes a program as a water weed chokes a canal. By refactoring you can ensure that your full understanding of how the program should be designed is always reflected in the program. As a water weed quickly spreads its tendrils, partially understood design decisions quickly spread their effects throughout your program. No one or two or even ten individual actions will be enough to eradicate the problem." -- Martin Fowler, in _Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code_, p. 360 "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." -- Bob Seger