3 * building with CLISP (or explaining why not). This will likely involve
4 a rearrangement of the build system so that it never renames
5 the output from COMPILE-FILE, because CLISP's COMPILE-FILE
6 outputs two (!) files and as far as I can tell LOAD uses both
7 of them. Since I have other motivations for this rearrangement
8 besides CLISPiosyncrasies, I'm reasonably motivated to do it.
9 * urgent EVAL/EVAL-WHEN/%COMPILE/DEFUN/DEFSTRUCT cleanup:
10 ** made inlining DEFUN inside MACROLET work again
11 ** (also, while working on INLINE anyway, it might be easy
12 to flush the old MAYBE-INLINE cruft entirely,
13 including e.g. on the man page)
14 ** fixed bug 137 (more)
15 * faster bootstrapping (both make.sh and slam.sh)
16 ** added mechanisms for automatically finding dead code, and
17 used them to remove dead code
18 ** moved stuff from warm init into cold init where possible
19 (so that slam.sh will run faster and also just because
20 ideally everything would be in cold init)
21 ** profiled and tweaked
22 * more EVAL/EVAL-WHEN/%COMPILE/DEFUN/DEFSTRUCT cleanup:
23 ** made %COMPILE understand magicality of DEFUN FOO
24 w.r.t. e.g. preexisting inlineness of FOO
25 ** used %COMPILE where COMPILE-TOP-LEVEL used to be used
26 ** removed now-redundant COMPILE-TOP-LEVEL and
27 FUNCTIONAL-KIND=:TOP-LEVEL stuff from the compiler
28 ** (ideally, but perhaps too hard, given what I've discovered
29 about the godawful internals of function debug names):
30 made FUNCTION-NAME logic work on closures, so that
31 various public functions like CL:PACKAGEP which
32 are now implemented as closures (because
33 they're structure slot accessors) won't be so
35 ** %SLOT-ACCESSOR/%SLOT-ACCESSOR stuff can probably go away,
36 since we inline expand all slot accessors into
37 %INSTANCE-REF and the optimizer knows all it needs
39 * rewrote long-standing confusing error restarts for redefining
41 * outstanding embarrassments
42 ** cut-and-pasted DEF-BOOLEAN-ATTRIBUTE (maybe easier to fix
43 now that EVAL-WHEN does what it should..)
45 ** :IGNORE-ERRORS-P cruft in stems-and-flags.lisp-expr. (It's
46 reasonable to support this as a crutch when initially
47 bootstrapping from balky xc hosts with their own
48 idiosyncratic ideas of what merits FAILURE-P, but it's
49 embarrassing to have to use it when bootstrapping
51 ** weird double-loading (first in GENESIS, then in warm init)
52 of src/assembly/target/*.lisp stuff, and the associated
53 weirdness of the half-baked state (compiler almost but
54 not quite ready for prime time..) of the system after
56 * fixups now feasible because of pre7 changes
57 ** ANSIfied DECLAIM INLINE stuff (deprecating MAYBE-INLINE)
58 * miscellaneous simple refactoring
60 ** renamed %PRIMITIVE to %VOP
61 * These days ANSI C has inline functions, so..
62 ** redid many cpp macros as inline functions:
63 HeaderValue, Pointerp, CEILING, ALIGNED_SIZE,
64 GET_FREE_POINTER, SET_FREE_POINTER,
65 GET_GC_TRIGGER, SET_GC_TRIGGER, GetBSP, SetBSP,
66 os_trunc_foo(), os_round_up_foo()
67 ** removed various avoid-evaluating-C-macro-arg-twice
69 * added mechanisms for automatically finding dead symbols is
70 package-data.lisp-expr (i.e. those symbols not bound,
71 fbound, defined as types, or whatever), and used them
72 to remove dead symbols
73 * made system handle stack overflow safely unless SAFETY is dominated
75 * Either get rid of or at least rework the fdefinition/encapsulation
76 system so that (SYMBOL-FUNCTION 'FOO) is identically equal to
78 =======================================================================
81 * refactored in preparation for moving CLOS into cold init and merging
82 SB-PCL:FOO with CL:FOO (for FOO=CLASS, FOO=CLASS-OF, etc.)
83 ** systematized support for MOP (new regression tests, maybe
84 new SB-MOP package..) to try to make sure things don't
85 get mislaid in the upcoming CLOS restructuring
86 ** extracted type system from SB-KERNEL into new SB-TYPE
88 ** reimplemented GENERIC-FUNCTION as a primitive object (or
89 maybe made SB-MOP:FUNCALLABLE-STANDARD-OBJECT the
90 primitive object, and then let GENERIC-FUNCTIONs
91 inherit from that) instead of structures with
92 :ALTERNATE-METACLASS and funcallableness. Now
93 FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE can go away. (And now the new
94 funcallable primitive objects need to go into
95 collections like *FUN-HEADER-WIDETAGS* where
96 FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE objects used to be.)
97 ** reimplemented CONDITIONs as primitive objects instead of
98 structures with :ALTERNATE-METACLASS. Now (between
99 this and the change to GENERIC-FUNCTIONs)
100 DEFSTRUCT :ALTERNATE-METACLASS can go away.
101 ** (maybe) Now INSTANCE_POINTER_LOWTAG can become just
102 STRUCTURE_POINTER_LOWTAG, and the concept of
103 SB-KERNEL:INSTANCE (including INSTANCEP,
104 (SPECIFIER-TYPE 'INSTANCE), etc.) can go away.
105 * moved CLOS into cold init, in order to allow CLOS to be used in the
106 implementation of the core system (e.g. the type system and the
107 compiler) and in order to support merger of CL:CLASS with
109 * (maybe) eliminated warm init altogether in favor of cold init
110 * (maybe, especially if warm init can be eliminated) rationalized
111 the build process, fixing miscellaneous pre-0.5.0 stuff that's
112 transparently not the right thing
113 ** removed separate build directories, now just building in
114 place with .sbclcoldfasl extensions
115 * (maybe) more refactoring in preparation for merging SB-PCL:FOO
116 into CL:FOO: reimplemented type system OO dispatch
117 (!DEFINE-TYPE-METHOD, etc.) in terms of CLOS OO dispatch
118 * merged SB-PCL:FOO into CL:FOO (and similarly CLASS-OF, etc.)
119 * added some automatic tests for basic binary compatibility, in hopes
120 that it might be practical to maintain binary compatibility
121 between minor maintenance releases on the stable branch (but no
122 promises, sorry, since I've never tried to do this before, and
123 have no idea how much of a pain this'll be)
124 ========================================================================
125 for 1.0 (fixes of lower priority which I'd nonetheless be embarrassed
126 to leave unfixed in 1.0):
127 * all too many BUGS entries and FIXMEs
128 =======================================================================
129 other priorities, no particular time:
131 * bug fixes, especially really annoying bugs (ANSI or not) and any
132 ANSI bugs (i.e. not just bugs in extras like the debugger or
133 "declarations are assertions", but violations of the standard)
134 * better communication with the outside world (scratching WHN's
135 personal itch): I don't want socket-level stuff so much as I
136 want RPC-level or higher (CORBA?) interfaces and (possibly
137 through RPC or CORBA) GUI support
138 =======================================================================
139 important but out of scope (for WHN, anyway: Patches from other people
140 are still welcome!) until after 1.0:
142 * sadly deteriorated support for ANSI-style block compilation
143 (static linking of DEFUNs within a single file or
144 WITH-COMPILATION-UNIT)
145 * various GC issues (exuberant cut-and-paste coding,
146 possibly dangerously over-conservative handling
147 of neighbors of function objects, general GC efficiency)
148 * package issues other than SB!TYPE, SB!MOP, and dead exported
150 * Any systematic effort to fix compiler consistency checks is
151 out of scope. (However, it still might be possible to
152 determine that some or all of them are hopelessly stale
154 ===============================================================================
155 other known issues with no particular target date:
157 bugs listed on the man page
159 hundreds of FIXME notes in the sources from WHN
161 various other unfinished business from CMU CL and before, marked with
162 "XX" or "XXX" or "###" or "***" or "???" or "pfw" or "@@@@" or "zzzzz"
163 or probably also other codes that I haven't noticed or have forgotten.
165 (Things marked as KLUDGE are in general things which are ugly or
166 confusing, but that, for whatever reason, may stay that way
168 =======================================================================
169 "There's nothing an agnostic can't do as long as he doesn't know
170 whether he believes in anything or not."
173 "God grant me serenity to accept the code I cannot change, courage to
174 change the code I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
177 "Accumulation of half-understood design decisions eventually chokes a
178 program as a water weed chokes a canal. By refactoring you can ensure
179 that your full understanding of how the program should be designed is
180 always reflected in the program. As a water weed quickly spreads its
181 tendrils, partially understood design decisions quickly spread their
182 effects throughout your program. No one or two or even ten individual
183 actions will be enough to eradicate the problem."
184 -- Martin Fowler, in _Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing
187 "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."