3 * filed off the roughest edges (or, perhaps, at least hammered down the
4 protruding rusty nails and snipped off the trailing razor wire,
5 leaving some filing for later:-) from the monster
6 EVAL/EVAL-WHEN/%COMPILE/DEFUN/DEFSTRUCT cleanup:
7 ** made inlining DEFUN inside MACROLET work again
8 ** made %COMPILE set up debugging data more like the way the
9 debugger expects (and maybe even completely
11 * incompatible changes listed in NEWS:
12 ** changed debugger prompt to "5]", "5[2]", "5[3]", etc.
13 ** changed default output representation of *PRINT-ESCAPE*-ed
14 unprintable ASCII characters to #\Nul, #\Soh, etc.
15 * some easy FIXMEs with high disruptive potential:
16 ** Search lists go away.
17 ** Grep for ~D and and change most of them to ~S.
18 * more renaming in global external names:
19 ** used DEFINE-THE-FOO-THING and DEFFOO style consistently (and
20 deprecated supported extensions named in the DEF-FOO
21 style, e.g. SB-ALIEN:DEF-ALIEN-ROUTINE)
22 ** reserved DO-FOO-style names for iteration macros
23 ** finished s/FUNCTION/FUN/
25 ** s/TOP-LEVEL/TOPLEVEL/
26 * global style systematization:
27 ** s/#'(lambda/(lambda/
28 ** four-space indentation in C
29 =======================================================================
32 * building with CLISP (or explaining why not)
33 * faster bootstrapping (both make.sh and slam.sh)
34 ** added mechanisms for automatically finding dead code, and
35 used them to remove dead code
36 ** moved stuff from warm init into cold init where possible
37 (so that slam.sh will run faster and also just because
38 ideally everything would be in cold init)
39 ** profiled and tweaked
40 * more EVAL/EVAL-WHEN/%COMPILE/DEFUN/DEFSTRUCT cleanup:
41 ** made %COMPILE understand magicality of DEFUN FOO
42 w.r.t. e.g. preexisting inlineness of FOO
43 ** used %COMPILE where COMPILE-TOP-LEVEL used to be used
44 ** removed now-redundant COMPILE-TOP-LEVEL and
45 FUNCTIONAL-KIND=:TOP-LEVEL stuff from the compiler
46 ** made FUNCTION-NAME logic work on closures, so that
47 various public functions like CL:PACKAGEP which
48 are now implemented as closures (because
49 they're structure slot accessors) won't be so
51 ** %SLOT-ACCESSOR/%SLOT-ACCESSOR stuff can probably go away,
52 since we inline expand all slot accessors into
53 %INSTANCE-REF and the optimizer knows all it needs
55 * rewrote long-standing confusing error restarts for redefining
57 * outstanding embarrassments
58 ** cut-and-pasted DEF-BOOLEAN-ATTRIBUTE (maybe easier to fix
59 now that EVAL-WHEN does what it should..)
61 ** :IGNORE-ERRORS-P cruft in stems-and-flags.lisp-expr
62 ** weird double-loading (first in GENESIS, then in warm init)
63 of src/assembly/target/*.lisp stuff, and the associated
64 weirdness of the half-baked state (compiler almost but
65 not quite ready for prime time..) of the system after
67 * fixups now feasible because of pre7 changes
68 ** ANSIfied DECLAIM INLINE stuff (deprecating MAYBE-INLINE)
69 * miscellaneous simple refactoring
71 ** renamed %PRIMITIVE to %VOP
72 * These days ANSI C has inline functions, so..
73 ** redid many cpp macros as inline functions:
74 HeaderValue, Pointerp, CEILING, ALIGNED_SIZE,
75 GET_FREE_POINTER, SET_FREE_POINTER,
76 GET_GC_TRIGGER, SET_GC_TRIGGER, GetBSP, SetBSP,
77 os_trunc_foo(), os_round_up_foo()
78 ** removed various avoid-evaluating-C-macro-arg-twice
80 * added mechanisms for automatically finding dead symbols is
81 package-data.lisp-expr (i.e. those symbols not bound,
82 fbound, defined as types, or whatever), and used them
83 to remove dead symbols
84 * made system handle stack overflow safely unless SAFETY is dominated
86 =======================================================================
89 * refactored in preparation for moving CLOS into cold init and merging
90 SB-PCL:FOO with CL:FOO (for FOO=CLASS, FOO=CLASS-OF, etc.)
91 ** systematized support for MOP (new regression tests, maybe
92 new SB-MOP package..) to try to make sure things don't
93 get mislaid in the upcoming CLOS restructuring
94 ** extracted type system from SB-KERNEL into new SB-TYPE
96 ** reimplemented GENERIC-FUNCTION as a primitive object (or
97 maybe made SB-MOP:FUNCALLABLE-STANDARD-OBJECT the
98 primitive object, and then let GENERIC-FUNCTIONs
99 inherit from that) instead of structures with
100 :ALTERNATE-METACLASS and funcallableness. Now
101 FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE can go away. (And now the new
102 funcallable primitive objects need to go into
103 collections like *FUN-HEADER-WIDETAGS* where
104 FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE objects used to be.)
105 ** reimplemented CONDITIONs as primitive objects instead of
106 structures with :ALTERNATE-METACLASS. Now (between
107 this and the change to GENERIC-FUNCTIONs)
108 DEFSTRUCT :ALTERNATE-METACLASS can go away.
109 ** (maybe) Now INSTANCE_POINTER_LOWTAG can become just
110 STRUCTURE_POINTER_LOWTAG, and the concept of
111 SB-KERNEL:INSTANCE (including INSTANCEP,
112 (SPECIFIER-TYPE 'INSTANCE), etc.) can go away.
113 * moved CLOS into cold init, in order to allow CLOS to be used in the
114 implementation of the core system (e.g. the type system and the
115 compiler) and in order to support merger of CL:CLASS with
117 * (maybe) eliminated warm init altogether in favor of cold init
118 * (maybe, especially if warm init can be eliminated) rationalized
119 the build process, fixing miscellaneous pre-0.5.0 stuff that's
120 transparently not the right thing
121 ** removed separate build directories, now just building in
122 place with .sbclcoldfasl extensions
123 * (maybe) more refactoring in preparation for merging SB-PCL:FOO
124 into CL:FOO: reimplemented type system OO dispatch
125 (!DEFINE-TYPE-METHOD, etc.) in terms of CLOS OO dispatch
126 * merged SB-PCL:FOO into CL:FOO (and similarly CLASS-OF, etc.)
127 * added some automatic tests for basic binary compatibility, in hopes
128 that it might be practical to maintain binary compatibility
129 between minor maintenance releases on the stable branch (but no
130 promises, sorry, since I've never tried to do this before, and
131 have no idea how much of a pain this'll be)
132 =======================================================================
133 other priorities, no particular time:
135 * bug fixes, especially really annoying bugs (ANSI or not) and any
136 ANSI bugs (i.e. not just bugs in extras like the debugger or
137 "declarations are assertions", but violations of the standard)
138 * better communication with the outside world (scratching WHN's
139 personal itch): I don't want socket-level stuff so much as I
140 want RPC-level or higher (CORBA?) interfaces and (possibly
141 through RPC or CORBA) GUI support
142 =======================================================================
143 important but out of scope (for WHN, anyway: Patches from other people
144 are still welcome!) until after 1.0:
146 * sadly deteriorated support for ANSI-style block compilation
147 (static linking of DEFUNs within a single file or
148 WITH-COMPILATION-UNIT)
149 * various GC issues (exuberant cut-and-paste coding,
150 possibly dangerously over-conservative handling
151 of neighbors of function objects, general GC efficiency)
152 * package issues other than SB!TYPE, SB!MOP, and dead exported
154 * Any systematic effort to fix compiler consistency checks is
155 out of scope. (However, it still might be possible to
156 determine that some or all of them are hopelessly stale
158 ===============================================================================
159 other known issues with no particular target date:
161 bugs listed on the man page
163 hundreds of FIXME notes in the sources from WHN
165 various other unfinished business from CMU CL and before, marked with
166 "XX" or "XXX" or "###" or "***" or "???" or "pfw" or "@@@@" or "zzzzz"
167 or probably also other codes that I haven't noticed or have forgotten.
169 (Things marked as KLUDGE are in general things which are ugly or
170 confusing, but that, for whatever reason, may stay that way
172 =======================================================================
173 "There's nothing an agnostic can't do as long as he doesn't know
174 whether he believes in anything or not."
177 "God grant me serenity to accept the code I cannot change, courage to
178 change the code I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
181 "Accumulation of half-understood design decisions eventually chokes a
182 program as a water weed chokes a canal. By refactoring you can ensure
183 that your full understanding of how the program should be designed is
184 always reflected in the program. As a water weed quickly spreads its
185 tendrils, partially understood design decisions quickly spread their
186 effects throughout your program. No one or two or even ten individual
187 actions will be enough to eradicate the problem."
188 -- Martin Fowler, in _Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing
191 "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."