Updates, delay on 0.2.2

[Brian T Rice]

Hi all,

This is just some quick information. I've been hired by a local software
megacorp which needs little introduction to do datawarehousing work. I'll
be starting work in 7 days. The setup and schedule for this job should not
be very taxing, and allow me to get work done at pretty much the same pace
as now; previously, looking for work and managing dwindling finances were
taking as much time as a full job.

So, my plan is to delay the 0.2.2 release for a week so that I can finish
up the C-translator work, and get it into writing out correct C code and
handling all the major aspects correctly. There is plenty of work left to
do on the VM, but it is largely easy by comparison with getting the
correctness of the basic output worked out.

Some other tidbits:

The bytecode compiler is now fairly complete and seemingly bug-free.
There's little code yet for writing out images and setting that up. The
bytecode interpreters (in Slate and Pidgin) are behaviorally complete
(see vm/interpreter.slate and vm/vm.slate). The heap code has been
separated from the specific GC routines.

We've fixed many many bugs in the core libraries. You can check out the
NEWS files for itemized details, and the CVS as always is browsable to see
what's happened in particular files. I daresay that Streams are rapidly
changing from their Squeak-inspired confused form of code to something
rational and much more useful, and the other collections are coming along
as well.

A lot of design changes are waiting for the VM setup to be complete,
particularly improving our environment support: file systems, system
calls, etc.

That's all I can think of to say for now. I'll keep you updated.

-- 
Brian T. Rice
LOGOS Research and Development
http://tunes.org/~water/