CMUCL 19d released
CMUCL Project
The CMUCL project is pleased to announce the release of CMUCL 19d.
This is a major release which contains numerous enhancements and
bugfixes from the 19c release.
CMUCL is a free, high performance implementation of the Common Lisp
programming language which runs on most major Unix platforms. It
mainly conforms to the ANSI Common Lisp standard. CMUCL provides a
sophisticated native code compiler; a powerful foreign function
interface; an implementation of CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System,
which includes multimethods and a metaobject protocol; a source-level
debugger and code profiler; and an Emacs-like editor implemented in
Common Lisp. CMUCL is maintained by a team of volunteers collaborating
over the Internet, and is mostly in the public domain.
New in this release:
* Feature enhancements:
- Destructive functions like nreverse that modify constant args
will produce a warning.
- Destructive functions like nreverse whose results are not used
will produce a warning.
- Pathnames that cannot be printed readably using #p"..." will
now be printed using the CMUCL extension #P(...). However,
there are still cases where CMUCL cannot print pathnames
readably, but these involve search-lists and patterns.
- LONG-LONG and UNSIGNED-LONG-LONG are recognized types in the
C-CALL package for signed and unsigned 64-bit integers.
- A port of gencgc to Darwin/ppc has been made. This still
needs work, and is known to have some issues, but it compiles
CMUCL without problems and runs maxima just fine.
- TRACE supports tracing of FLET/LABELS functions. Use (trace
(labels foo bar)) to trace the labels function FOO in the
function BAR. This is currently experimental.
- DISASSEMBLE will disassemble flets/labels functions when
disassembling a function. Set disassem::*disassemble-flets*
to NIL to turn this off.
- Simple errors in socket handling code have been converted to
socket-error's to allow easier distinction of the errors.
- EXT:LOAD-FOREIGN will use dlopen to try to open a shared
library, so if dlopen searches in certain places, LOAD-FOREIGN
will find the shared object.
- A new search-list "ld-library-path:" has been created and
contains the value of the environment variable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH. This is analogous to the "path:"
search-list.
- When a core file is started, any shared libraries that were
loaded when the core was made will be reloaded on startup. If
the library cannot be found, several restarts are available.
- Support for the new float type EXT:DOUBLE-DOUBLE-FLOAT. This
includes support for complex numbers with this component type
and simple arrays for this type and complex numbers of this
type.
A DOUBLE-DOUBLE-FLOAT uses two DOUBLE-FLOAT's to represent a
number with >= 106 bits of precision (about 33 digits). Known
issues:
* If you are expecting IEEE-style behavior, you don't get it:
- signed zeroes aren't really available.
- overflows don't return infinity but return NaN instead.
- rounding might not be quite the same as IEEE
- SQRT is not accurate to the last bit, as required by IEEE.
* Multiplying by a number very close to
most-positive-double-float will produce an error even if the
result does not overflow. (This is an artifact of how
multiplication is done. I don't have a solution to this.)
* Read/write consistency is not working. (Because conversion
from a bignum to a double-double-float doesn't really
understand the internal double-double-float format.)
* INTEGER-DECODE-FLOAT and SCALE-FLOAT aren't "inverses".
That is, you can't take the result of integer-decode-float
and use scale-float to produce exactly the same number.
This is because of how bignums are converted to
double-doubles.
* FLOAT-DIGITS always returns 106 even though there could be
more bits. (Consider the double-double (1d0,1d-200)). This
will show up in PRINT where the printed result will have way
more than the normal 33 digits or so. But reading such a
number back won't give the same value.
* There is probably more consing than is necessary in many of
the standard Common Lisp functions like floor, ffloor, etc.
* The special functions are not fully tested. I did a few
random spot checks for each function and compared the
results with maxima to verify them.
* The branch cuts for the special functions very likely will
not match the double-float versions, mostly because we don't
have working signed zeroes.
* Type derivation for double-double-floats might not be
working quite right.
* PI is still a double-float. If you want a double-double
version of pi, it's KERNEL:DD-PI. (Soon to be EXT:DD-PI.)
* There are probably still many bugs where double-double-float
support was overlooked.
* The double-double arithmetic operations can be inlined by
specifying (SPACE 0). Otherwise, they are not inlined.
(Each double-double operation is about 20 FP instructions.)
- Hash tables now support weak value, weak key-and-value, and
weak key-or-value tables. The :WEAK-P keyword argument can
take the following values with the given meanings:
T
For backward compatibility. It is the same as :KEY.
:KEY
The entry exists as long as the key is not
garbage-collected.
:VALUE
The entry exists as long as the value is not
garbage-collected.
:KEY-AND-VALUE
The entry exists as long as the key and the value are
alive.
:KEY-OR-VALUE
The entry exists as long as the key or the value are alive.
These tables are currently experimental, but appear to work.
- TRACE supports an extra option, :WHEREIN-ONLY. This is
similar to the :WHEREIN option, except :WHEREIN-ONLY only
traces the function if the immediate caller is the specified
function(s).
* Numerous ANSI compliance fixes:
- A reader-error is signaled if the number that is being read is
too small to be presented. We used to silently return 0.
- WITH-INPUT-FROM-STRING no longer modifies the index if
WITH-INPUT-FROM-STRING is not exited normally.
- An error is signaled if a declaration is used as the name of a
deftype, condition, or defstruct, and vice versa.
- An error is signaled when trying to generate a namestring from
a pathname with just a version component (other than nil,
:newest, or :unspecific). CMUCL cannot print that readably.
- FLET and LABELS functions will catch errors in keyword
parameters. Previously, a keyword of NIL was silently
accepted.
- Printing a zero using ~E will now include a trailing zero
after the decimal point, as required by CLHS, 22.3.3.2.
- DOCUMENTATION and (SETF DOCUMENTATION) now works for
structures of type list or vector.
- DOTIMES will execute the loop the specified number of times,
independent of what the loop might do to the loop counter.
- Printing of circular objects using logical-blocks is handled
better.
- SET-SYNTAX-FROM-CHAR copies the entire dispatch table of
reader macro functions if necessary.
- SET-SYNTAX-FROM-CHAR handles single-escape, multiple-escape
and # characters correctly now.
- When CLOSE'ing a file with :ABORT, don't delete the file,
unless we renamed it. This preserves any and all changes to
the file, instead of deleting it.
- As specified by CLHS 22.1.3.1.3, PRIN1 and friends now produce
a trailing zero if necessary.
- As specified by CLHS 22.3.3.2, ~E will produce a single zero
for the fractional part, if necessary.
- (FORMAT NIL "~,2F" 0.001) produces "0.00" instead of "0.001".
Thus, we actually honor the d field now.
* Numerous bugfixes:
- LISTEN on DUAL-CHANNEL-SIMPLE-STREAM should work now.
- Some numerical issues with the two-arg log function have been
fixed. (log 17 10f0), (log 17f0 10) and (log 17 10) all
return the same result now.
- DESTRUCTURING-BIND no longer causes an error when the list to
be destructured is circular.
- PEEK-CHAR for Gray streams handles end of file correctly now.
- For the ppc port, the alignment of objects in alien structures
now matches the PowerOpen ABI for Mac OS X.
- For Darwin/ppc, CMUCL was not following the ABI when calling
out to C varargs functions. Now we always copy any float args
to the corresponding int regs (or stack) as required by the
ABI. This isn't necessary for non-varargs functions, but
CMUCL doesn't know functions which are varargs functions.
- Callbacks with long-long args or results should work correctly
now for Darwin/ppc.
- DESCRIBE no longer depends on having PCL loaded.
- Tracing with no encapsulation appears to be working now for
ppc.
- A simple interface to sysinfo(2) has been added for sparc.
This is used to provide better values for MACHINE-TYPE and
MACHINE-VERSION.
- PARSE-TIME can parse times like "Tue Sep 7 18:56:57 UTC 2004"
again.
- The pretty-printer for MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND can handle
malformed MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND forms now, instead of producing
an error.
- Callbacks on Darwin/ppc with a large number of args (more than
8 integer args) should work correctly now. (Previous versions
would signal an error.)
- DESCRIBE no longer says arrays are adjustable when they are
not, and vice versa.
- Disassembly of some floating-point instructions on ppc has
been corrected to display floating-point registers instead of
integer registers.
- (read (make-array 5)) doesn't cause a segfault anymore on
x86/linux. An error is now signaled saying the object isn't
one of the possible stream types.
- The PPC port no longer runs very slowly on some tests on a G5.
This was caused by using an instruction (mcrxr) that is
emulated on a G5 but not earlier.
- The pretty printer no longer causes an error on badly formed
slots in defclass forms.
- Document LISP::*IGNORE-WILDCARDS*. When set, namestrings will
not have pathnames with wildcards escaped when parsing
namestrings or when creating namestrings.
- Fix PPC bug in fixnum arithmetic that caused overflow. A trap
would be triggered, but there's no C support for the trap.
- Some flet/labels functions were not disassembled at all.
- (expt 1 <big number>) doesn't trigger a continuable error
anymore and returns 1 immediately.
- Disassembling methods doesn't produce a type error anymore.
- The unknown condition type 'LISP:SOCKET-ERROR has been fixed.
It properly signals the EXT:SOCKET-ERROR condition now.
- The accuracy of the trig functions (sin, cos, tan) for large
arguments has been improved for x86 and ppc. Sparc already
had accurate versions. Thus, (cos 1d120) is
-0.8278608682708728d0.
- ROOM works a bit better with GENCGC's allocation because
unallocated pages ended up looking like pages of conses.
- DESCRIBE will indicate if a hash-table is a weak (key)
hash-table or not.
- Some issues with GC of weak pointers and weak hash-tables have
been fixed. (CMUCL would sometimes crash to ldb about weird,
invalid objects.) There are, however, still issues with weak
pointers.
- Hash table entries with a key and value of :EMTPY now work as
expected.
- EXT:READ-VECTOR can read binary data from streams with element
type BASE-CHAR or CHARACTER.
* Trac Tickets
3. without-package-locks doesn't work with defmacro
- DEFMACRO within a WITHOUT-PACKAGE-LOCKS now actually
disables the package lock.
4. symbol-macrolet + ignorable causes internal compiler error
- IGNOREing a symbol in a SYMBOL-MACROLET doesn't cause a
type error anymore.
5. Hash table entry with key and value of :EMPTY is treated as
an empty entry.
- :EMPTY is allowed now and works as expected.
6. GCed items in weak hash tables are still accessible (with
random junk)
- When an entry is freed in a weak hash-table, the entry is
actually marked as free now. Previously, MAPHASH and
WITH-HASH-TABLE-ITERATOR would still display (potentially
incorrect) entry for it.
7. Bug in ext:read-vector
- Fixed so that EXT:READ-VECTOR can read binary data from
streams with element type BASE-CHAR and CHARACTER. This
matches the behavior of STREAMS:READ-VECTOR.
* Other changes:
- CMUCL catches more cases where it cannot print a pathname
readably. In particular when the pathname name contains "/"
or ".", or when the pathname type contains a ".".
- WITH-SLOTS and WITH-ACCESSORS are now pprinted like
MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND instead of like WITH-OPEN-FILE.
- LOOKUP-HOST-ENTRY now returns a second value. If
LOOKUP-HOST-ENTRY succeeds, the second value is T; otherwise,
the value of h_errno is returned.
- A warning is printed when creating a weak key hash table with
a test different from EQ.
* Changes to rebuilding procedure:
- Build scripts should recognize FreeBSD automatically.
- Should be able to build on either Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.4 using
the default version of gcc.
This release is not binary compatible with code compiled using CMUCL
19c; you will need to recompile FASL files.
See <URL:http://www.cons.org/cmucl/> for download information,
guidelines on reporting bugs, and mailing list details.
We hope you enjoy using this release of CMUCL!
JShr...@gmail.com
else, I have to admit.) Is there a spreadsheet someplace with all the
lisp implementations and their relative features (just in a binary
sense) so that someone like me who can't keep track of their neices and
nephews names can figure out which Lisp they are most likely to want to
use?
I'm guessing that if I create such a spreadsheet I'll get PLENTY of
feedback to help filling it out...
Hmmm. Let's try and see if it's already been done, and/or how badly
roasted I get :-)
sross
> I'm guessing that if I create such a spreadsheet I'll get PLENTY of
> feedback to help filling it out...
You're far more likely to get feedback if you put this up in plain
HTML, but i say go for it and good luck.
sean.
Richard M Kreuter
> This is great news, but I'm confused by CMUCL/SBCL...
<snip>
> I'm guessing that if I create such a spreadsheet I'll get PLENTY of
> feedback to help filling it out...
>
> Hmmm. Let's try and see if it's already been done, and/or how badly
> roasted I get :-)
>
> http://nostoc.stanford.edu/jeff/llisp/lisps.xls
Why do you include NewLisp in your spreadsheet? It might be a fine
language, but as it's not CL, the resources available for Common
Lispers (the HyperSpec, books, howtos, libraries, this newsgroup,
etc.) will probably be of little use for somebody interested in
NewLisp, don't you think?
Also, what is the intended distinction between "actively supported" and
"actively developed"? Is "actively supported" supposed to mean that
there's somebody you can pay for support, or something less precise?
Anyhow, for the CLs you do include:
* Clisp is GPL plus a usage exception, and it runs on Windows (both
natively and under Cygwin). Clisp doesn't have threads. Also,
while it does include a compiler, it compiles to a portable
bytecode, in case that matters. Clisp's url is
http://clisp.cons.org/
* CMUCL has multithreading on x86 (and maybe elsewhere), but not OS
threads, and so is unicore.
* SBCL has multithreading on Linux/x86, FreeBSD/x86, (and
Linux/x86-64, I think), and these are OS threads, so is multicore.
SBCL's url is http://sbcl.sourceforge.net/
* Probably your ANSI conformance category should instead be something
like "aims for conformance with ANSI CL".
Finally, among free Lisps, you've omitted OpenMCL, ECL, GCL, ABCL, and
the proprietary Scieneer, and LispWorks (about which I know nothing).
(ABCL might be "dead"; I can't tell, and free software projects
occasionally get resurrected.) The following table is a best-effort,
and might understate things:
OpenMCL ECL GCL ABCL
license LGPL LGPL GPL GPL**
cost free free free free
url [1] [2] [3] [4]
supported yes yes yes ?
developed yes yes yes ?
compiler yes C* C* Java*
WinTel no yes ? yes
Linux ppc,x86-64 yes yes yes
Mac ppc ppc,x86? ? presumably
threads yes yes ? ?
multicore yes yes ? ?
conform. yes yes(?) ? ?
* ECL and GCL compile to native executable formats via the system's C
compiler. ABCL compiles to Java bytecode via a Java compiler.
** ABCL provides a linking exception to the GPL.
URLs:
[1] http://openmcl.clozure.com
[2] http://ecls.sourceforge.net
[3] http://www.gnu.org/software/gcl/
[4] http://armedbear.org/abcl.html
--
RmK
JShr...@gmail.com
It's actually just a Tab Separated Text file.
JShr...@gmail.com
clarifications.
You asked:
> Why do you include NewLisp in your spreadsheet? It might be a fine
> language, but as it's not CL, the resources available for Common
> Lispers (the HyperSpec, books, howtos, libraries, this newsgroup,
> etc.) will probably be of little use for somebody interested in
> NewLisp, don't you think?
I'm hoping not to think, just to record what people tell me. I used
NewLisp to create a rather useful (through very simple) Windows utility
for myself, using pretty standard stuff. Im hoping that by noting that
it's not compliant folks will get the idea that it's not CL, although I
guess by this principle I should start listing Schemes too, eh?
> Also, what is the intended distinction between "actively supported" and
> "actively developed"? Is "actively supported" supposed to mean that
> there's somebody you can pay for support, or something less precise?
I've tried to clarify this in the table. My thought (even though I just
said above I was hoping not to think too much) was that AS means
someone is likely to help you debug it, whereas AD means that there are
actual releases (i.e., a bug fix might actually get into a release, as
opposed to you having to maintain your own slowly diverging version).
Might not be the most sensible distinction.
Thanks for your input!
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(10 Dec 2006 09:25:14 -0800))
(
J> Hmmm. Let's try and see if it's already been done, and/or how badly
J> roasted I get :-)
J> http://nostoc.stanford.edu/jeff/llisp/lisps.xls
there's some table in:
http://www.cliki.net/Common%20Lisp%20implementation
can you put your table into wiki too?
i can provide additional info about ABCL: it supports multhithreaded and
multicore, but i suspect that i'm the only user of multicore :(. CLOS
crashes with multicore, while other stuff seems to work good enough. i think
some mutex should be inserted somewhere into the CLOS impl, and ABCL will
have full support for multicore. unfortunately, i don't know where to put
that mutex
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
Andras Simon
>
> * ECL and GCL compile to native executable formats via the system's C
> compiler. ABCL compiles to Java bytecode via a Java compiler.
No, ABCL compiles directly to Java bytecode.
Andras
JShr...@gmail.com
this. I didn't think to look in CLiki.) Do you think it worth (a)
reformatting the Cliki info into a table, (b) just updating that page
in place and forget the tabular form, (c) sucking it all into a
spreadsheet and then putting it on CLiki and CLD, or (d) just dropping
the idea as it's already been done well there?
in 'll add my table
Thibault Langlois
On Dec 10, 5:25 pm, "JShra...@gmail.com" <JShra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is great news, but I'm confused by CMUCL/SBCL (and everything
> else, I have to admit.)
Same for me.
I am a cmucl user since version 18 and when I saw the recent applause
for the release of SBCL 1.0 I was wondering if cmucl was still used by
as many people as it used to be. Was the huge amount of work invested
by so many people in th CMUCL implementation going to be forgotten ?
Was it time to switch ?
Correct me if I am wrong but at the begining the objective of the the
SBCL fork was to simplify the building process. For me, this objective
is orthogonal with the set of features of the implementation. It seems
that during the fork some features were left (for example green
threads) and new ones were included afterward. Does anyone knows what
are the features that were abandoned, and why ?
Does SBCL use the same python compiler ?
How much source code is there in common between CMUCL and SBCL ?
For the code i write, I find particulary usefull the cmucl MP package.
I know SBCL has OS based threads but I would like to know what are,
from the programmer point of view, the differences between CMUCL's
green threads and SBCL's os-based threads.
I know that os-based threads take advantage of multi-processor or
multi-core architectures. Is it the only advantage ? Do SBCL's threads
have to be cooperative like CMUCL's ? Are they more efficient (in term
of speed and memory) ?
Well... that's too many questions for a single post :-)
Thibault
Didier Verna
> I know SBCL has OS based threads but I would like to know what are, from the
> programmer point of view, the differences between CMUCL's green threads and
> SBCL's os-based threads. I know that os-based threads take advantage of
> multi-processor or multi-core architectures. Is it the only advantage ? Do
> SBCL's threads have to be cooperative like CMUCL's ?
Well, if SBCL's threads are in kernel land, they don't have to
cooperate (I guess you mean in the sense that they don't have to yield),
assuming that your os'scheduler is preemptive of course.
> Are they more efficient (in term of speed and memory) ?
At some point, kernel threads were heavier in terms of context
switching (but then of course, they were the only choice if you wanted real
parallelism), although I'm not sure whether that still applies. I would also
be interesting to know which systems actually support scheduler activations. I
know there's a patch around for Linux, but I don't know its status.
--
Looking for a Christmas present idea? http://cdbaby.com/cd/didierverna
Didier Verna EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicętre, France Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22
ivant
> guidelines on reporting bugs, and mailing list details.
I tried once (like 3 months ago) to file a bug report, but without
success. I sent at least 2 emails to the cmucl-help mailing list (as
suggested on the site), but didn't get a reply. Today I saw in this
announcement, that there is a TRAC bug tracking system for CMUCL, but I
don't see a way to register bug there either.
So, what is the right way to report bugs?
P.S. The bug was still present in CMUCL 19d pre2. I haven't tried it
with the release yet.
rydis
> > See <URL:http://www.cons.org/cmucl/> for download information,
> > guidelines on reporting bugs, and mailing list details.
>
> I tried once (like 3 months ago) to file a bug report, but without
> success. I sent at least 2 emails to the cmucl-help mailing list (as
> suggested on the site), but didn't get a reply. Today I saw in this
> announcement, that there is a TRAC bug tracking system for CMUCL, but I
> don't see a way to register bug there either.
You need to be subscribed to the mailing list (with the same address
you're sending from) to send mail, and you need to have a
common-lisp.net account to enter trac tickets. Both are because
spammers are destroying the internet.
> So, what is the right way to report bugs?
Subscribe to the mailing-list, and try again, I guess.
',mr
--
rydis (Martin Rydström) @CD.Chalmers.SE http://www.rydis.se
[Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is
beautiful. -- Neal Stephenson, _In the Beginning was the Command Line_