Luca Bruno <lethalma...@gmail.com>

Hello,
after several months a new version of Syx has been released. This release contains mostly VM changes and some changes to the Smalltalk Collections. As usual, release notes follow:

This versions enhances a new version of the interpreter, major updates to the scheduler, and as usual a lot of bug fixes. Syx left the Google Code SVN repositories because of many connection problems.

You can find informations about the new GIT repository here: http://code.google.com/p/syx/wiki/GitSource?tm=4

Installation instructions: http://code.google.com/p/syx/wiki/InstallationInstructions

API and environment:

    * SYX_ROOT_PATH and SYX_PLUGIN_PATH environment variables have been introduced.
    * Process and context creation changed.
    * New functions have been added for the scheduler, for manually do events iteration and adding idle functions to wake up semaphores.
    * Startup responsibility has been dropped from libsyx.
    * Added syx errors for system signals to be used with syx_signal.
    * Image recovering has been fixed.

Smalltalk:

    * Covered several standard methods for Collections, Numbers and Object printing/storing.
    * Error reporting from the VM now drops the exception to the Smalltalk environment when the interpreter is running.
    * Random class has been added.
    * Signal handling improvements for the GTK+ plugin.
    * #display family methods have been introduced for Smalltalk objects.

Interpreter:

    * System signal handling has been improved.
    * Cache hash code of Symbols.
    * The interpreter has been refactored to use one stack per Process.
    * Contexts are now created only on demand.
    * Optimized Symbols creation.
    * Signal class has been abstracted.

Parser:

    * The parser have been changed for handling new interpreter specifications.
    * Several fixes to the parser for special cases.
    * Fixed blocks scope.
    * Support <- assignment.

Image:

    * Image snapshot will nullify C pointers
    * Image format has been changed for handling new interpreter specifications.
    * Handle internal interpreter C pointers to be restored the right way.

Scheduler:

    * Different behavior of the scheduler for POSIX and Windows systems has been introduced.
    * Scheduler external idle sources have been added.
    * Asyncronous command line and GTK+ loop using semaphores. This leads to dropping readline.
    * A simple round robin scheduler has been added.
    * Dropped image saving of POSIX fd poll

Documentation:

    * Added lots of new comments.
    * Started documentation project including a manual still under development and a manpage.

Thanks to everyone contributing to the project.

See the ChangeLog for a complete list of things that changed.

--
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