Release Digest: GNU, June 26, 2002

GNU Smalltalk 2.0

GNU Smalltalk 2.0 has been released on
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/smalltalk/smalltalk-2.0.tar.gz

This is an important release.  Doing a major release has allowed us to break
backwards compatibility in a few selected areas to get a lot nearer to our
target of ANSI compliancy and providing a full set of full-featured and
well-organized libraries for Smalltalk development.

Here is a brief list of changes:

- A complete code cleanup was done for the virtual machine, adding
several hundred lines of comments

- Texinfo documentation is included for most of the included class
libraries.  Texinfo allows generation, in turn, of html, docbook, and
several other formats

- Reviewed and refactored TCP class libraries (prepared
for IPv6 though not supporting it yet),

- A class library to support a few common Internet protocols (FTP,
SMTP, HTTP, POP3).  This is a refactored version of the library
in the public domain SmallWalker web browser.

- ANSI-compliance test suites

- Support for GNU MP for faster large integer operations and
a reimplementation of Fractions for better speed.

- IEEE754 floating-point numbers

- extensive usage of namespaces and a new Namespace Browser tool

- initial support for virtual filesystems (à la GNOME)

There are lots of bugfixes and other minor changes; see
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/smalltalk/NEWS for a complete list.

Paolo Bonzini