Release Digest: GNU, May 14, 2002

guile-1.4.1

folks,

this is to announce release of guile, the GNU Ubiquitous
Intelligent Language for Extension, version 1.4.1.

 news blurb: http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/news.html
   download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-1.4.1.tar.gz

NEWS excerpt below.  to quote the blurb:

  This is a cleanup release for guile-1.4, and is the first of a handful
  planned to ease migration from 1.4.x to 1.6.x (where all the cool new
  goodies are).  If you have already migrated, you can safely skip this
  release.  On the other hand, if you have had problems with guile-1.4,
  or are interested in eventually migrating to 1.6.x, please see the ftp
  dir (now also available via http) or mirrors.

guile is released under a modified form of the GNU GPL (General Public
License) that permits linking against libguile to not necessarily result
in a derived work -- be sure to see file COPYING for more info.

please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.

thi


______________________________________________
Guile 1.4.1 released 2002-05-13
Changes since Guile 1.4:

* installation fix: (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)

This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
that can't tolerate `*'s in file names.  The exported macro continues
to be named `and-let*', of course.

On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
(ice-9 and-let*).  It will go away in a future release.

* build fix: net_db.c `inet_aton' declaration now properly conditionalized

This buglet typically caused compilation to fail at
libguile/net_db.c:85, and in fact, motivated 1.4.1 release.

* bugfix: `expt' now handles negative exponents correctly

* installation fix: some programs are no longer installed

The following programs are used in the build process and are now no longer
installed in $bindir.

        guile-doc-snarf
        guile-func-name-check
        guile-snarf.awk

* guile-snarf usage now internalizes output-file creation/deletion

In Guile 1.4, the installed (in $bindir) program "guile-snarf" wrote
to standard output and required this kind of construction in the Makefile:

  guile-snarf foo.c $(snarf-cpp-opts) > foo.x || { rm foo.x; false; }

The program now handles output-file deletion on error interanlly, and
can be used like so:

  guile-snarf -o foo.x foo.c $(snarf-cpp-opts)

The "-o OUTFILE INFILE $(snarf-cpp-opts)" must appear in the specified order.
This usage is upward compatible with future guile-snarf programs.  Support
for the old usage is likely to be dropped in the future.

* installation fix: libltdl now "installable" instead of "convenience"

Previously, libguile included a private copy of libltdl.  Now,
configuration detects if libltdl is already installed, and uses that.
If libltdl is not already installed, a copy is built and installed.
In any case, libguile no longer includes libltdl, see next item.

* library versioning now more disciplined

The CURRENT:REVISION:AGE scheme is now applied to all shared-object
libraries built as part of guile:

                      guile-1.4     guile-1.4.1
  libguile                9.0.0          10.0.0
  libqthreads             0.0.0           0.1.0
  libguile-readline       0.0.0           0.1.0

The change in CURRENT for libguile is due to libltdl unbundling
(14 symbols w/ "lt_" prefix are no longer provided).

* "make check" now works

This optional step in the build process (between "make" and "make
install") runs some tests on the built guile and reports a summary,
something like:

  Totals for this test run:
  passes:                 2109
  failures:               0
  unexpected passes:      0
  expected failures:      11
  unresolved test cases:  11
  untested test cases:    0
  unsupported test cases: 9
  errors:                 0

If there are any errors, "make check" fails.

The tests comprising "make check" are located under the test-suite
subdir, and can be run individually using the "check-guile" script, like
so:

  check-guile numbers.test

(This is how "make check" does it, too.)  See the header comments in
check-guile for more info.  If you write new tests, send them to
bug-guile.

* provisional documentation available

The data-rep.info that was included in Guile 1.4 is now incorporated
into guile.info, which is a temporary placeholder for the reference manual
that is still to be fully integrated at some point in the future.

* interface summarization available

Programming interfaces are now summarized in doc/guile-api.alist, in a
program-friendly format.  This file contains a single sexp of the form:

  ((meta ...) (interface ...))

The meta fields are `GUILE_LOAD_PATH', `LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH', `guile'
`libguileinterface', `sofile' and `groups'.  The interface elements are
in turn sub-alists w/ keys `groups' and `scan-data'.  Interface elements
initially belong in one of two groups `Scheme' or `C' (but not both) and
sometimes belong in other groups (see doc/groupings.alist for defs).