Steel Bank Common Lisp

Version 0.8.5 of SBCL has been released, and can be found on the 
SourceForge downloads page.

If you do threading, note that (as in the 5th entry quoted from NEWS
below) you might want to try some threading/GC patches which didn't
make it into this release.

Enjoy.

from the NEWS file in the distribution:
changes in sbcl-0.8.5 relative to sbcl-0.8.4:
  * New code in contrib/sb-introspect (still probably not entirely
    stable yet) provides some support for smart Lisp development 
    environments like SLIME.
  * The conditions signalled for errors occurring when loading .fasl
    files have been systematized (inheriting from SB-EXT:INVALID-FASL)
    in a way which should help ASDF recover gracefully.
  * The REQUIRE/PROVIDE behavior of *MODULE-PROVIDER-FUNCTIONS* 
    stuff has been cleaned up. If you code contrib/ stuff, this might 
    affect you, and you can look at contrib/README, contrib/STANDARDS, 
    and/or the 0.8.4.27 diff to check.
  * In full calls the compiler now does not generate checks for declared
    argument types for all arguments.
  * various threading fixes
    ** and some experimental patches which didn't make it into 
       the main tree for this release, but which are shipped in 
       contrib/experimental-thread.patch as a possible fix for some
       failures (deadlock, spinning...) in GC-intensive multithreaded
       applications.
  * fixed PPC build problem (source code incompatibility of different 
    library versions): added offsetof() hackery which attempts to divine 
    where glibc maintainers put uc_mcontext today 
  * fixed bug 282: compiler does not trust type assertions while passing
    arguments to a full call.
  * fixed bug 261: compiler allows NIL or "no value" to be accepted for
    &OPTIONAL VALUES type parameter.
  * fix bug 214: algorithm for noting rejected templates is now more
    similar to that of template seletion. (also reported by rydis on
    #lisp)
  * fixed bug 141b: printing backquoted information readably and prettily
    inserts a space where necessary.
  * bug fix: obviously wrong type specifiers such as (FIXNUM 1) or
    (CHARACTER 10) are now reported as errors, rather than propagated
    as unknown types.  (reported by piso on #lisp)
  * bug fix: the :IF-EXISTS argument to OPEN now behaves correctly
    with values NIL and :ERROR.  (thanks to Milan Zamazal)
  * fixed bug 191c: CLOS now does proper keyword argument checking as
    described in CLHS 7.6.5 and 7.6.5.1.
  * bug fix: LOOP forms using NIL as a for-as-arithmetic counter no
    longer raise an error; further, using a list as a for-as-arithmetic
    counter now raises a meaningful error.
  * fixed bug 213a: even fairly unreasonable CONS type specifiers are
    now understood by sequence creation functions such as MAKE-SEQUENCE
    and COERCE.
  * fixed bug 46k: READ-BYTE now signals an error when asked to read from
    a STRING-INPUT-STREAM.
  * compiler enhancement: SIGNUM is now better able to derive the type
    of its result.
  * type declarations inside WITH-SLOTS are checked.  (reported by
    salex on #lisp)
  * fixed some bugs revealed by Paul Dietz' test suite:
    ** incorrect optimization of TRUNCATE for a positive first
       argument and negative second.
    ** compiler failure in let-convertion during flushing dead code.
    ** compiler failure while deriving type of TRUNCATE on an
       interval, containing 0.
    ** ASH of a negative bignum by a negative bignum count now returns
       -1, not 0.
    ** intersection of CONS types now canonicalizes properly, fixing
       inconsistencies in SUBTYPEP.

-- 
William Harold Newman <william.newman@...>
We were bedevilled by the daemons of diagrammatic overdesign. My God,
three little boxes drawn on the back of a napkin, Game, Frame, and
Throw, and it was still too complicated and just plain wrong.
  -- Robert C. Martin, _Agile Software Development_, p. 72
PGP key fingerprint 85 CE 1C BA 79 8D 51 8C  B9 25 FB EE E0 C3 E5 7C

I have just succeeded in putting sbcl-0.8.4 into the SourceForge file
release system. (It was tagged in CVS yesterday, but then I had
connection problems which kept me from doing the file release.)

The developers (as opposed to, say, release managers) were busy last
month. From the NEWS file in the distribution:
changes in sbcl-0.8.4 relative to sbcl-0.8.3:
  * incompatible change: The --disable-debugger command line
    option now clobbers the debugger at a more fundamental
    level, by redefining #'INVOKE-DEBUGGER instead of by 
    rebinding *DEBUGGER-HOOK*. The main difference is that BREAK
    is specified by ANSI to ignore *DEBUGGER-HOOK* and
    INVOKE-DEBUGGER regardless. Under the old system, BREAK would
    enter the debugger REPL and then suffer recursive errors
    because *DEBUG-IO* is also messed up in --disable-debugger mode;
    while under the new system, BREAK in --disable-debugger mode
    terminates the system just as an unhandled error would.
  * fixed compiler performance when processing loops with a step >1;
  * bug fix: DOCUMENTATION now retrieves generic function
    documentation.  Also, DOCUMENTATION and (SETF DOCUMENTATION)
    support has been systematized, and now supports the methods
    specified by ANSI, along with a default method and a method for
    slot documentation.  (reported by Nathan Froyd)
  * bug fix: effective methods associated with a generic function are
    no longer cached over a change of that generic function's method
    combination.  (reported by Andreas Fuchs)
  * bug fix: RUN-PROGRAM now does not fail if some element in $PATH
    names a non-existent directory.  (thanks to Andreas Fuchs)
  * bug fix: ROUND and TRUNCATE could, under certain circumstances on
    the PPC platform, lead to stack corruption; this has been fixed.
    (reported by Rainer Joswig)
  * bug fix: ASH on an (UNSIGNED-BYTE 32) with a shift of -32 or lower
    no longer ever returns 1 instead of 0.  (thanks to Lars Brinkhoff)
  * fixed bug 285: TRUNCATE on bignum arguments, and indeed bignum
    arithmetic in general, is now much more reliable on the PPC
    platform.
  * bug fix: LOGCOUNT on (UNSIGNED-BYTE 64) objects on the Alpha 
    platform now returns the right answer.
  * optimization: restored some effective method precomputation in
    CLOS (turned off by an ANSI fix in sbcl-0.8.3); the amount of
    precomputation is now tunable.
  * optimization: compiler-internal data structure use has been
    reviewed, and changes have been made that should improve the
    performance of the compiler by about 20%.
  * optimization: performance of FILL (and :INITIAL-ELEMENT) on
    simple-base-strings and simple-bit-vectors is improved.
  * optimization: the optimization of 32-bit logical and arithmetic
    functions introduced in version 0.8.3 on the x86 has been
    implemented on the mips, ppc and sparc platforms; an
    implementation of the same facility, but for 64-bit arithmetic,
    has been added for the alpha.
  * microoptimization: the compiler is better able to make use of the
    x86 LEA instruction for multiplication by constants.
  * bug fix: in some situations compiler did not report usage of
    generic arithmetic in (SPEED 3) policy.
  * bug 145b fix: compiler used wrong type specifier while converting
    MEMBER-types to numeric.
  * bug fix: COMPILE-FILE must bind *READTABLE*. (reported by Doug
    McNaught)
  * bug fix: (SETF AREF) on byte-sized-element arrays with constant 
    index argument now works properly on the Alpha platform.
  * bug fix: floating point exception treatment on the Alpha platform
    is improved.
  * bug fix: FILE-POSITION works much better on string input and 
    output streams.  (thanks to Nikodemus Siivola)
  * bug fix: many threading/garbage collection symptoms sorted.  
    SB-THREAD:INTERRUPT-THREAD now safe to call on a thread that 
    might be pseudo-atomic.
  * internal change: Stopping for GC is now done with signals not 
    ptrace. GC is now done in whichever thread wanted it, instead of
    in the parent. 
  * bug fix: GC hooks (missing since 0.8) reinstated, so finalizers 
    work again.
  * bug fix: result form in DO is not contained in the implicit
    TAGBODY.
  * incompatible change: ICR structure is changed; the value part of
    CONTINUATION is now called LVAR; corresponding functions are
    renamed (e.g. SB-C::CONTINUATION-TYPE has become SB-C::LVAR-TYPE).
  * added type deriver for ISQRT (thanks to Robert E. Brown).
  * bug fix: better support for loading from the command line when an
    initialization file sets (READTABLE-CASE *READTABLE*).  (thanks 
    to Adam Warner)
  * fixed some bugs revealed by Paul Dietz' test suite:
    ** the RETURN clause in LOOP is now equivalent to DO (RETURN ...).
    ** ROUND and FROUND now give the right answer when given very
       small float arguments.
    ** (FLOAT X) for X of type DOUBLE-FLOAT now returns X in all
       circumstances.
    ** optimizer for (EXPT X 0) did not work for X not of type FLOAT.
    ** (GCD 0 <negative-integer>) returned <negative-integer>.
    ** LCM should return a non-negative integer.
    ** PARSE-INTEGER returned the index of a terminator instead of the
       upper bounding index of a substring in case :JUNK-ALLOWED NIL.
    ** PARSE-INTEGER returned an incorrect index being applied to a
       displaced string.
    ** LCM with two arguments of 0 returns 0 rather than signalling
       DIVISION-BY-ZERO.
    ** unsigned addition of a 32-bit constant with the high bit set no
       longer causes an internal compiler error on the x86.
    ** LOGBITP accepts a non-negative bignum as its INDEX argument.
    ** compiler incorrectly derived types of DPB and DEPOSIT-FIELD
       with negative last argument.
    ** byte specifiers with zero size and position no longer cause
       an error during type derivation.
    ** bignum multiplication on the Alpha platform now returns the
       right answer.
  * porting: The system now builds on SuSE AMD64, although it still
    generates a 32-bit binary.
  * .fasl file incompatibility: The fasl file version number has
    been incremented (because of the changes to internal compiler
    data structures referred to above).

-- 
William Harold Newman <william.newman@...>
"There's nothing an agnostic can't do as long as he doesn't know
whether he believes in anything or not." - Monty Python
PGP key fingerprint 85 CE 1C BA 79 8D 51 8C  B9 25 FB EE E0 C3 E5 7C