[XPS-announce] XPS 0.1.9 Released

[Reid S. <dev...@re...>]

Everyone,

I have just committed, tagged, and released version 0.1.9 of XPS.
Although I expected to be releasing the reflective compiler at this
point, I got sidetracked with various housekeeping issues. The
reflective compiler will be in the next release 0.2.0, hopefully within
the next month (depending on my work schedule).  Release 0.1.9 fixes a
lot of housekeeping issues for XPS. Among them are: 

      * Removal Of Dependence On ACE. Although the venerable Adaptive
        Communications Environment has served us well, I've removed it
        from XPS because it was (a) too large, (b) too heavy (contained
        way more features than XPS will every need), and (c) too hard to
        configure and customize.  While ACE isn't with us any more, we
        thank Doug Schmidt, et.al. for their great inspiration. Many of
        the patterns implemented in ACE will live on in XPS. 
      * Source now in "xps". There is a new top level source directory
        named "xps" that replaces the now defunct "src". This directory
        now contains all the software. This was necessary in order to
        avoid complicated autoconf work to make links in the right
        places. This assists use with getting the right path for
        including header files. 
      * Removal of $ Log $ Lines. These lines were bloating the size of
        the source files and mostly redundant. If you want to look at
        the history, please use the "cvs log" command or browse it on
        the site.  Since all the files were changing to the "xps"
        directory, I took the opportunity to clean these lines out since
        all the files were getting fresh versions. 
      * New "os" module. This module provides an operating system
        abstraction layer that provides simple abstractions implemented
        by most operating systems without the need to #include ANY
        system header files. This greatly speeds compilation and
        provides a very concrete boundary between XPS and the operating
        system. Support for files, memory mapping, asynchronous file
        I/O, signal handling, dynamic libraries, threading, and
        synchronization is currently implemented. Coming later will be
        process management, asynchronous messaging, asynchronous socket
        I/O, timers, and shared memory.  Much of this will be used to
        implement the XVM. 
      * New "base" module. If you ever looked at the old "util" module,
        you'll probably find "base" familiar. Most of the classes have
        migrated there. That's needed because of library ordering and
        dependency. Think of "base" as operating system independent
        stuff (dependent only on language features). Parts of the old
        "util" module were dependent on the "os" module so we moved the
        parts that weren't to "base" and left the rest in "util".  This
        is one of the consequences of removing ACE. 
      * Missing modules. The "adt", "meta", "task", "xvmapi", and
        "xplec" modules have been temporarily removed. There is
        significant work to do in these modules and rather than commit
        them half-baked, I chose not to commit them at all for this
        release. They'll reappear in 0.2.0. Its better that you don't
        read broken code anyway.

As with the 0.1.8 release, you can build the XPL compiler (xplc) and use
it for checking your XPL program syntax. The XPS Daemon (xpsd), XPS
Shell (xpsh), and XPS Virtual Machine (xvm) all build correctly but
don't do anything other than print version information.

If you're going to build this, please read the file "INSTALL" before you
proceed. It will help you get the software you need in order
to successfully build XPS.  As always, please let me know if you have
questions or problems.

Best Regards,

-- 
Reid Spencer <dev...@re...>
Open Source Developer