[quirks-announce] quirks-uvm 1.1d3 released

[<sl...@is...>]

A new release 1.1d3 of Quirks Universal Virual Machine is available at
http://sf.net/projects/quirks-uvm.

Quirks UVM is a generic virtual machine which can be used with a wide
set of languages.

The current development (pre alpha) release of Quirks contain the
following improvements:

1. The syntax is fully redesigned. Now we use structured blocks
   instead of jumps. When mapped on jump model (for native code
   generation or interpretation) it pass through jump optimization
   stage and gives effective sequence of control commands.

2. Nested blocks added. For nested blocks we can use 3 models:
   Stack Sparing (default), Single Allocation and Deferred Undo.

   (See the Ackermann and Hanoi examples).

   SS - all block stuff (local variables etc.) is allocated and
	initialized just after entering and deallocated at the
	end of the block;

   SA - all blocks are merged into one big block; all data is
	allocated at the beginning of a procedure and deallocated
	at the end;

   DU - all data is allocated/initialized just after entering a block
        but deallocated at the end of a LEVEL
        (levels are formed but the procedure
        (the topmost level) as well as each nested loop blocks).

   A desirable block model can defined at the moment of
   an instantiation of a procedure.

3. Debug printing is added.
   New commands are:

    print "string";

    print <cell>;

    printn "string";

    printn <cell>;

  `printn' is the same as `print' but doesn't feed a line after
  printing. All printing is performed to standard output.
  Normally these commands are ignored when an instance for a procedure
  is created. But if we give "debug" property to instance maker
  it start works.

4. Using `au' selectors in conditions is added.
   (Example: while auInc[0] loop ...).

5. Type aliasing is added (see the Hanoi example).

6. Now we provide MSVC++ build support.
   (win/Quirks_UVM/Quirks_UVM.dsw
    - the Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 workspace).

7. More benchmarks/examples.

8. Bug fixes.


The current release was tested on following configurations:

Linux Debian Woody, Sid  (IA-32, gcc)
AIX 4.3.2  (RS/6000 r43 PowerPC, xlc)
cygwin (Win2k)  (IA-32, gcc)
Win2k native (IA-32, MSVC++ 6.0)


A performance comparison with JavaVM can be found on Quirks UVM home
page: http://quirks-uvm.sf.net.
There are several benchmark results available there which you can
recheck with this release.


See the instruction in the file INSTALL of how to compile the Quirks.
See the instruction in the file README of how to run demos.


-- 
 Sergei Lodyagin