[Openmcl-devel] New OpenMCL snapshots

[Gary Byers]

There are new (061231) snapshot archives in <ftp://clozure.com/pub/testing>.

OpenMCL 1.1-pre-061231
- The FASL version changed (old FASL files won't work with this
   lisp version), as did the version information which tries to
   keep the kernel in sync with heap images.
   The binary incompatibility has to do with how a few pages of
   low memory in the lisp kernel's address space are mapped and
   used.  OpenMCL was generally assuming that these pages were
   otherwise unused and could be used to map a small static data
   area from the heap image file; on some platforms, the dynamic
   linker may have already allocated data in those unused pages
   before the lisp kernel even starts to run.  Fixing this involved
   changing the address of that small static data area slightly,
   and this caused the addresses of some objects contained within
   that static data area - notably NIL - to change, as well.
- This snapshot is otherwise just a set of bug fixes/work-in-progress
   changes.
- Even though no supported filesystem actually supports versioned files,
   OpenMCL now tries to retain PATHNAME-VERSION informaton for physical
   pathnames.  (The fact that it didn't caused several ANSI test failures.)
   This change introduced/exposed a few other bugs; I think that I've
   caught at least the most obvious ones, but it's possible that some
   new pathname-related bugs have been introduced.
- The cron job that runs on clozure.com and updates the ChangeLog from
   CVS commit info stopped running as of a system upgrade in late November.
   The problem was fixed a couple of weeks ago, so it's once again meaningful
   to refer to the ChangeLog for details of bug fixes.
- FSQRT and FSQRTS instructions are "optional" on the PPC.  In practice,
   that often meant that they are implemented on chips made by IBM and
   not on chips made by Motorola/FreeScale.  This version of OpenMCL
   assumes that they're implemented and emulates them if they aren't.
- OSX 10.2 (Jaguar) and earlier versions are officially no longer
   supported.  I honestly don't know if things have actually worked
   on Jaguar in a while, but some recent changes are known not to
   work on Jaguar and the kernel now inists on at least Panther on
   startup.