[Gcl-devel] GCL 2.6.8 and 2.6.9 are released

Terrific job!  Thanks!

I just looked through the release notes.  Do any versions of GCL support UTF8 ?

At 02:22 PM 9/4/2013, Matt Kaufmann wrote:
>Hi, Camm --
>
>Should we expect 2.6.8 and 2.6.9 to support ANSI builds (i.e., using
>configure option --enable-ansi)?
>
>Thanks -
>-- Matt
>   From: Camm Maguire <camm at maguirefamily.org>
>   Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 11:48:24 -0400
>
>   Greetings!  The GCL team is happy to announce a pair of stable releases
>   at
>
>   ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcl/gcl_2.6.8.tar.gz
>   and
>   ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcl/gcl_2.6.9.tar.gz
>
>   Please also see the homepage and release notes at
>
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/gcl.
>
>   The 2.6.8 release represents several years worth of fixes and
>   enhancements, notably a great extension of GCL's native object file
>   relocation support.  
>
>   2.6.9 is released concurrently as it contains a number of structural
>   improvements which, while passing all our tests, may cause issues for
>   some people.  These improvements are chiefly a two word cons, immediate
>   fixnum support, word sized fixnums (64bits on 64bit machines), and a
>   'dynamic maxpage' implementation, which removes all compile time limits
>   to the heap size and auxiliary typing and marking tables.  2.6.9 will
>   attempt to manage the heap given the apparent constraints of the running
>   system, with the goal of eliminating allocation failures and handling
>   out of memory conditions in advance with a modicum of grace.  As this
>   involves a runtime startup probe of brk, which has varying degrees of
>   significance in different operating systems, one might still experience
>   overallocation of memory (notably on hurd).  In such cases, 
>
>   gcl -eval '(si::set-log-maxpage-bound x)'
>
>   will limit the heap to 2^x bytes as a workaround.
>
>   All gcl, maxima, acl2, axiom, and hol88 builds and self tests pass for
>   the following platforms, with noted exceptions(*) itemized below:
>
>   debian: amd64 armel armhf hurd-i386 i386 ia64 kfreebsd-amd64
>   kfreebsd-i386 mips mipsel powerpc s390 s390x sparc
>
>   debian-ports: alpha hppa m68k powerpcspe ppc64 sh4 sparc64 x32
>
>   macosx, windows
>
>   *exceptions
>
>   1) all systems use native object relocation by default now but ia64 and
>   ppc64, which use dlopen.  Thus there is a typical limit of 1024 files
>   that can be loaded, and the current acl2 build exceeds this limit.  As
>   this bound is runtime configurable with root access, this is not an
>   insurmountable obstacle.
>
>   2) kfreebsd-i386 systems do not appear to allow one to brk more than
>   500M of memory, and the acl2 certification process needs 1Gb.  A
>   solution here is as yet unknown but may be forthcoming shortly.
>
>   3) windows builds have been performed on win95.  There is an as yet
>   unidentified runtime error running the 2.6.9 images on win7.  More
>   information here will be forthcoming shortly.
>
>   Windows installers can be found at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcl.
>
>   4) macosx builds have been tested on snow leopard.  More recent versions
>   appear to have a linker bug which prevents configure from detecting the
>   provided profil() routine.  A workaround here should be to 
>
>   echo "#undef NO_PROFILE >>h/config.h" 
>
>   after configure and before make.
>
>
>   GCL has moved to the git version control system.  The 2.6.8 and 2.6.9
>   branches and tags are identical in cvs and git.  Henceforward,
>   modifications will be made to git only.  As of the present writing, git
>   contains a merge of experimental into master, and a port of most 2.6.x
>   improvements into master.  This will form the basis of a 2.7.0 release
>   sometime in the future.
>
>   For those unfamiliar with git:
>
>   git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/gcl.git
>   cd gcl
>   git checkout master, or git checkout Version_2_6_9, etc.
>   cd gcl
>   ./configure && make
>
>   git can of course provide much more.  I'm currently using Egg, an emacs
>   interface to git, with increasing success.  Merging, logging, bisecting,
>   branching, and uploading appear much simpler.  I recommend this tool to
>   would-be gcl contributors.
>
>   Feedback as always most welcome!
>
>   Take care,
>   -- 
>   Camm Maguire                                     camm at maguirefamily.org
>   ==========================================================================
>   "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah