[Chicken-users] 4.7.3 development snapshot

[Felix]

Hello!


A new development snapshot is available:

  http://code.call-cc.org/dev-snapshots/2011/08/17/chicken-4.7.3.tar.gz

Note: the banner shows "(no branch)", which is incorrect (and
fixed in trunk), so just ignore this.

What's new:


4.7.3

- Build system
  - version information has been moved into a separate unit to make the
    build-version shown in the banner and accessible through library
    procedures more accurate, this also speeds up the build on version-
    changes (many thanks to Jim Ursetto for contributing this)

- Runtime system
  - fixed handling of "inf" and nan" floating-point predicates for Solaris
    (thanks to Claude Marinier)
  - remaining support for re-loading of compiled files has now been completely 
    removed

- Core libraries
  - added "foldl" and "foldr" procedures, which are more efficient and
    have a more consistent argument order than the corresponding
    SRFI-1 procedures
  - "shuffle" has been deprecated
  - added "queue-length"
  - "queue->list" allocates and returns a fresh list now
  - invoking a parameter-procedure with an argument will return the new
    value
  - added new procedure "quit"
  - port-procedures now check correctly for argument-ports being open 
    (thanks to Peter Bex)
  - irregex bugfixes (by Peter Bex)
  - "repl" accepts an optional evaluator procedure (suggested by John 
    Cowan)

- Core syntax
  - "parameterize" now correctly omits invoking the guard procedure when
    the old value is restored (thanks to Joo ChurlSoo)
  - "optional", "let-optionals" and "let-optionals*" do not check
    for surplus arguments anymore
  - added ":", "the" and "assume" syntax for declaring types
  - added "define-specialization" form to declare type-driven procedure
    call rewrites in compiled code

- Compiler
  - added "-specialize" option and "specialize" declaration which enables
    optimizations of uses of core library procedures based on type-
    information gathered during flow analysis
  - "-optimize-level 3" and higher now implies "-specialize"
  - added option "-strict-types" and "-emit-type-file"
  - progress-information is now only shown with "-debug p"; the "-verbose"
    option only shows informational but noncritical messages
  - fixed several bugs in the unboxing pass (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
  - added optimizations for some library procedures
  - variable propagation for global variable accesses is done in certain
    situations now
  - the algorithmic complexity of the closure-conversion pass has been
    greatly reduced which speeds up compilation noticably when compiling
    large files
  - the "-uses" option handles whitespace in unit lists given on the
    command line (thanks to Santosh Rajan)
  - the alternative branch in a conditional is dropped when the condition
    is known to be a non-boolean value (suggested by Joerg Wittenberger)
  - implemented numerous fixes and improvements for flow analysis

- Interpreter
  - ",q" now leaves the currently active REPL invocation instead of
    terminating the process (as suggested by John Cowan)

- Syntax expander
  - fixed devious bug in the invocation and generation of transformer
    procedures
  - using normal "lambda" forms as transformers for local or global
    syntax definitions is deprecated - please use "syntax-rules",
    "er-macro-transformer" or "ir-macro-transformer" from now on

- Core tools
  - "chicken-profile"
    - fixed some bugs in the profiler and the runtime support code for
      profiling (thanks to Sven Hartrumpf)
    - fixed broken percentage calculation (thanks to "megane")
  - "chicken-status"
    - the "pattern" argument is now actually treated as a pattern and not
      as a regex
  - "chicken-install"
    - added support for "or"-dependencies where a dependency is considered
      installed if one of a set of candidates is available


cheers,
felix