GNU Guile 1.8.3 released

[Ludovic Courtès]

We are pleased to announce GNU Guile release 1.8.3.  This is the next
maintenance release for the 1.8 stable series.

You can find it here:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-1.8.3.tar.gz
  SHA1 checksum: 26cf7b70d4caff8fe2a5fbcc363f2457bc591c2b

A GPG detached signature of the package is available at:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-1.8.3.tar.gz.sig

The Guile web page is located at http://www.gnu.org/software/guile,
and among other things, it contains a link to the Guile FAQ and
pointers to the mailing lists.

Guile is an interpreter for the Scheme programming language, with
support for many SRFIs, packaged for use in a wide variety of
environments.  In addition to implementing the R5RS Scheme standard,
Guile includes a module system, full access to POSIX system calls,
networking support, multiple threads, dynamic linking, a foreign
function call interface, and powerful string processing.

Guile can run interactively or as a script interpreter, and is also
packaged as a library so that applications can easily incorporate a
complete Scheme interpreter.  An application can use Guile as an
extension language, a clean and powerful configuration language, or as
multi-purpose "glue" to connect primitives provided by the
application.  It is easy to call Scheme code from C code and vice
versa.  Applications can add new functions, data types, control
structures, and even syntax to Guile, to create a domain-specific
language tailored to the task at hand.

This is primarily a bugfix release.  Here are the highlights, taken from
the `NEWS' file:

  - New modules (see the manual for details)

   - `(srfi srfi-35)'
   - `(srfi srfi-37)'

  - Bugs fixed

   - The `(ice-9 slib)' module now works as expected
   - Expressions like "(set! 'x #t)" no longer yield a crash
   - Warnings about duplicate bindings now go to stderr
   - A memory leak in `make-socket-address' was fixed
   - Alignment issues (e.g., on SPARC) in network routines were fixed
   - A threading issue that showed up at least on NetBSD was fixed
   - Build problems on Solaris and IRIX fixed

  - Implementation improvements

   - The reader is now faster, which reduces startup time
   - Procedures returned by `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' are faster


Any bugs found in this release will be addressed by further bugfix
releases numbered 1.8.*.

You can follow Guile development in CVS and on the Guile mailing lists
(see ANON-CVS and HACKING).  Guile builds from the development branch
of CVS will have version number 1.9.0.

Guile versions with an odd middle number, e.g., 1.9.*, are unstable
development versions.  Even middle numbers indicate stable versions.
This has been the case since the 1.3.* series.

Please send bug reports to address@hidden'.


Ludovic Courtès, on behalf of the Guile team.