[Info-edma] Version 0.9 in progress

[David Martinez]

Hi,

I would like to announce that version 0.9 is in progress, and this is
important due to heavy changes this version introduces. The more important
are listed bellow:

1. The whole API was updated to follow GNU coding rules and code has been
cleaned up again.

Now all the function begin with the prefix edma_, and some function names
have been changed to be more descriptive

(i.e. AddSC is now edma_add_superclasses_obj)

New functions have been added. A complete list will be included with the
new release.

2. Seldom used features are being temporally removed

Virtual Objects support has been removed from the current version, because
I never use it except in some old description papers, and it makes some
parts of the code tricky and messy

Virtual Objects is a feature introduced as a refactoring tool in early
GNU/EDMA versions. It allows basically two operations: convert a
superclass property into a method and add shortcuts to superclasses
members. This last operation can be seen as the rename feature provided by
Eiffel

It's quite interesting so it will be added again in future versions.

3. Inheritance model and classpath support is being improved

In this version the GNU/EDMA inheritance model is closer to classical
programming languages and new ways to proceed are included. For example,
accessing to a member in an object will look for that member in the most
concret classes first instead of in the current object.

This new approach may break current class hierarchy. The old primitives
will be maintained for the moment, so you can keep your applications
running, but update is highly recommended

Now, you can provide anchor points directly in classpath strings to use
with on-demand inheritance. The new classpath item will look like this:

"address@hidden|ANCHOR_POINT2"


Other minor changes not affecting current application or class code (for
example, better error checking and some minor bugs fixed) are also
included. See Changelog in the new release comming soon.

At this moment, I'm updating the basic set of classes, test applications
and tools included in the main distribution to work with the above changes
and I hope next week, the new release will be available.

Thank you for reading this text and I'm sorry about my poor English

Regards
-- 
David Martínez Oliveira
GNU/EDMA Pages at GNU Site : http://www.gnu.org/software/edma
GNU/EDMA CVS & Mailinglist : http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/edma
Spanish Papers             : http://inicia.es/de/dmartin