guile-1.4.1.8.tar.gz (snap) available

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

(new) NEWS excerpt below.  see:

  http://www.glug.org/tmp/2002-08/

methodology note: see OPTDIR_foo in Makefile.am and configure.in for
(yet to be documented but supported in automake 1.6.3 anyway) usage of
AM_CONDITIONAL (see automake mailing list for details).  i believe this
is along the lines of what Tom Lord had in mind originally w/ the
PLUGINS file (of yore).  we will realize that vision eventually by end
of 1.4.x, Tom -- please pardon the slow progress of lesser minds.

request for assistance: i'm no pthreads expert, so if you see any
bletcherous pthreads/coop-threads/linuxthreads issues lurking w/ this
version of guile, please give a shout.

i have removed the DATE portion of the version to ease version skew for
casual testers.  see GUILE-VERSION if you want to add that (or any other
personalized suffix) back.

thi


_____________________________________________________
* Configuration bugfix: coop-threads and readline

Cooperative threading support used to be enabled with the configure
option `--with-threads'.  This was an incorrect use of "--with-FOO",
which is reserved for specifying external packages.

You can now use `--enable-coop-threads' for this.  A bug was also fixed
where `--with-threads=no' did not honor the request for excluding coop
threads support.  The equivalent now is to omit `--enable-coop-threads'
or alternatively use option `--disable-coop-threads'.

Likewise, you can now disable readline support (enabled by default)
with the configure option `--disable-readline'.  Use `configure --help'
for more info.

When these features are disabled, "make check" displays "SKIP" for
test files that rely on them.  Also, `(use-modules (ice-9 FEATURE))'
results in the error: "no code for module (ice-9 FEATURE)".

* COPYING includes exception notice

Previously, the file COPYING only included a copy of the GNU GPL.
It now contains the Guile-specific exception notice as well.

* Installation bugfix: libguile/scmconfig.h no longer installed

Before, "make install" used to also install libguile/scmconfig.h, which
caused problems because that file defines some very generic pre-processor
macros (e.g., HAVE_LONG_LONGS) that interfere with those used by client
programs.  Now, libguile/scmconfig.h is no longer installed.

[This doesn't fix this general class of bug, however.  The ideal is to
 have all installed symbols defined by libguile.h (and its children) be
 prefixed with either "scm_" or "SCM_" (or "GH_" or "gh_" for the old GH
 interface).  This is not yet the case, but is a prerequisite for 1.4.2
 release.  --ttn]

Note that configure-time variables and scmconfig.h symbols are now captured
anyway.  After building, see scripts/guile-config-data for details.

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