From 3d86df27c8ee95c68a8f2f4bb177014486dddf72 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jan Nieuwenhuizen Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2016 16:43:28 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Update documentation. * doc/ANNOUNCE-0.4: New file. * NEWS: Typo. --- NEWS | 2 +- doc/ANNOUNCE-0.4 | 103 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 104 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 doc/ANNOUNCE-0.4 diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index 867302d2..bb9aaca6 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ block-comments. *** Reduced size. Total C size: ~1500LOC. The main Mes evaluator is now ~1000LOC including cell creation and garbage collector. This code is able to -execute a Scheme progam that has been loaded into memory. Another +execute a Scheme program that has been loaded into memory. Another ~500LOC is spent to load a minimal Scheme program and to dump it, to provide a small posix interface, math functions and do some error reporting. diff --git a/doc/ANNOUNCE-0.4 b/doc/ANNOUNCE-0.4 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..13583037 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/ANNOUNCE-0.4 @@ -0,0 +1,103 @@ +Subject: Mes 0.4 released + +I am pleased to announce the release of Mes 0.4, representing 115 +commits over barely two weeks. It now runs Nyacc and PEG and has much +reduced core. + +* About + + Mes aims to create an entirely source-based bootstrapping path. The + target is to [have GuixSD] boostrap from a minimal, easily inspectable + binary --that should be readable as source-- into something close to + R6RS Scheme. + + As bootstrapping is presumably easiest and probably most fun with + Scheme, the next step for Mes is mescc: a C compiler/linker to + boostrap into GNU Gcc and GNU Guile, possibly via Tiny-CC. + + It currently has an interpreter written in C (mes) with Garbage + Collector (Jam Scraper), a library of loadable Scheme modules-- + notably Dominique Boucher's LALR[1], Pre-R6RS portable + syntax-case[2] with R7RS ellipsis, Nyacc[3] and Guile's PEG[4] + --and test suite just barely enough to support a simple REPL + (repl.mes) and a proof-of-concept C-compiler (mescc.mes) that + produces an elf from the simplest of C files. + + Mes is inspired by The Maxwell Equations of Software: LISP-1.5[5] + -- John McCarthy page 13 + +* Download + + git clone https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes + + wget https://gitlab.com/janneke/mes/repository/archive.tar.gz?ref=v0.4 -O mes-0.4.tar.gz + +Mes runs from the source tree and can also be built, packaged and +installed in Guix[SD] by the usual + + guix package -f guix.scm + +* Changes in 0.4 since 0.3 + ** Core + *** Improved performance. + Macros are now memoized; after expansion and before eval'ing the + expanded form, their input s-expression is replaced by the expansion. + This yields a nice performance improvement which finally allowed + moving all non-essential bits from the C-core into Scheme...including + the reader. The Scheme reader is much, much slower than the previous + C version, making Mes--again-- feel slow. Think of that as a feature. + *** Bootstrap with minimal reader in C. + The C-reader needs only support reading of words and lists + (s-expressions), line-comments to read the initial Scheme reader which + then takes over and handles reading of quoting, characters, strings, + block-comments. + *** Reduced size. + Total C size: ~1500LOC. The main Mes evaluator is now ~1000LOC + including cell creation and garbage collector. This code is able to + execute a Scheme program that has been loaded into memory. Another + ~500LOC is spent to load a minimal Scheme program and to dump it, to + provide a small posix interface, math functions and do some error + reporting. + *** Programs can be dumped and loaded using --dump and --load. + ** Language + *** Minimal syntactic exception support for Nyacc. + *** Minimal syntactic fluids support for Nyacc. + *** Keywords are now supported. + *** Cond now supports =>. + *** Guile's optargs: lambda* and define* are now supported. + *** #;-comments are now supported. + *** Non-nested #| |#-comments are now supported. + *** Quasisyntax is now supported. + *** R7RS syntax-rules with custom ellipsis, with-ellipsis are now supported. + *** 9 new [partial] modules + (mes fluids), (mes nyacc), (mes optargs), (mes pmatch), (mes peg), + (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-9-psyntax), (srfi srfi-26), (srfi srfi-43), + (rnrs arithmetic bitwise), (sxml xpath) + *** 36 new functions + 1+, 1-, abs, and=>, append-reverse, ash, char<=?, char=?, + char>?, even?, filter, delete, delq, vector-copy, fold, fold-right, + getenv, iota, keyword->symbol list-head, list-tail, negative?, odd?, + positive?, remove!, remove, string->number, string-copy, + string-prefix?, string=, string=?, symbol->keyword symbol-append, + symbol-prefix?, unless, write, zero?. + ** Noteworthy bug fixes + *** Macros are now memoized. + *** An error is reported when using a wrong number of arguments with a call. + *** Cond now evaluates its test clauses only once. + *** Append can also handle one argument. + *** For-each now supports 2 list arguments. + *** Map now supports 3 list arguments. + *** Backslash in string is supported. + *** Closure is not a pair. + *** All standard characters are supported. + *** Mescc now also runs in Guile. + + +Greetings, +Jan + +[1] https://github.com/schemeway/lalr-scm +[2] https://www.cs.indiana.edu/chezscheme/syntax-case/old-psyntax.html +[3] https://www.nongnu.org/nyacc/ +[4] https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/master/guile.html/PEG-Parsing.html +[5] http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%25201.5%2520Programmers%2520Manual.pdf