Changeset 25553 in project

Timestamp:

11/22/11 21:44:40 (9 years ago)

Author:

Christian Kellermann

Message:

gazette #21: add core dev section, pending comments from felix

File:

• gazette/src/issues/21.wiki (modified) (1 diff)

gazette/src/issues/21.wiki

@@ -247 +247 @@
 == 4. Core Development
 
-TODO: INCLUDE CHRISTIAN'S REPORT.
-
-I need some blurb on this from people Who Know.
-I'd like something on the scrutinizer and stability work that's been going on as well as the proposal to bug fix until r7rs
-and then do Chicken 5.0.
-
-http://wiki.call-cc.org/development-process
+Since the last issue two main things happened in the chicken core:
+Improvements to the scrutinizer and hand in hand to that so called
+specialisation (or partial evaluation). What does this do? The first
+lead to a flow analysis pass in the compiler. This made it possible to
+give the programmer more hints at potential programming errors, such
+as unused code, unreachable branches, and type misuses. The latter is
+done by having a central database of core procedure types. It is
+installed as types.db and has been there on your chicken system for a
+quite a while now. With more improvements going on the false positives
+(warnings about non-issues) are much fewer than before, also lots
+additional procedures and types have been added. One example for this
+are procedures using ports which is now even checked for the right
+port type (input or output port).
+
+Now that the flow analysis pass is already there it can also be used
+to optimise code, usually resulting in omitting redundant code such as
+superfluous type checks. In the end this should lead to faster code
+altogether. Over the last months more and more specialisations have
+been added. For more information on specialisation see the respective
+section at
+[[http://library.readscheme.org/page10.html|readscheme.org]].
+
+A couple of months ago the CHICKEN team has formalised the development
+process a bit as can be seen on
+[[http://wiki.call-cc.org/development-process|its wiki page]]. Others
+already joined in the discussion of patches on chicken-hackers and you
+are more than welcome to join in.
+
+As more people are trying git checkouts, the question of how to
+bootstrap a git checkout properly keeps reappearing on the mailing
+list. So the steps are:
+
+* Build a stable or development release
+* Checkout chicken-core from git (see [[http://code.call-cc.org]])
+* Build a boot-chicken: {{make boot-chicken}}
+* Use this chicken to build the real chicken: {{make CHICKEN=./chicken-boot}}
+* Install the chicken and run tests: {{make install && make check}}
+
 
 sparc64
-mario, felix, ckeen
-lots of bug fixes, sparc64 support, scrutinizer fixes
+mario, felix
+lots of bug fixes, sparc64 support
 
  * On origin/master: