RELEASE-NOTES

Upcoming Clasp version 0.5.0

* Full integration of the Cleavir/Sicl compiler by Robert Strandh (https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL)
* A nascent type inference system within Cleavir by Alex Wood
* LLVM whole program, Link-Time-Optimization
* Multi threading compatible with Bordeaux threads
* Unicode, 32bit wide characters
* Specialized arrays for many primitive types (int8, int16, int32, int64, double, float)
* CFFI (C Foreign Function Interface)
* New build system based on waf (https://github.com/waf-project/waf)
* Code and file cleanup
* Better Emacs and Slime support including jumping to source (C++ and CL),
  tab-completion and lambda-list display
* Many, many improvements and bug fixes


Clasp version 0.4.0

* Clasp has a completely new compiler!
  The Cleavir Common Lisp compiler developed by Robert Strandh as part of his SICL project.
  Cleavir is an advanced compiler that generates fast code
  and is an excellent compiler for testing advanced optimization algorithms.
  Cleavir carries out escape analysis to properly assign variables to the stack/heap
  and it does aggressive inlining. The best code that Cleavir generates has clocked within
  a factor of four of the speed of C.
  For more details on SICL see: https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL
* Fixnum, character and single-float types are now immediate values and fixnums are tagged
  using #b000 in the bottom three bits to allow fast integer arithmetic.
* General object pointers are tagged, cons cells have a separate tag to accelerate are tagged.
* Building Clasp has been accelerated and now takes about 2.5 hours on a reasonably powerful
  Linux system and 3.5 hours on OS X.
* Clbind library allows programmers to expose external C++ libraries to Clasp Common Lisp.
* The build system has been improved and externals-clasp has been eliminated as a requirement.
* Clasp version 0.4.0 is a Boehm only version of Clasp.
  The Memory Pool System garbage collector
  is being tuned for Clasp and is planned to be in the 0.5.0 release.



Clasp version 0.11

* Added ASDF support.  
  This is still alpha.  Compile the ASDF module using (core:compile-asdf).
  After that you can load the module using (load "sys:kernel;asdf;build;asdf.bundle").
  It takes between 15-30 seconds to load (this is why I'm integrating Cleavir).
* Added the :CLASP *feature* and removed the :ECL *feature*.
  Clasp will continue to mimic the underlying ECL functionality so that
  Common Lisp code that supports ECL can be made to support Clasp by converting
  #+ecl to #+(or ecl clasp)   and #-ecl to #-(or ecl clasp)
* Added code to generate object files directly from Clasp.
  The LLVM bitcode compiler "llc" no longer needs to be in the PATH
  for Clasp to generate object files from Common Lisp source.
  The "ld" linker does need to be accessible.