========================== C M U C L  18 c =============================

December 25, 2000

The CMUCL project is pleased to announce the release of CMUCL 18c.
This is a major release which contains numerous enhancements and
bugfixes from the 18b release.

CMUCL is a free, high performance implementation of the Common Lisp
programming language which runs on most major Unix platforms. It
mainly conforms to the ANSI Common Lisp standard. CMUCL provides a
sophisticated native code compiler; a powerful foreign function
interface; an implementation of CLOS; the Common Lisp Object System;
which includes multimethods and a metaobject protocol; a source-level
debugger and code profiler; and an Emacs-like editor implemented in
Common Lisp. CMUCL is maintained by a team of volunteers collaborating
over the Internet, and is in the public domain.

Features new in this release:
           
   o Every platform now supports (complex single-float) and (complex
     double-float) (and long-float for the x86).
   o Every platform now supports signed-array's with elements of type
     (signed-byte 8), (signed-byte 16), (signed-byte 30), and
     (signed-byte 32).
   o On the x86 and sparc platform, much larger heaps are available.
   o Support for glibc2 on x86.
   o Support for FreeBSD 4.x, Solaris 2.7 & 8.
   o Better support for Sparc V9 machines (UltraSparc II and later).
   o Better handling of logical pathnames and pathnames in general.
   o equalp hash tables implemented.
   o New implementations of some sequence functions to run significantly
     faster.
   o Specialized arrays and various other objects can be printed readably
     now, using a CMUCL extension.
   o LOCALLY is a special form, not a macro.
   o compiler-let is now in the extension package.
   o PRINT-OBJECT methods can be used with structures.  (But the
     :print-object option to defstruct is still not accepted.)
   o The dynamic heap size is now controllable from the command line with
     the -dynamic-space-size option on the x86 and sparc ports.
   o The -batch commandline option flushes all output on exit, and
     causes exit upon error also when using -load.
   o A new -quiet commandline to suppress informational messages.
   o :cmu17 is no longer a *feature*.  This may break existing code.  A
     simple possible workaround is to replace :cmu17 with (or :cmu17
     :cmu18) everywhere in the offending code.

Some sparc-specific changes:

   o Bigger spaces:
     o 256 MB for read-only and static spaces
     o 128 MB for binding and control stacks
     o Upto 1 GB for the lisp heap.  Default is 256 MB
   o Added VOPS for complex single/double-float operations.
   o Try not to use deprecated instructions in the V9 architecture.
   o In certain situations, use conditional move instructions available
     in the V9 architecture.
   
And finally,

   o Lots and lots of bug fixes, improvements to ANSI CL conformance
     and lots and lots of compiler enhancements. 


This release is not binary compatible with code compiled using CMUCL
18b; you will need to recompile FASL files. 

See <URL:http://cmucl.cons.org/> for download information, guidelines
on reporting bugs, and mailing list details.


We hope you enjoy using this release of CMUCL!