Corman Lisp 3.1

It is the first community release intended for real use.

The main objectives of this release are:

• to make the system usable on the modern versions of the Windows operating system, especially the 64-bit ones;
• to improve the stability of the runtime and kernel code;
• to improve basic functionality of the IDE;
• to fix long-standing bugs;
• to prepare the ground for the future development.

Nevertheless, it contains a lot of new features.

New in this release

• Support for modern, x64 editions of Windows - it does not crash when intensively using FFI.
  The application itself is still a 32-bit one.

• New customisable high-quality Lisp code indenting engine in the IDE (Dorai Sitaram's scmindent).
  The functionality is used during source-code editing and is also available via the context menu for reindenting the selected code.

• Hardware-assisted garbage collector mode (experimental, disabled by default).
  See the new functions ENABLE-HARDWARE-GC and HARDWARE-GC-ENABLED-P (Chapter 12 of the Corman Lisp manual). One can find :HARDWARE-GC keyword in *FEATURES* when this functionality is available (it is always available starting from Corman Lisp 3.1 and onwards).

• Support for multi-user environments.
  The Corman Lisp does not assume that it has write permissions to the installation directory.
  See Chapter 6 of the Corman Lisp manual for the additional details.

• User specific initialisation file (%USERPROFILE%\corman-init.lisp).

• Support for high-DPI screens in the IDE.

• Support for IPv6 (when available on the platform).
  One can find :IPV6 keyword in *FEATURES* when this functionality is available.

• Support for datagram sockets.
  One can find :DATAGRAM-SOCKETS keyword in *FEATURES* when this functionality is available.

• Networking sockets library does not need specific initialisation any more.
  The START-SOCKETS and STOP-SOCKETS are dummy functions which are available for compatibility reasons.

• SSL sockets module does not need any specific initialisation.
  The START-SSL-SOCKETS is a dummy function which is available only for compatibility reasons.

• SSL sockets module now uses TLS by default.

• New MSI-based installer created using WiX 3.x.

• Installer creates %CORMANLISP_HOME% environmental variable which contains Corman Lisp installation directory (to make it easier to integrate it into the other projects).

• Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is used to build the project.

• The Visual Studio solution was reorganised to make it easier to build the project and contribute.
  The only optional dependency is WiX 3.x which is used to build the installer.

• The third party libraries were updated to the latest versions when possible.

• All old Corman Lisp licensing code is properly removed.

• Support for Windows operating system versions older than Windows XP SP3 is dropped.

• It is possible to load a Lisp image without crashing the IDE (all the time ;).
  Corman Lisp is one of the few modern implementations which provide image loading functionality without restarting the process.

• New LOAD-DEFAULT-IMAGE function.
  See Chapter 22 of the Corman Lisp manual.

• Numerous improvements to the CLOS implementation.

• Numerous improvements to the kernel and runtime code.

• Numerous bug fixes.

• Numerous stability improvements.

What is missing (planned for the next releases)

• Support for the recent version of ASDF.
• Support for the new efficient thread synchronisation primitives available starting from Windows Vista and newer.

New examples

• Minesweepers AI and GUI demo (examples/minesweepers.lisp).

Credits

Release 3.1 includes new contributions from the following people (in alphabetical order):

• Artem Boldariev (@arbv)
• Chun Tian (@binghe)
• Luis Cervantes (@Luis-Cervantes)
• Max Chumak (Instagram)
• Roger Corman (@rgcorman)
• Zachary Beane (@xach)

If you believe that your name is missing here please contact me (@arbv).

To see the full list of contributors, please, visit the following page:
https://github.com/sharplispers/cormanlisp/graphs/contributors

Corman Lisp 3.1 Release Candidate 1

A Release Candidate of the Corman Lisp 3.1. The full list of changes is available here.

The new changes compared to the last beta:

• numerous networking related fixes/changes;
• IPv6 support;
• datagram sockets support;
• new high-quality code indenter in the IDE (Dorai Sitaram's scmindent);
• third-party libraries were updated;
• installer fixes.

3.1.0-beta

This pre-release features a new installer and includes some improvements to CLOS.

Beware! This is a pre-release and thus intended only for testing. It contains known non-fixed bugs and it is not cleaned up in overall.

3.1-alpha2

This prerelease includes various improvements to the CLOS.

Beware! This is a pre-release and thus intended only for testing. It contains known non-fixed bugs and it is not cleaned up in overall.

3.1-alpha

This release contains changes which prepare Corman Lisp for functioning in the multi-user environments where not every user could have write access to the installation directory as well as smaller fixes/additions.

Beware! This is a pre-release and thus intended only for testing. It contains known non-fixed bugs and it is overly not cleaned up.

3.1-prealpha

This is a testing release which contains important fixes for support of modern 64-bit versions of Windows. The licensing code was completely removed from the project source code tree too.

Beware! This is a pre-release and thus intended only for testing. It contains known non-fixed bugs and it is overly not cleaned up.

v3.02

This is the first release you can actually run, courtesy of @binghe who has disabled the license verification code.

NOTE: on UAC-enabled systems, it's better to run CormanLisp with Administrator privilege for the first time, in this way the registration info (user name, organization, and generated license code) can be successfully written into Windows Registry.