2016/10/10

0.9.5, and what's next

Released 0.9.5, finally. Every release I say I'll make next release quicker, but slip away every time, so I don't say it this time. (I did have hard time to put the release notes together, so I do hope shorter release notes next time.)

There are a few things I marked "after 0.9.5", so I guess I start with them. Here are top priority items:

• Finishing up line-editing feature: It's "experimental" in 0.9.5, with a few known issues. Let's make it official. Completion feature is also nice to have.
• Rewriting internal legacy macros with ER-macros. I can only do this after 0.9.5, since the source must be compilable by the latest release. I'm also hoping to rewrite syntax-rules expander in Scheme.
• I like to look into better instrument to examine what's going on in the running program---e.g. debugger and profiler. The advantage of dynamically typed language is that you can examine and modify the running program without stopping it. We need to take maximum advantage of it.
• Better way to organize and maintain library packages written by others---a central site to register and track them, I'm thinking.

Other thoughts, in more long term, but before 1.0:

• Performance - I haven't visited this area for a while, but the technology in this field is advancing, so it might be a good time to revisit it once more. The current VM instructions was designed when ScmWord is 32bit and it's not likely to optimal for 64bit architecture; especially, lots of instruction space is wasted. I might redesign VM instructions, with possibility of adopting JIT.
• Deployment - there are several experimental features---such as precompiling Gauche program, or statically linking Gauche runtime---but there's no standard workflow yet.

Tag: 0.9.5