Release Notes for Allegro CL 9.0

This document contains the following sections:

1.0 Introduction

This document is a copy of the version 9.0 release notes included with the version 10.0 documentation, providing release notes for release 9.0 of Allegro Common Lisp and related products. Note: if you are using version 9.0, you should not refer to this document but to the current actual 9.0 Release Notes as this document is simplified and also not updated for changes to 9.0 after the 10.0 release.

This document describes the changes, major and minor, from 8.2 to 9.0. Please look particularly at these sections:

• Section 6.1 New features in the base Lisp: this section describes new features.
• Section 6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp: this very important section describes changes to Allegro CL which are not backward compatible. You may have to modify your source code in light of these changes.
• Section 8.3 Non-backward-compatible changes in Common Graphics: [Common Graphics is not available on all platforms] this section describes changes to Common Graphics which are not backward compatible. You may have to modify your source code in light of these changes.

2.0 Information on changes and new stuff since the 9.0 release

These changes were made after the initial release of Allegro CL 9.0. You must update you images to use most of the functionality described (see sys:update-allegro). Note that this section is not updated for changes made after the 10.0 release. See the current actual 9.0 Release Notes for the latest 9.0 information.

1. New EC2 implementation: an updated interface to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) has been released in a patch dated November 4, 2014. The API version support is moved to version 2014-09-01. See ec2.htm for further information.
2. Update required to use Allegro CL 9.0 with Mac OS X 10.10. Allegro CL updates are required to use Allegro CL 9.0 with Mac OS X 10.10. Please see Updating for Mac OS X 10.10 in installation.htm for information. Note that, as described in the linked section, XQuartz must also be reinstalled.
3. A new for-as-in-sequence subclause for the loop macro. The loop macro now supports a for-as-in-sequence subclause which iterates over a list or a simple, general vector. Existing (standard) subclauses include for-as-in-list and for-as-across (for vector) and this new subclause combines them, as so allows the sequence operated on to be a list or a simple vector at runtime. See cl:loop and the for-as-in-sequence subclause for looping over sequences in implementation.htm. This new subclause was added in a patch in May, 2014.
4. New universal date parser. New functions string-to-universal-time and universal-time-to-string convert strings denoting times in various standard formats to universal times and universal times to strings in various formats. Converting durations to strings is also supported. This is not part of the date-time module described in date-time.htm but since the functionality is related, the General date to universal time parsers section in that document describes the new facility. These functions were added in a patch released in May, 2014.
5. jLinker update: a patch released in April, 2014 made a number of changes to the jLinker module. There are now several calling models, including a new calling style where Lisp functions are generated by analyzing Java jar files or classes. The names of the Lisp functions are systematically derived from the Java names and mimic the overloading style used in Java; in most cases, the Lisp name is easily deduced from the Java name so that perusing a translation table is rarely needed. The correct Java method to call is determined at run time by comparing the Lisp argument types to Java signatures. See Calling Style from Lisp to Java in jlinker.htm.
6. Major update to SSL socket module. (This change is not related to the Heartbleed problem described in the next item.) The interface to SSL sockets has been upgraded. SSL contexts, re-usable objects which contain configuration values for SSL server and client streams, are now supported. Contexts are created with make-ssl-server-context and make-ssl-client-context. make-ssl-server-stream and make-ssl-client-stream now have context keyword arguments which take an SSL context as a value. Also, the default value for the method argument to make-ssl-server-stream and make-ssl-client-stream is :tlsv1+. These modifications were added in a patch released in April, 2014.
7. Fix for OpenSSL Heartbleed bug available. The OpenSSL Heartbleed bug (see https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt) requires new library files and application rebuilds. See the Tech Corner Article at https://franz.com/support/tech_corner/heartbleed040914.lhtml for instructions. Users are strongly recommended to apply this fix.
8. The list value of *global-gc-behavior* should not be used in an SMP Lisp. The variable *global-gc-behavior* controls when and how often global garbage collections happen. On possible value for this variable is a list of a positive integer (specifying a number of seconds), and a real greater than or equal to 1.0 (and optionally a boolean specifying verbosity). This value is designed to trigger global gc's after a specified amount of idle time. But idle time is ill-defined in an SMP Lisp. The list value for *global-gc-behavior* uses sys:funcall-after-idle-timeout, which, as the next item notes, should not be used in SMP Lisps.
9. sys:funcall-after-idle-timeout should not be used in an SMP Lisp. In an SMP Lisp, idle time is ill-defined. The function sys:funcall-after-idle-timeout, which calls a function after a specified idle time, should not be used.
10. Documentation for load-compiled corrected. The function load-compiled, when first implemented, compiled a file but did not write a fasl file. That was changed some time ago so load-compiled is a roughly equivalent to the :cload top-level command (compiling and loading file). The documentation has been corrected.
11. Enhancement to net.post-office:send-letter. The first argument to net.post-office:send-letter, the server specification, can now specify an alternate transport mechanism, instead of the usual SMTP network protocol. See net.post-office:send-letter for details. The patch implementing this cahange was released in early November, 2013.
12. Some MySQL changes. A new client-flags keyword argument to connect was added to 8.2 in a patch but was not documented in either the 8.2 or 9.0 documentation until now. A patch released in early August, 2013, modified the behavior of the host keyword argument to connect, which can now be a list. insert-db now has an on-dup-keys keyword argument improves handling when the insert tries to insert a row with the same values in key columns as an existing row. Also, some support for stored procedures has been added. See MySQL and stored procedures in mysql.htm.
13. A patch released in late Jult, 2013 implements a major jLinker upgrade. A major patch release of jlinker (version 7.1) adds several new features. The patch consists of Lisp code in a new fasl file and Java code in a new jar file. New features include connection pooling, better socket handling, and improved error hierarchy. A number of functions have been modified, but all modifications are backward compatible. See jlinker.htm for a complete discussion of the patch. The patch is for version 9.0 only. It does not apply to earlier releases.
14. New regexp patch fixes some replace-re behavior and enhances match-re. A bug in replace-re caused handling of BOS and EOS markers incorrectly. So (replace-re "abc abc bc" "^abc\\s+" "_") would return "__bc" rather than "_abc bc". Also, (replace-re "abc def " "def$" "_" :end 7) would return "abc _ " rather than "abc def ". This has been fixed and the correct values are now returned. As part of the change, match-re has additional keyword arguments start-unbounded and end-unbounded. The behavior of match-re is unchanged if the new arguments are not specified.
15. Better control over proxies in Aserve. If you allow proxies in AllegroServe, you may open a security hole. Proxies, which before were general, can now be restruicted to specific machines using the new proxy-control object, if desired. See the Proxy section of the the AllegroServe documentation for details.
16. The profiler may now be included in runtime images (except those created by Allegro Express).
17. New jlinker-init keyword argument: :end-function. The value of the end-function keyword argument to jlinker-init should be a function called when a jlinker connection is terminated. The function gets a single argument, the jlinker connection instance. Added by a pacth released May 1, 2013.
18. All nicknames removed for the excl package. This was done when 9.0 was released but we neglected to document it. The nicknames were excl, franz, and stream. In fact, it is illegal for a package nickname to be the package name (so excl was removed). The other two names (which were added when the symbols in those packages were merged into the excl package) were removed so that they would not appear as qualifiers to excl symbols when excl:*print-nickname* is true. This is a backward incompatible change. Users who depend on stream or franz as nicknames can add them back using rename-package if desired. This item is repeated below in Section 6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp.
19. regexp patch fixes some bugs, changes split-re behavior. WARNING: some changes result in changed behavior (nil might be returned instead of (""); some forms no longer signal errors).. A patch released in February, 2013 fixes some regexp bugs and changes the behavior of split-re to match PERL behavior. split-re now has a limit keyword argument; it not longer errors when the regexp argument matches the empty string; and trailing empty fields are removed. See regexp.htm and also the description of split-re, where we have examples of the changes.
20. New ability to dump virtual images on Windows. See Virtual dumplisp: for very large images and pseudo-forks on Windows
21. We have revised the regexp.htm and have removed the discussion of the older regexp module (which is still maintained for backward compatibility, and individual functions are still documented in the operators pages)). All new code should use the regexp2 module described in regexp.htm.
22. text-line does not work on file streams. The common-graphics:text-line function only works on text-edit-panes and multi-line-editable-text widgets. It does not work on file streams. The documentation has been updated to make that clear.

3.0 Fasl files are not-compatible between versions and operating systems

3.1 All pre-9.0 Lisp compiled files must be recompiled (old fasl files will not load)

fasl files (compiled Lisp files) created by releases of Allegro CL prior to 9.0 will not load into Allegro CL 9.0. All such files must be recreated by compiling the associated Lisp source files. An error will be signaled if Lisp attempts to load an older, incompatible fasl file.

3.2 Fasl files may be incompatible in different Lisps on same hardware

Fasl files created on Windows x86 cannot be loaded into Linux or FreeBSD x86 Lisps

The Windows and UNIX operating systems are too different. However, FASL files (for the same Lisp version) can generally be shared between different UNIX operating systems on the same hardware. The general principles are as follows. Note that incompatibility may creep in for reasons outside our control. If fasl files are incompatible, recompile on the target machine.

Fasl files will usually be compatible between platforms when:

• the architecture (hardware) is the same
• the calling convention is the same (that is, the method of calling functions and the registers they use for arguments are the same)
• the method for generating signals can be made compatible (this cannot be done for Windows and UNIX, so they are incompatible for this reason)

It is up to the user to ensure that there are no os-specific dependencies, or that features (i.e. #+/#- ) did not cause essential code to be excluded or extraneous code introduced that would cause a problem on the crossed architecture.

4.0 Release Notes for installation

1. Version 9.0 uses the 8.2 installation procedure: installation is described in installation.htm.
2. The distribution includes 8 bit and 16 bit character images (this information is repeated from earlier Release Notes). Allegro CL has images that support 8 bit characters only, or 16 bit characters only. It is our expectation that most users will use the 16 bit images. Executables supplied with the distribution either have or do not have `8' in the name. Those with 8 in the name (mlisp8 and alisp8, e.g.) support 8 bit characters. Those without a number in the name support 16 bit characters. Image (dxl) files also come in 8 and 16 varieties. Again, 8 in the name means 8 bit character support. Character support for images and executables must match. Trying to start an executable with the wrong type of image fails.
3. No prebuilt Allegro Composer images in the distribution (this information is repeated from earlier Release Notes). To create an Allegro Composer image, start Allegro CL and load buildcomposer.cl. That will produce composer and composer.dxl, or composer8 and composer8.dxl. Allegro Composer is available on Unix only.
4. No prebuilt Allegro CLIM images in the distribution (this information is repeated from earlier Release Notes). To create a CLIM image, start Allegro CL and load buildclim.cl. That will produce clim and clim.dxl, or clim8 and clim8.dxl.

5.0 Release notes for specific platforms

Allegro CL 9.0 is known to work with the following minimal operating system versions. Allegro CL 9.0 runs on all operating system versions released (not in beta or pre-release form) January 1, 2012. See below for places to obtain information on operating systems released after that date.

Because Ubuntu no longer supports 32-bit libraries, 32-bit Allegro CL does not run on current and recent versions of Ubuntu. (If you have an old version which has 32-bit libraries, 32-bit Allegro CL will work but then you cannot upgrade the OS.)

64-bit platforms

• 64-bit Apple Mac OS X 10.6
• 64-bit Linux (x86-64), glibc 2.11
• 64-bit Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7 &Server
• 64-bit Sun Solaris (SPARC) 2.10 (no SMP)
• 64-bit Sun Solaris (x86-64) 2.10 (no SMP)

32-bit platforms

• Apple Mac OSX (Intel) 10.6
• FreeBSD 8.2 (no SMP)
• Linux (x86), glibc 2.11 (but not on Ubuntu, see above)
• Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7 & Server
• Sun Solaris (SPARC) 2.10 (no SMP)

5.1 Mac OS X notes

Allegro CL 9.0 is only supported on Mac OS X version 10.6 or later. It is not supported on versions 10.5 or earlier.

Common Graphics and the IDE are now supported on Mac OS X but are not supported on the SMP version on the Mac. See Section 8.1 Common Graphics and the IDE on the Mac for more information. Both the IDE and CLIM require certain tools (X11, GTK, Open Motif) which may have to be installed separately. See Installation on Mac OS X in installation.htm for details.

The Runtime Analyzer (see runtime-analyzer.htm) does not work properly on the 64-bit Mac OS X port (there is no problem on the 32-bit port).

Building shared libraries on Mac OS X

Building shared libraries on Mac OS X in foreign-functions.htm describes how to create a shared library suitable for loading into Allegro CL. We have determined that the -flat_namespace to the ld used to create the shared library is necessary, as shown in the linked section.

5.1.1 Allegro CL must be updated to work with Mac OS X 10.10

Allegro CL updates are required to use Allegro CL 9.0 with Mac OS X 10.10. Please see Updating for Mac OS X 10.10 in installation.htm for information.

5.1.2 Installing Mavericks OS (Mac OS X 10.9) may break X11

We have had reports that installing the Mavericks OS on Macs (Mavericks is Mac OS X 10.9) causes X11 to be stop working properly. The symptom is blank rectangles in Common Graphics applications (including Gruff). X11 is necessary for the IDE, CLIM, and Allegro Composer. To fix the problem, install the latest version of XQuartz (available from http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/) after installing Mavericks (regardless of what version, if any, was installed before installing Mavericks).

5.1.3 Installing Mountain Lion OS (Mac OS X 10.8) may uninstall X11

We have had reports that installing the Mountain Lion OS on Macs (Mountain Lion is Mac OS X 10.8) causes X11 to be uninstalled, and does not itself include X11. X11 is necessary for the IDE, CLIM, and Allegro Composer. If you find X11 uninstalled (so it is no longer in the Utilities sub-folder of the Applications folder, you can reinstall it by downloading and installing XQuartz.

If you have an older version of Mac OS and need to install/reinstall X11, install it from your installation medium.

5.2 Heap start locations

When building large new images, it is often useful to specify Lisp Heap and C-heap start locations. See the discussion of the lisp-heap-start and c-heap-start keyword arguments in Arguments to build-lisp-image 2: defaults not inherited from the running image in building-images.htm. Here are the initial locations (called `bases') in Allegro CL 9.0 as delivered. Values are Hexadecimal integers.

6.0 Release Notes for the base Lisp

This main section contains three subsections (which have additional subsections): one on new features (Section 6.1 New features in the base Lisp), one on changes which are not backwards compatible and so may require code changes, (Section 6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp), and one on miscellaneous changes (Section 6.3 Other changes to and notes about the base Lisp).

6.1 New features in the base Lisp

Full SMP support is added for the Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms (but not on Solaris or FreeBSD). This is the major new feature. Non-SMP distributions are also provided for all platforms. See smp.htm.

6.1.1 Features added to Allegro CL 8.2 after the initial release of Allegro CL 8.2

Major update to AllegroServe

A new version of AllegroServe, version 1.3.1, has been released. It is available from github (https://github.com/franzinc/aserve/) or as a patch for Allegrop CL 8.2. Of particular importance are automatic compression and inflation of files, chunking support, and new choices for security, including the TLS v1.0 (also called SSL v3.1) protocol for secure communications. See aserve/aserve.html, which is the AllegroServe documentation.

The changes include:

1. New compression and chunking support on AllegroServe. AllegroServe can now compress responses on the fly if requested. Aserve's client code can request a compressed transfer and can uncompress the result. Further, In the past AllegoServe disabled chunking for an SSL server and told users to use the http/1.0 protocol for clients when SSL was being used. Now those restrictions are gone. The default for the server will be to use chunking in all cases and clients can specify http/1.1 for requests over SSL. See documentation (aserve/aserve.html) for API changes related to these new features.
2. Security options. net.aserve:start and net.aserve.client:do-http-request have a :ssl-method keyword argument which can be used to specify v2.0, v3.0 or TLS v1.0 (SSL v3.1) communication protocols. Specifying :tslv1 means that you only want to communicate using TLS v1.0 (SSL v3.1), the most modern and secure of the protocols.
3. Delay sending headers for computed entities. Errors can occur when running the computed entity function. When an error occurs one would like to send back a different response such as '500 - Internal Server Error'. In order to make this possible the http response code and the headers that follow that are not immediately sent back to the server when with-http-body starts. Instead they are held in request-reply-stream and are only sent when the computed entity function sends data to the stream. Thus if you do computation before sending any data you can avoid having any response sent to the client until the computation finishes.
4. publish-directory can accept a list of destinations. When a request comes in publish-directory will search one or more directories for the requested file.
5. Other AllegroServe changes. (1) The :keep-alive arguement to do-http-request will now cause do-http-request to return a fifth value: a socket connected to the server. That fifth value will be nil if the server refuses to keep the connection with the client open. Even if the server agrees to keeps the connection alive it will close it after some period of inactivity. (2) do-http-request takes a :connection argument which is how the socket returned by do-http-request should be passed to the next do-http-request call. It is ok if the value of the :connection argument is nil or closed socket. do-http-request will notice that the socket is unusable and will create a new one. See documentation (aserve/aserve.html).

jLinker revision patch removed

A jLinker patch released in April, 2011, has been withdrawn. If you downloaded the patch, doing a further update will revoke it. It was decided that the changes could not be accomodated in deployed applications. The changes will be re-introduced in release 9.0.

We have further revised jlinker.htm and the documentation of jlinker-init in light of removing the patch.

Major changes to the Allegro CL interface to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), some incompatible

The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), described in ec2.htm has had a major revision, with support now provided for regions. The changes are described at the beginning of ec2.htm. Note that some changes are incompatible: some argument lists have changed, a number of variables have been removed, defaults for some arguments are changed, and so on. There is also much new functionality.

Other changes since the release

• New installation for Mac 64-bit graphics utilities. You need GTK and X11 to use the IDE or CLIM with Allegro CL on the Mac, and additionally OpenMotif for CLIM. Previously, installation of these utilities for 64-bit Lisps was very involved and difficult. This process has been simplified substantially, as described in Installing X11, GTK, and Open Motif on Mac OS X in installation.htm.
• dequeue method can now wait with a timeout. The wait keyword argument to dequeue can now be a real number, indicating how many seconds a process should wait when asked to dequeue an empty queue (waiting for an item to be added to the queue so it can be dequeued). If the time limit is reached, the value of the new empty-queue-result argument is returned. If wait is nil and the queue is empty, an error is returned (as before). If wait is a real less than or equal to zero and the queue is empty, dequeue returns the value of the empty-queue-result immediately.
• Deflation (compression) of data now supported. The class util.zip:deflate-stream and related functions allow you to compress data which can then be written to a file or to a vector. The existing function util.zip:inflate will uncompress the data. The deflate utility was added in a patch released in March, 2011.
• The macro in-case-mode, designed to assit loading fasl file compiled in one case mode into a Lisp using another case mode. While it is always better to use source files and associated fasl files compiled in the case mode you are using in your running Lisp (see case.htm), sometimes this is not possible. The new macro in-case-mode will permit loading fasl files compiled in a different mode from the running Lisp in most cases.
• Structures may be passed and returned to foreign functions by value as well as by reference. See Passing structures by value in foreign-functions.htm for more information. Until this change, all structures were passed and returned by reference, even when the specification indicated (because no *) that by value was desired. Because of this change, existing code that seems to specify by value will signal a warning but will still be converted to by reference. You must modify the code (specifying a value for the pass-structs-by-value argument to def-foreign-call) or set the value of ff:*pass-structs-by-value* appropriately to get by value behavior.

6.2 Non-backward-compatible changes in the base Lisp

1. All nicknames removed for the excl package. This was done when 9.0 was released but we neglected to document it (we added this item is a doc update). The nicknames were excl, franz, and stream. In fact, it is illegal for a package nickname to be the package name (so excl was removed). The other two names (which were added when the symbols in those packages were merged into the excl package) were removed so that they would not appear as qualifiers to excl symbols when excl:*print-nickname* is true. This is a backward incompatible change. Users who depend on stream or franz as nicknames can add them back using rename-package if desired. This item is repeated above in Section 2.0 Information on changes and new stuff since the 9.0 release.
2. Significant changes, many non-backward-compatible, changes to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) interface. See ec2.htm for details. The release notes for the changes are at the beginning oif that document.
3. The asdf module does not autoload. Users need to evaluate (require :asdf) to use it.
4. delete, delete-if, delete-if-not, and delete-duplicates and in-place deletion. Certain deletion operations on vectors by delete, delete-if, delete-if-not, and delete-duplicates modified the vector in place, and so some programs, aware of this, might use the argument vector rather than the result vector (that is, might assume the result vector is the argument vector modified rather than a new vector). However, in a SMP Lisp (and, in fact, but rarely in a non-SMP multiprocessing Lisp), multiple threads traversing the vector simultaneously while one deletes elements could cause heap corruption and so a new variable, *delete-in-place*, specifies whether deletion in place is allowed. The initial value of this variable is nil in SMP Lisps (meaning in-place deletion is not allowed), so the argument vector is never the same as the result vector in that case. Code which assumed it was the same can now fail. See cl:delete, cl:delete-if, cl:delete-if-not, cl:delete-duplicates: multiprocessing issues in implementation.htm for more information.
5. *cl-default-special-bindings* replaced by *required-top-level-bindings* and other changes to process initialization and bindings. *cl-default-special-bindings* has been renamed *required-top-level-bindings*. A new variable *required-thread-bindings* provides bindings for all threads. New macros required-thread-binding and required-top-level-binding add to the alists which are the values of those variables. Processes and their dynamic environments (both models) in multiprocessing.htm and Setting global variables in initialization files in startup.htm have been updated to reflect these changes.
6. The debugger API has some keyword arguments changed to optional arguments, and other API changes. The debugger API, described in debugger-api.htm has new (and incompatible) argument lists for db:oldest-frame and db:output-frame: they arglists used to have both optional and keyword argument and now just have optional arguments. Also, there is a new function db:newest-frame. And most single-letter argument names (like p and e) now have descriptive names (like process and environment) though that change does not affect the interface since the arguments are in all cases required or optional. See debugger-api.htm for details.
7. with-output-to-buffer has modified argument list. To make it more like with-output-to-string, the buffer argument to with-output-to-buffer is now an optional argument rather than a leyword argument. Further, the behavior when no value is supplied for the buffer argument is different: before it was equivalent to specifying nil and resulted in a bit bucket being used (so the number of characters written was available but not the characters themseleves). Now unsupplied means create an actual buffer which extends when needed and whose contents are available with get-output-stream-buffer. Specifying nil has the same meaning as in earlier releases.
8. Some command-line arguments now start with -- rather than -. --ee, --qq, --backtrace-on-error, --batch, --kill, --locale, and --compat-crlf. See Command line arguments in startup.htm for a list of command-line arguments. The single - versions still work but are not longer documented and will likely be removed in a later release.

6.2.1 New features in Allegro CL 9.0

1. New Idy5 compiler message notes that a dynamic-extent declaration is ineffective. See this section of compiler-explanations.htm. The message appears when there is a dynamic-extent declaration but it is ineffective because declarations are not trusted.
2. def-foreign-call now has :documentation keyword argument. (setf documentation) works works on foreign functions but this new feature allows specifying the documentation without writing a wrapper function. See ff:def-foreign-call.
3. New gensym variant excl:gen-sym. excl:gen-sym is identical to cl:gensym except that a symbol is accepted as its optional argument, in which case the symbol-name is used. This is useful for programs that are intended for use in either ansi or modern lisps, where it is desired to print any gensyms without requiring escapes.
4. with-staged-output and synchronized-output-stream-p allow coordination when writing to a stream. synchronized-output-stream-p (which is setf'able) determines whether a stream is marked as suitable for synchronized output. with-staged-output then ensures output is staged. Most built-in output functions are called in the body of with-staged-output.
5. New functions peek-byte and unread-byte. peek-byte resembles peek-char except it peeks at a single byte rather than a character. unread-byte similarly resembles unread-char except it unreads one byte rather than one characters. See peek-byte and unread-byte in streams.htm for a general discussion of these functions.
6. New compiler switch enforces optimal branch alignment on 64-bit x86 platform. align-branch-targets-switch, when true, tells the comnpiler to optimally align code branches on 64-bit x86 platform. Ignored on all other platforms.
7. New tester macro, variable useful for testing in SMP. Allegro CL provide a test harness described in test-harness.htm. While there has always been issues when testing in a multiprocessing environment, in a non-SMP Lisp these were fairly insignificant. They are more serious in an SMP Lisp, so changes have been made to better manage the tester. These include a new macro to use when incrementing results, inc-test-counter; a new variable which controls whether output should be labeled by thread, *test-report-thread*; and locking to avoid intermixed tester output mesages. See Running tests in multiple threads (Lisp processes) in test-harness.htm for more information.
8. yes-or-no-p and y-or-n-p now have better default format control strings. yes-or-no-p and y-or-n-p previously had empty default control strings. Now the defaults are "(Yes or No)? " and "(Y or N)? ".
9. Change to package locking. Package locking is described on Package locking and package definition locking in packages.htm. Packages locked against definitions used to accept new definitions only if the name of *package*, or any of its nicknames, was on the locked package's implementation-packages list. Definitions will still be accepted in these cases, but will also be allowed if *package* is eq to the locked package.

6.3 Other changes to and notes about the base Lisp

1. New queue keyword argument to schedule-finalization, new function call-finalizer. schedule-finalization, which allows defining a function to be called when an object becomes garbage, has a new queue keyword argument. If non-nil, it must be a queue object. When the object is marked as garbage, instead of running the finalization function, the system will place a finalizer object, which is a list of the finalization function and the object, on the queue. It is then the responsibility of the program to apply the function call-finalizer to that list at some later time.
2. New HMAC functions for MD5 and SHA* encoding support. See the new hmac-init, hmac-string, hmac-update, and hmac-final which handle SHA* digest algorithms. See MD5, SHA1, HMAC, RC4, and other encoding support in miscellaneous.htm for more information.
3. New general functions for MD* and SHA* encoding support. Various new encoding algorithms are now supported, inlcuding MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512, and RMD160. There are new functions digest-init, digest-update, digest-final, digest-string, and digest-file which encode and support all those formats. They are similar to the existing md5-* and sha1-* functions, with the same arguments, except digest-init, digest-file, and digest-string have a name required argument to specify the encoding format being used). See MD5, SHA1, HMAC, RC4, and other encoding support in miscellaneous.htm for more information.
4. Expanded #A reader macro, new variable *print-simple-array-specialized*. The standard #A template is expanded from #nAdata to #{n}A{t}data where the n is optional (defaulting to 1) and t can specify the element type it is one of unsigned byte 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64, or signed byte 8, 16, 32, or 64. See The #A reader macro in implementation.htm for details. The printer will use the new template when appropriate when the variable *print-simple-array-specialized* is true.
5. user-homedir-pathname and username-to-home-directory documentation about behavior on Windows corrected. cl:user-homedir-pathname and excl:username-to-home-directory were incorrectly documented in 8.2. The documentation has been corrected. (Essentially, the current user's home directory is returned in all cases, and that is discovered from the HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables, or, failing that, from the HOME environment variable. #P"C\\" is returned if none of those environment variables have valid values.) The behavior of cl:user-homedir-pathname on Windows is discussed in What user-homedir-pathname does on Windows in implementation.htm.
6. get-output-stream-buffer now returns a second value. get-output-stream-buffer now returns the number of elements written to the buffer as a second returned value.
7. excl:uncompile and cl:function-lambda-expression succeed in more cases. Both may succeed when source level debugging information is stored (here succeed means returning a non-nil first value for cl:function-lambda-expression and actually uncompiling the function for uncompile). See uncompile and cl:function-lambda-expression in implementation.htm for more information.
8. The :local and :set-local top-level commands have a raw option, :r. This option displays locals in raw mode. See :local for a discussion of this mode. :set-local allows values to be set in raw mode.
9. Previously undocumented :x option to :local top-level command causes numbers to be displayed in hexadecimal. This option actually existed in earlier releases but was not dicumented. See :local.
10. There is now CRL (certificate revocation list) support in the SSL (secure socket layer) implementation. See make-ssl-client-stream and make-ssl-server-stream.
11. make-ssl-server-stream now has a prefer-server-cipher-order keyword argument. When choosing a cipher during an SSLv3 or TLSv1 handshake, normally the client's preference is used. However, if the new prefer-cipher-server-order keyword argument to make-ssl-server-stream is non-nil (the default is nil), the server's preference will be used instead.
12. mapped-file-simple-stream has new release-handle option to open. The mapped-file-simple-stream class can now be opened with its handle released upon openning so the handle is available for other uses. See the release-handle option.
13. New arguments to def-foreign-call to control garbage-collections while foreign code is running. The new arguments to def-foreign-call are allow-gc and release-heap-implies-allow-gc.
14. add-signal-handler has new delayed-interrupts keyword argument. If the delayed-interrupts keyword argument to add-signal-handler is true, the handler be run in a with-delayed-interrupts, else it will be run with interrupts enabled.
15. New function mp:process-queue-interrupt. The new generic function mp:process-queue-interrupt is like mp:process-interrupt but calls the interruptions with with-delayed-interrupts being in effect which guarantees order of arrival processing.
16. The pid argument to excl.osi:getsid is now optional. See excl.osi:getsid. The default value is 0.
17. New exit-on-missing-shared-library keyword argument to build-lisp-image. This new argument to build-lisp-image causes the new image to exit with a non-zero exit status after printing an appropriate error message if a shared library cannot be found.
18. The time macro now reports page faults. The general description of the time macro is in the ANS.
19. Additional keyword argument to excl.osi:find-in-path. If the executable keyword to find-in-path (ignored on Windows) is non-nil, then only matches of files that have execute bit set in their mode are returned.
20. New command line argument --debug-startup. --debug-startup prevents errors from being handled automatically by -L, -e, --ee and init file processing. Instead, errors land in the debugger unless --batch is also specified. See Command line arguments in startup.htm for a list of command-line arguments.
21. New Windows-only command line arguments +left, +top, +width, +height. These specify the position and size of the console window. See Command line arguments in startup.htm for a list of command-line arguments.
22. New variable sys:*zlib-system-library*. The value of sys:*zlib-system-library* is the name of the gzip library used by the deflate module. See Support for gzip compression and decompression in miscellaneous.htm.
23. Use of cltl1 package is deprecated. The compiler-let special operator has been moved to the excl package. Use of other functionality in the cltl1 package should be avoided. The cltl-1 module is no longer autoloaded.
24. New :direction keyword argument to dbi:bind-parameter. This argument allows specification of the direction of the parameter in a call to dbi:bind-parameter.

6.4 Multiprocessing and SMP release notes

Because SMP is the major addition to Allegro CL 9.0 on the Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms. Consequently multiprocessing in Allegro CL has changed, we group all SMP and multiprocessing release notes into this section.

1. Atomic update routines will work on any symbol. In the initial implementations of SMP, only symbols defined with defvar-nonbindable were suitable as places for atomic update operators like push-atomic. This is not longer true. Any symbol can be used as such a place. defvar-nonbindable is therefore no longer associated with atomic updates but is retained because it may be useful for other purposes. (This item was added after the initial release of the 9.0 documentation.)
2. with-shared-lock, with-exclusive-lock, and sharable-lock-lock have new recursive-p argument and return different values. The operators with-shared-lock, with-exclusive-lock, and sharable-lock-lock, added with a patch in 8.2, have new return values and have a new argument, recursive-p. See the descriptions for details.
3. make-sharable-lock has new argument constructor, recursive-p argument can have new values. See the description of make-sharable-lock.
4. New mp:condition-variable class. A condition-variable provides another way to synchronize the behavior of multiple threads. See Condition Variables in smp.htm.
5. New macro with-sharable-lock. with-sharable-lock is similar but more powerful than with-shared-lock.
6. New generic function mp:process-join. mp:process-join suspends the current process until the process thread of another process exits. This is a bit more complicated than it sounds (processes can be associated with more than one thread, so the question is, which is meant), as noted in the documentation.
7. New generic function lockedp. lockedp tests whether a lock is held.
8. New generic function process-lockedp. See process-lockedp.
9. time macro reporting of new space additions. In the statistics reported by the garbage collector, the new-copied number is now the net copied to newspace. When multiple sequential scavenges are required, the number reported represents the amount copied into newspace by the last scavenge, not the total copying done by all the scavenges.

6.5 Base Lisp platform-specific information

There are no entries at this time. Information may be placed here in documentation updates after the initial Allegro CL 9.0 release.

7.0 Release Notes for CLIM

The CLIM manual has not been updated (other than minor corrections) for the 9.0 release. There have been no significant changes to CLIM functionality compared to 8.2, though there have been bug fixes and performance enhancements.

8.0 Release Notes for Common Graphics and the IDE

Common Graphics and the IDE are supported on Windows SMP Lisp but are not supported in SMP Lisps on the Mac and Linux. They are supported in the non-SMP Lisps on Windows, Linux, and the Mac (the same platforms on which they were supported in release 8.2).

The first subsection describes changes to Common Graphics and the IDE that are non backward-compatible. Please review this section and make whatever necessary changes to your code to obtain the desired behavior in release 8.2.

The second subsection describes other changes to Common Graphics and the IDE. These should not require code changes (please tell us if any do, because that may indicate a bug), but note that certain function and argument names have been deprecated in favor of new names, and that new code should reflect these changes, and old code should be revised at some point.

The section Section 8.5 IDE release notes and its subsections provide information about the IDE.

8.1 Common Graphics and the IDE on the Mac

Common Graphics and the IDE and available on the Mac but only on the non-SMP Lisp. You must run X11 (it is in the /Applications directory and comes with recent versions of OSX and is usually installed by default on 10.6, but see Installation on Mac OS X in installation.htm for full details). Usage is like that on Linux. See cgide.htm for details.

These are known problems using CG and the IDE on the Mac:

1. Parenthesis-matching marks are drawn on pop-up windows. They cannot be drawn directly on a lisp-edit-pane, so instead a pop-up window (which otherwise looks like it is drawn directly on the pane) is displayed. See *show-parenthesis-matches-as-pop-up-window*, which must be set to true, as it is initially on Mac OS X, and also *parenthesis-match-pop-up-milliseconds*.
2. No annotations in form windows when designing dialogs. The annotations include widget resizing handles and alignment lines.

8.2 Significant changes in Common Graphics

• Support for multiple external formats in text-edit-panes. This change allows display of more than one character set in a text-edit-pane (such as both English text using the Roman alphabet and Japanese text using Japanese characters). New operators include external-format-for-saved-files, external-format-for-save, automatic-font-changing, dual-fonts-for-languages, all in the cg package, ide:ide-auto-font-changing and ide:ide-dual-fonts-for-languages, and the variable *use-unicode-winapi-for-cg* in the excl package.

8.3 Non-backward-compatible changes in Common Graphics

1. draw-rounded-box and fill-rounded-box have smaller corners. Rounded box corners on GTK are smaller than in 8.x, but now match beheavior on Windows. See draw-rounded-box and fill-rounded-box.
2. Variables dst, ds~t, d~st etc. renamed. The exported constant symbols like dst and ~d~st for paint operation bit flags have been renamed to po-dst and po-~d~st, etc., to avoid errors in apps that use a local variable named dst.

8.4 Other changes in Common Graphics

1. New grid-widget functions determining which subsection gets keyboard focus. The new generic functions are focus-row-section, focus-column-section, and focus-subsection. See grid-widget for general information on grid widgets.
2. New class-grid property horizontally-scrollable. The horizontally-scrollable property of a class-grid specifies whether the user can interactively scroll a class-grid horizontally, to bring other grid columns into view.
3. New properties to control whether a grid-section scrolls when the user drags a grid-subsection to a new position among its siblings. scroll-parent-section-while-dragging controls whener scrolling happens and scroll-parent-section-distance controls the scroll increment. See also grid-widget for general information on that widget.
4. Several new functions for manipulating outline-items. These new generic functions have been added for progammatically manipulating outline-items on outline widgets: select-on-typing, move-up-one-outline-item, move-down-one-outline-item, hide-outline-item-children, show-outline-item-children, outline-item-removed, outline-item-added, outline-items-reordered, remove-outline-item, add-sibling-outline-item, add-child-outline-item, and shift-outline-item.
5. New configuration option delay-pop-up-menus-until-mouse-buttons-up. delay-pop-up-menus-until-mouse-buttons-up, when true, delays the appearance of a pop-up menu until all mouse buttons are up. Its initial value is nil on Windows but true on GTK (Linux and Mac). On GTK, we have not found a way to prevent a mouse button release event from selecting an item on a pop-up menu that was invoked while a mouse button is down. That behavior can lead to the user not seeing the menu altogether, or even selecting an arbitrary item if the menu is placed under the mouse cursor but does not appear until the mouse button has already been released. That does not happen when the value of this new option is true.
6. New function set-console-exterior on Windows only. The function set-console-exterior allows you to set the size and location of the console Window if there is one. This is a Windows-only function.
7. ask-user-for-new-or-existing-directory and ask-user-for-directory have some new arguments. ask-user-for-directory now has a include-edit-box keyword argument (adds a text-entry widget to the dialog) and a new-dialog-style keyword argument (use the new MS style for the dialog). ask-user-for-new-or-existing-directory has a new special-folders keyword argument (allows specifying special Windows folders like My Documents). See the descriptions of ask-user-for-new-or-existing-directory and ask-user-for-directory for full details.
8. New macro with-cg-bindings. with-cg-bindings allows establishing the Common Graphics variable bindings in an existing process where it is not feasible to pass *default-cg-bindings* at process creation time.
9. window-message now returns a meaningful value. window-message returns t if the message was displayed in some status bar (either that of the argument window or an ancestor of the argument window) and returns nil otherwise.
10. set-paragraph-format limited to 32 tab stops. This is a Windows limitation. The number of tab stops is specified by the tabs keyword argument to set-paragraph-format. Previously specifying a value greater than 32 would cause an error. Now values greater than 32 are treated as if 32 were specified. Specifying nil removes all tab stops.
11. New outline control properties: ancestor-background-color and highlight-ancestors. these properties control whether an outline widget will draw the background of each ancestor outline-item of the currently selected item in a different color.
12. select-on-multiple-characters and select-on-multiple-characters-time-limit now are properties of outline widgets, along with new properties select-on-multiple-characters-item-test and select-on-multiple-characters-callback. See select-on-multiple-characters, select-on-multiple-characters-time-limit, select-on-multiple-characters-item-test, select-on-multiple-characters-callback and outline.
13. New validate-edited-slot-value method allows validation of new slot values in object-editors and class-grids. The new method validate-edited-slot-value can be used with object-editors and class-grids to validate input.
14. pop-up-string-dialog and ask-user-for-string have new cursor-at-end argument. This specifies whether the cursor should be placed at the end of the string to be modified (allowing for easy extension) or the beginning (easier for replacing). See pop-up-string-dialog and ask-user-for-string.
15. pop-up-menus-for-many-sorted-choices has new case-insensitive and on-help keyword arguments. The new case-insensitive keyword argument to pop-up-menus-for-many-sorted-choices allows specifying whether or not choices starting with the same letter, but some lowercase and some upper, should be grouped together. The new on-help argument allows you to specify a function which may be used for displaying status bar messages as the user highlights individual menu items.
16. pop-up-lettered-menu has new stream and on-help keyword arguments. The new stream argument to pop-up-lettered-menu is either the screen or else a window that will serve as the owner of the pop-up menu. The new on-help argument allows you to specify a function which may be used for displaying status bar messages as the user highlights individual menu items.
17. New printer-class keyword argument to with-output-to-printer. with-output-to-printer now has a printer-class keyword argument which allows you to specify a subclass of cg:printer as the type of stream to instantiate, if desired.
18. New outline widget property lines-of-padding. The lines-of-padding property of outline widgets specifies how many items should be in view around a selected outline-item

8.5 IDE release notes

The IDE is supported on the Windows SMP Lisp. It is not supported in the Mac or Linux SMP versions of Allegro CL 9.0. It is supported in the non-SMP version of those platforms.

The non-SMP version runs one one hardware processor at a time, and corresponds to earlier versions of Allegro CL.

1. The :runtime-bundle build-flag is now included in the initial build-flags value. See ide:build-flags.
2. Class Interface Editor dialog changes. The Class Interface Editor has been enhanced to make the properties that you can specify interactively for a class-grid be more nearly complete]
3. The Inspect now shows package names of slot values.
4. New checkbox on Find in Files dialog to specify whether subprojects should searched. The Search Subprojects Later checkbox, when checked while searching a project, causes the entire project hierarchy to be searched. When unchecked, only the top-level project is searched. See the Find In Files dialog.
5. Revised Include Subdirectories checkbox on Find in Files dialog. The Include Subdirectories checkbox is now labeled Include Subdirectories or Subprojects and controls searching subprojects when searching a project. See the Find In Files dialog.
6. ide:shift-windows-onto-screen-at-startup now works on the single parent window. ide:shift-windows-onto-screen-at-startup will move the single parent window (which contains all IDE subwindows when ide:use-ide-parent-window is true) into view. Its behavior when ide:use-ide-parent-window is false is unchanged.
7. New functionality for using Unicode in text files. New configuration options and other operators allow better handling of Unicode text on Windows. See compile-files-as-utf8, external-format-for-saved-files, external-format-for-save, *use-unicode-winapi-for-cg*, automatic-font-changing, dual-fonts-for-languages, ide:ide-auto-font-changing, ide:ide-dual-fonts-for-languages, write-bom-to-utf8-files, and load-utf8-if-no-bom.
8. New Inspect Dialog option 'Inspect Sorted Copy'. This option appears on the Inspect dialog when inspecting a list or a vector. If chosen, a new sequence copied from the inspected one and sorted by print name is inspected. This may make finding items in long sequences easier.
9. File | Build Project Exe now File | Build Project Executable. The Build Project Exe item ion the File menu is now File | Build Project Executable. We wish to make clear the command does more than create a single exe file.
10. New IDE option find-in-files-show-html-files-in-browser. If the IDE configuration option ide:find-in-files-show-html-files-in-browser is true (its initial value) then HTML files (as determined by the file type) will open in a browser rather than an editor buffer.
11. New IDE option find-in-files-file-list-portion. If the IDE configuration option ide:find-in-files-file-list-portion allows users to specify the proportion between the heights of the two lower widgets in the Find In Files dialog, which list the files that have matches followed by the matching lines in the selected file.
12. Stepper dialog now has yellow highlighting for code which has limited information. The Stepper Dialog highlight code being stepped through. Green menas source code debugging info is available, orange means you are stopped at a macro form, etc. Now yellow is a possible highlight color and means you can do a Step Into to step through the function that is being called on that step, though no source debug info is known for the function that is being entered and so it will be stepped through at the assembly language level.
13. New command on Run menu: Show Definition in Stepper Dialog. The menu command Show Definition in Stepper Dialog on the Run menu displays the source code of the selected function or method in the Stepper Dialog and allows you to set breakpoints inside the definition without breakpointing the entrance to and exit from the function.
14. New project property concatenate-project-fasls. The project property concatenate-project-fasls, when true, causes all project fasl files to be concatenated into a single fasl file. This property can be set with setf or with the Concatenate Project Fasls check box on the Options tab of the Project Manager dialog.
15. Finer control of opening files in Emacs from the IDE. The function ide:open-files-in-gnu-emacs allows you to specify that the File | Open command should open files in an Emacs buffer rather than an IDE editor buffer. If you make the value of that property :open-only, the File | Save All menu command will not save Emacs buffers. If the value of the property is any other true value, File | Save All will save all unsaved Emacs buffers.
16. Improved type-ahead in IDE listeners. Typing ahead in an IDE listener while an evaluation is happening will now echo the characters at the end of the text as you type them, rather than only after the evaluation is complete. Any printing that's done to the listener will always be sent to the end of the listener's text rather than to the text cursor position.

8.5.1 Opening projects from releases prior to 9.0

Allegro CL 8.2 projects should open without problem in Allegro CL 9.0.

8.6 Functionality to handle differences between Windows and GTK

For complete information on the differences between Windows and GTK, please see cggtk-relnotes.html.

Common Graphics and the IDE run on Windows and Linux with GTK. Certain differences between the two operating systems and windowing systems mean that some things do not work the same in Windows as in GTK and vice versa. The functionality listed here tries to handle the differences. Some of the variables/operators/etc. are only available on one of the two platforms.

Known bug with menu-items and buttons

GTK Only: all-black menu-items and half-black buttons. There is still a mystery on the GTK platform where all button widgets can turn half black along a diagonal line, and all menu-items on some platforms will be totally black. This seems to happen only when opening a project from the Startup Action dialog, though, so a workaround is to not reopen a project from that dialog and instead to use the Recent menu or File | Open Project just afterward. We have tracked the problem down to the use of transparent-pane windows such as the frame-child of a form window, but beyond that it is a total mystery.

Mozilla support

The system needs to know the directory where the GTK control supplied by Mozilla to support the html-widget resides. (On windows, the widget is implemented in another way.) It may not be practical to search for the location automatically. See mozilla-library-path, *mozilla-library-path*, and find-mozilla-gtk-path.

Event handler processes

Because Linux currently does not use native threads and Windows does, on Windows, all windows handle events in their own thread associated with the window while on Linux/GTK, there is one event-handling thread. default-application-window-subkey, *use-single-cg-event-handling-process*, and *single-cg-event-handling-process* allow distinguishing behavior when necessary. cg-process-wait should be used on GTK instead of process-wait in event handlers. See also process-pending-events-if-event-handler.

Miscellaneous

The with-message-window window is now a frameless-topmost-p window on the GTK platforms to avoid problems that it had otherwise. This means that deselecting the owner window will close the message window, and so it may be a good idea to display the message in an additional place such as a status bar.

8.7 Release notes for the winapi module

The winapi module contains certain functions, in the windows package, that perform OS-related tasks. See The Windows API and a Windows API program with windows but without CG in cgide.htm for more information.

1. Unicase names for several functions removed. This is a non-backward-compatible change. For example, CreateWin and related functions existed with uppercase names in ANSI Lisp and lowercase names in nonANSI Lisp is earlier releases but now exists only with a mixed case name. See The Windows API and a Windows API program with windows but without CG in cgide.htm for more information.

9.0 Release notes for AllegroServe

No notes at this time

10.0 Release notes for The Emacs/Lisp interface

The command fi:lisp-find-definition no longer sets a mark.

11.0 Availability of CLX for Allegro CL

CLX (Common Lisp X) provides an interface between Common Lisp and the X window system. All versions of Allegro CL include a compiled version of CLX with the distribution. The fasl file is code/clx.fasl, loaded by evaluating (require :clx). The Allegro CL products CLIM and Allegro Composer use CLX. Users wanting low-level access to an X server in Lisp may also want to use CLX. CLX is not supported by Franz Inc.

The sources to CLX are supplied with the regular Allegro CL distributions in the contrib/clx/ directory. Note that during installation, you are asked whether you wish to install the contrib/ directory and the default is not to install it. The contrib/ directory is not included in the Trial distribution, but Trial users can download the CLX sources from the Franz Inc. website as described next.

The sources to CLX are also available on the Franz Inc. web site (franz.com), at the location ftp://ftp.franz.com/pub/clx/.

12.0 Release notes for Orblink

No significant changes.

Appendix A: ANSI Conformance in Allegro CL

We discuss ANSI conformance in Conformance with the ANSI specification in implementation.htm. Elsewhere in implementation.htm we discuss specifics of our implementation of certain Common Lisp functionality.

Copyright (c) 1998-2019, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
This page was not revised from the 9.0 page.
Created 2015.5.21.