S  M  L   /   N  J

                  1  1  0  .  3  8      N  E  W  S
			
  		         January 28, 2002

			      WARNING

  	This version is intended for compiler hackers. The 
	version ought to be stable, however we have not run
	our full regression testing.

        http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/what/smlnj/index.html


Summary:

    Major internal improvements to MLRISC.  A re-worked FFI.  Bug fixes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Details:

FFI:

  - A complete overhaul of the library interfaces and the glue-code
    generator (ml-nlffigen).  The implementation now scales much better,
    making it possible to target huge C libraries such as gtk+ etc.
    (See the README file under src/ml-nlffigen.)

  - ML represenation types have been streamlined

  - Getter and setter functions work with concrete values, not abstract
    ones where possible.
  - WORD-style bit-operations on INTEGER representations added.

  - Ml-nlffigen command line more flexible (see README file).

  - C_Debug added as an alternative to structure C.  The difference is
    that it always checks for NULL on pointer-dereference operations.

  - DynLinkage.open_lib' added.  This function takes an additional list
    of library handles.  This is used for expressing inter-library
    (symbol-resolution-)dependencies.

  - bug fixes

MLRISC:

  - There is a dramatic simplification in the interface to the
    register allocator for RISC architectures as a result of making 
    parallel copy instructions explicit. 

  - Bugs in x86-fast-fp have been fixed.  It is now turned on by default
    in SML/NJ.

  - Changed the representation of instructions from being fully abstract 
    to being partially concrete.  See HISTORY file for more details.

  - Removed the native COPY and FCOPY instructions from all the
    architectures and replaced it with the explicit COPY instruction
    from the previous commit.

  - Since COPY instructions are no longer native to the architecture, 
    a generic functor can be used to implement the expandCopies function.

  - Allowed EXPORT and IMPORT pseudo-op declarations to appear inside a
    TEXT segment.

  - bug fixes

misc:

  - Allen Leung's "nowhere" tool added.
  - Minor modifications to pgraph.
  - rounding mode-related bug fixed in Basis library