[isabelle-dev] [polyml] Forthcoming 5.1 release (fwd)

[Makarius]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 08:56:38 +0000
From: David Matthews <David.Matthews at prolingua.co.uk>
To: PolyML mailing list <polyml at inf.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: [polyml] Forthcoming 5.1 release

There has been quite a lot of work on Poly/ML over the last year and I'm
intending to release version 5.1 shortly.  This is an invitation to try the CVS
version and let me know if there are any bugs that need to be fixed before the
final release.

The two major changes are the addition of true multi-threading and the ability
to save and load changes without having to build an executable.  There have also
been changes to the Windows interface structures and other minor changes.

The multi-threading changes (thanks to the Verisoft project and TUM) involved a
major re-working of the run-time system to allow the code to use kernel threads,
in turn allowing multi-threaded programs to make use of multiple cores.  A new
Thread structure has been written to make effective use of this and the details
are at http://www.polyml.org/docs/Threads.html .  The old Process structure has
been rewritten in terms of this but it will generally be better to use the
Thread structure directly.

A new substructure, PolyML.SaveState, has been added (thanks to Qinetiq), to
allow the state of a session to be saved and then reloaded in another session.
This is a lighter-weight version of the PolyML.export and does not require a
linking step.  Details of the structure can be found at
http://www.polyml.org/docs/SaveState.html . As well as simple saved states it is
also possible to build chains of saved states in which each saved state contains
only the changes from the one above.

The current plan is to release version 5.1 towards the end of this month so any
feedback would be appreciated as soon as possible.

David.
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