[Chicken-users] Ann.: CHICKEN 4.0.0 released

[felix winkelmann]

Yo!

Version 4.0.0 of CHICKEN, the portable and practical Scheme system has
been released. In addition to many bugfixes and cleaning up, it
provides the following significant changes:

- PCRE has been replaced by Alex Shinn's excellent "IrRegex" regular
  expression package (while still being API compatible to the old
  regular expression subsystem)

- New implementations of tools to download, build and install
  extension libraries, which are easier to use and provide more
  flexibility (like download extensions via Subversion or installation  
  from a local tree)

- The macro system has been completely rewritten and is now fully
  hygienic with highlevel R5RS "syntax-rules" macros and low level
  "explicit renaming" macros that allow full control over hygiene;
  "define-macro" is not available anymore

- A module system has been implemented that fully supports hygienic
  macros, and still integrates with separate and cross compilation; module-
  and syntax meta-information is not retained in compiled run-time code,
  unless explicitly enabled by the user

- A new optimization mode "local" enables inlining of definitions that
  are visible from other compilation units but not globally modified

- Better support for building and using CHICKEN on Windows (mingw and
  MSYS)

- Experimental support for cross-module inlining

CHICKEN 4.0.0 can be downloaded from:

  http://www.call-with-current-continuation.org/chicken-4.0.0.tar.gz

CHICKEN-related mailing lists can be found here:

  http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
  http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-hackers

To follow the latest development, check out

  https://galinha.ucpel.tche.br/svn/chicken-eggs

Special thanks to Alaric for providing this read-only svn mirror (updated
daily):

  http://chicken.kitten-technologies.co.uk/svn

Send bug reports to to <address@hidden> or use the
`chicken-bug' program.

Many thanks to all who helped improve and extend the system.


cheers,
felix