scsh-0.5/RELEASE

Scsh 0.5.3 Release notes					-*- outline -*-

We are pleased to release scsh version 0.5.3.  The new release has many bug
fixes, improvements and new features.

The text below gives a general description of scsh, instructions for obtaining
it, pointers to discussion forums, and a description of the new features in
release 0.5.3.  (Emacs should display this document is in outline mode. Say
c-h m for instructions on how to move through it by sections (e.g., c-c c-n,
c-c c-p).)

* Contents
==========
What is scsh
  Scsh as a scripting language
  Scsh as a systems-programming language
  Scsh is a portable programming environment
Obtaining and installing scsh
Getting in touch
The World-Wide What?
New in this release
  Scsh is now "open source."
  Scsh is now on Win32
  Scsh is now on Mac OS X
  CVS repository will be public-readable
  New char-sets and char-set operations
  New regular expression system
  New libraries
  Renaming
  Bugfixes
Thanks


* What is scsh
==============
Scsh is a broad-spectrum systems-programming environment for Unix embedded
in R4RS Scheme. It has an open-source copyright, and runs on most major
Unix systems.

** Scsh as a scripting language
-------------------------------
Scsh has a high-level process notation for doing shell-script like tasks:
running programs, establishing pipelines and I/O redirection. For example, the
shell pipeline

    gunzip < paper.tex.gz | detex | spell | lpr -Ppulp &

would be written in scsh as

    (& (| (gunzip) (detex) (spell) (lpr -Ppulp))	; Background a pipeline
       (< paper.tex.gz))				; with this redirection

Scsh embeds this process notation within a full Scheme implementation.
The process notation is realized as a set of macro definitions, and is
carefully designed to allow full integration with standard Scheme code.
Scsh isn't Scheme-like; it is Scheme.

At the scripting level, scsh also has an Awk design, also implemented
as a macro that can be embedded inside general Scheme code.

Scripts can be written as standalone Scheme source files, with a leading
    #!/usr/local/bin/scsh -s
trigger line.


** Scsh as a systems-programming language
-----------------------------------------
Scsh additionally provides the low-level access to the operating system
normally associated with C. The current release provides full access to Posix,
plus important non-Posix extensions, such as complete sockets support.
"Complete Posix" means: fork, exec & wait, sockets, full read, write, open &
close, seek & tell, complete file-system access, including stat,
chmod/chgrp/chown, symlink, FIFO & directory access, tty & pty support, file
locking, pipes, select, file-name pattern-matching, time & date, environment
variables, signal handlers, and more.

In brief, you can now write Unix systems programs in Scheme instead of C.
For example, we have implemented an extensible HTTP server at MIT entirely
in scsh.

As important as full access to the OS is the manner in which it is provided.
Scsh integrates the OS support into Scheme in a manner which respects the
general structure of the language. The details of the design are discussed
in a joint MIT Lab for Computer Science/University of Hong Kong technical
report, "A Scheme Shell," also to appear in a revised format in the *Journal 
of Lisp and Symbolic Computation."  This paper is also available by ftp:
    ftp://ftp-swiss.ai.mit.edu/pub/su/scsh/scsh-paper.ps


** Scsh is a portable programming environment
---------------------------------------------
Scsh is designed for portability. It is implemented on top of Scheme 48,
a byte-code-interpreter Scheme implementation. The Scheme 48 virtual machine
can be compiled on any system with a C compiler; the rest of Scheme 48 is
machine-independent across 32-bit processors. Scsh's OS interface is
also quite portable, providing a consistent interface across different
Unix platforms. We currently have scsh implementations for:
    AIX
    BSD/OS
    CXUX
    FreeBSD
    HP-UX
    IRIX
    Linux
    NetBSD
    Solaris
    SunOS
    Ultrix
    Win32
    Darwin/Mac OS X

Scsh code should run without change across these systems.
Porting to new platforms is usually not difficult.


* Obtaining and installing scsh
===============================
You can get a copy of scsh via anonymous ftp, from
    ftp://ftp-swiss.ai.mit.edu/pub/su/scsh/scsh.tar.gz
The tar file includes a detailed manual and a paper describing
the design of the system.

For the lazily curious, we also have the manual separately available as
    ftp://ftp-swiss.ai.mit.edu/pub/su/scsh/scsh-manual.ps
Just click 'n view.

You *should* be able to build scsh on the standard platforms with exactly five
commands: gunzip, tar, cd, ./configure, and make. The configure script figures
out the special flags and switches needed to make the build work (thanks to
the GNU project for the autoconfig tool that makes this possible).

After doing the make, you can start up a Scheme shell and try it out
by saying
    ./scshvm -o ./scshvm -i ./scsh/scsh.image
See the manual for full details on the command-line switches.

If it's harder than this, and your system is standard, we'd like to know
about it.


* Getting in touch
==================
There are two main ways to join in scsh-related discussion: the mailing-list
    scsh@zurich.ai.mit.edu
and the netnews group 
    comp.lang.scheme.scsh
These two forums are exactly equivalent, being bi-directionally gatewayed 
at MIT.

Bugs can be reported to
    scsh-bugs@zurich.ai.mit.edu
or via the Scsh project's bugs section on SourceForge:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/scsh/

If you do not netnews hierarchy, or wish to join the mailing
list for other reasons, send mail to
    scsh-request@zurich.ai.mit.edu


* The World-Wide What?
======================
We even have one of those dot-com cyberweb things: 
    http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scsh/
We now manage the project using SourceForge:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/scsh/

* New in this release
=====================

    
** Scsh is now on Win32
   Scsh will now build and run using Cygwin 1.1. This was tested
   on Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, but presumably things could work
   on other Cygwin platforms such as Win95 or Win98. Cygwin is available
   from:
   http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/

** Scsh is now on Mac OS X
   Scsh does now support Darwin and thus Mac OS X. This was simply
   achived by treating Darwin as a BSD platform.

** CVS repository is now publically accessable
   The scsh sources have moved to scsh.sourceforge.net, and the
   the CVS repository is publically readable. Here's the magic:

   cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.scsh.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/scsh co scsh
   cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.scsh.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/scsh co scsh-0.6

   (The 0.6 source tree builds with a modern Scheme 48 and thread support.
    It has not been released.)

** New libraries
   Scsh now provides the SRFI-1, SRFI-13 and SRFI-14 libraries, giving
   portable support for list, string and character-set operations.

   These libraries make basic list and string hacking very straightforward.

** Database access via ODBC
   Brian Carlstrom, Sam Thiebault and Olin Shivers have designed and
   implemented a portable interface to relational databases. The code
   back-ends to ODBC drivers for portability.

** Bugfixes
   Over a year's worth of bug fixes. In particular, the old problems with the
   signal system blowing up builds on some of the more obscure Unix systems
   have been fixed.


* Thanks
========

We would like to thank the members of local-resistance cells for the
Underground everywhere for bug reports, bug fixes, design review and comments
that were incorporated into this release. We really appreciate their help,
particularly in the task of porting scsh to new platforms.
    Friedrich Dominicus
    Jay Nietling
    Tim Bradshaw
    Robert Brown
    Eric Marsden
    Paul Emsley
    Pawel Turnau
    Hannu Koivisto
    Andy Gaynor
    Francisco Vides Fernandez
    Tim Burgess
    Brian Denheyer
    Harvey Stein
    Eric Hilsdale

We'd like to thank everyone else for their patience; this release seemed like
a long time coming.

Brought to you by the Scheme Underground. Go forth and write elegant systems
programs.
    -Olin Shivers, Brian Carlstrom, Martin Gasbichler & Mike Sperber