New release notes.

doc/scsh-release-0.5

@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+We are pleased to release version 0.5 of scsh, the Scheme shell.
+
+* Scsh
+------
+
+Scsh is a Scheme system designed for systems programming and high-level
+scripting of Unix applications. It includes
+
+- a complete Posix interface from Scheme, including complete
+  sockets support, signal handlers, and tty control;
+
+- a uniform interface to other generally-universal Unix features, 
+  such as symlinks and pseudo-terminals;
+
+- a library of generally useful tools for scripting applications, 
+  such as regular expressions;
+
+- macro support for a high-level process notation, allowing one to
+  build pipelines of programs and redirect I/O, similar to Unix shells
+  such as sh and csh;
+
+- a full R5RS-compliant Scheme, with important extensions: record types,
+  exceptions, and modules;
+
+- command-line interface designed for writing scripts that are invoked
+  with #! triggers on their first line.
+
+Scsh runs on most Unix platforms, including Linux, various BSD systems,
+Solaris, AIX, and Irix. It is implemented as an extension of Scheme 48,
+a portable, byte-code interpreter Scheme implementation.
+
+* Obtaining scsh
+----------------
+
+You may obtain the new release at the scsh web page
+
+    http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scsh/
+
+which points to the following file, retrievable by anonymous ftp:
+
+    ftp://ftp-swiss.ai.mit.edu/pub/su/scsh/scsh.tar.gz
+
+The tar file includes full sources, 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 for your system by simply ftping
+the release file, and doing the following:
+    gunzip < scsh.tar.gz | tar xf -
+    cd scsh-0.5
+    ./configure
+    make
+    make install
+
+* New in this release
+---------------------
+Our last release had a lot of new code, and some elements were pretty
+flaky. Scsh is now much more robust. All known bugs have been fixed.
+
+Scsh now supports complete Posix, including signal handlers.
+Early autoreaping of child processes is now handled by a SIGCHLD
+signal handler, so children are reaped as early as possible with no
+user intervention required.
+
+A functional static heap linker is included in this release.
+It is ugly, limited in functionality, and extremely slow, but it works.
+It can be used to build scsh binaries that start up instantly.
+
+There is a new command-line switch, 
+    -sfd <num>
+which causes scsh to read its script from file descriptor <num>.
+
+Scheme 48's floating point support was inadvertently omitted from the last
+release. It has been reinstated.
+
+The regular expression system has been sped up.  Regular-expression
+compilation is now provided, and the AWK macro has been rewritten to
+pre-compile regexps used in rules outside the loop.  It is still, however,
+slower than it should be.
+
+Execing programs should be faster in this release, since we now use the
+CLOEXEC status bit to get automatic closing of unrevealed port file
+descriptors.
+
+* Thanks
+--------
+
+We received many bug reports, improvements, fixes and suggestions from scsh
+users. In particular, we'd like to thank Alan Bawden, Michael Becker, Jin
+Choi, Sean Doran, Lutz Euler, Kevin Esler, Rolf-Thomas Happe, David Hull,
+Shriram Krishnamurthi, Tod Olson, Michel Schinz, Bill Sommerfeld, Mike
+Sperber, and Victor Zandy for their contributions to this release.
+
+Thanks, guys; we really appreciate the feedback.
+
+Olin Shivers		Brian D. Carlstrom
+Cambridge, Mass.	Santa Clara, Ca.
+
+May, 1997