7df7b02014-10-03Per Hedbor Pike 8.1: Changes since Pike 8.0 (scratch area for future release notes)
2ac4992011-03-09Martin Stjernholm ----------------------------------------------------------------------
dca6762014-11-03Martin Nilsson New language features --------------------- o Unlimited character constant size. There is no longer any limit to the size of character constants, e.g. 'acdefghijk' creates the bignum 0x61636465666768696a6b.
a72ec62016-01-04Per Hedbor o 'auto' type added. This is much like a strict typed mixed. The actual type is deduced compile-time.
8e10492016-01-31Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  Typical use is as the type for variables in foreach when looping over complexly typed values, or as the type in macro-defined functions and similar.
a72ec62016-01-04Per Hedbor  auto can be used as return type for a function, it will be the logical or of all the types of the return statements in the function. o typeof(X) can now be used as a type. The main use case is in macros, but it might be useful for other things as well (as an example in a typedef). typedef typeof(Val.true)|typeof(Val.false) bool; typeof, when used like this, behaves very much like the C++ decltype() expression.
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson o Random rewrite The random functions have been rewritten to ensure security by
f8800b2016-01-26Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  default. random_string() and random() now get their data directly from the operating system random generator, i.e. /dev/urandom on most unixen. This is about half the speed compared with the random_string function in Pike 8.0, but is now as secure as the system random generator.
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  For consumers of random data that have additional requirements, different random generators are exposed in the new module
f8800b2016-01-26Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  Random. The module has the following generators:
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  - Random.Interface This is not actually a generator, but an interface class that is inherited into all the other generators. It contains code that can turn the output from the random_string method into random numbers with different limits without introducing bias. It also contains code for all the different variants of random() on different types. This is currently not possible to implement in Pike code, as the typing is too complicated and it is not possible to access private/protected _random methods in objects. - Random.System This generator maps directly on top of the system random generator. This is the default generator used for random() and random_string(). - Random.Deterministic
f8800b2016-01-26Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  This generator creates the same sequence of random numbers for a
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  given seed, with good pseudo random properties. - Random.Hardware
f8800b2016-01-26Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  This generator accesses the hardware random generator, when
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  available. - Random.Fast This generator takes entropy from the Random.System, but feeds
f8800b2016-01-26Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  it into a cryptographic pseudo random number generator to be
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  able to output data fast. This is not the default random number
8aa0f52016-03-19Martin Nilsson  generator to avoid loading crypto code on every startup.
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson 
f8800b2016-01-26Henrik Grubbström (Grubba)  Comparing the different generators with each other gives the following approximate speeds on a Linux system with hardware random support:
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  Random.System 1.0 Pike 8.0 random_string 0.45 Random.Hardware 0.25 Random.Fast 0.20 Random.Deterministic 0.20
8aa0f52016-03-19Martin Nilsson  Objects implementing the _random lfun now get two arguments, the current random_string() and random() functions. This is convenient for C-level functions that doesn't have to look up functions themselves. Note that it is possible for a user to replace these with non-conforming functions (returning values of the wrong type, strings of the wrong length or shift size, and values outside the given range) or even non-functions. All code in Pike that uses random now uses the current random functions (though in some cases fixed at object creation). This allows for repeatable results if the random functions are replaced with a deterministic random generator, such as Random.Deterministic. Example: Random.Deterministic rnd = Random.Deterministic( seed ); add_constant( "random_string", rnd->random_string ); add_constant( "random", rnd->random );
7a82ac2016-01-26Martin Nilsson 
9654e02015-10-15Martin Nilsson Incompatible changes -------------------- o Gz.crc32 now only returns positive results.
35e4fd2016-02-01Henrik Grubbström (Grubba) 
dca6762014-11-03Martin Nilsson Removed features and modules ---------------------------- o Compatibility for Pike versions before 7.8 is no longer available.
a72ec62016-01-04Per Hedbor o GTK1 library is deprecated, so glue code is removed.
951b442016-01-04Martin Nilsson New modules ----------- o ADT.Scheduler o ADT.TreeScheduler o Filesystem.Zip o Stdio.FakePipe o Parser.Markdown
f5f00d2016-01-26Martin Nilsson 
951b442016-01-04Martin Nilsson o Crypto.Checksum
f5f00d2016-01-26Martin Nilsson  This module collect non-cryptographic checksums. Support for crc32, adler32 and Castagnoli CRC (CRC32C).
951b442016-01-04Martin Nilsson o Protocols.HTTP2 o Bittorrent.DHT
4fd7212016-01-04Martin Nilsson o MsgPack
951b442016-01-04Martin Nilsson 
35e4fd2016-02-01Henrik Grubbström (Grubba) 
a72ec62016-01-04Per Hedbor New features ------------
be725d2016-01-04Martin Nilsson o Gmp.mpf is now implemented using gmpf if the library is available.
992e242015-08-24Martin Nilsson 
35e4fd2016-02-01Henrik Grubbström (Grubba) 
83a8f52015-11-09Martin Nilsson C-level API changes ------------------- o The contract for functions is now changed so that a function is no longer required to clean the stack. The topmost value of the stack will be regarded as the return value and the rest of the items on the stack, compared to before the function arguments were pushed, will be popped and discarded. Efuns still have to clean their stack as previously.
83a3202016-01-29Martin Nilsson o Removed add_function, pike_add_function, pike_add_function2,
4903e82016-01-30Martin Nilsson  simple_add_variable, map_variable and MAP_VARIABLE. This removes the remaining few API:s where text types were used. Use ADD_FUNCTION and
f1dbf02016-01-29Martin Nilsson  PIKE_MAP_VARIABLE instead.
83a3202016-01-29Martin Nilsson 
8aa0f52016-03-19Martin Nilsson o Removed my_rand and my_srand are removed. Use the random functions on the stack for _random lfuns, the push_random_string or look up the random function from get_builtin_constants().
35e4fd2016-02-01Henrik Grubbström (Grubba) 
dca6762014-11-03Martin Nilsson Building and installing ----------------------- o GMP 4.1 or later is now required.
9721ab2016-01-11Martin Nilsson  o C99 assumed The configure tests will not check for functions defined in C99 anymore and C99 compiler support is assumed.