Release 3.5 Summary

• Bistro has been upgraded to support Sun JDK v1.4
• The IdentityDictionary and IdentitySet classes have finally been added (based on JDK v1.4).
• The default primitive contents of a Dictionary is now a HashMap rather than a Hashtable.
• The Bistro compiler now supports two new assertion idioms based on Java assertions.
• See the release notes for details and additional changes.

Summary of Recent Additions

• The metaclass: section of a Bistro class definition has become optional.
• The SmallInteger class now provides flyweight instances for more efficient math.
• The Bistro compiler now supports wrapped methods.
• The Bistro compiler was upgraded to use ANTLR 2.7.1.
• The Bistro compiler message optimizations have been improved.
• The Bistro compiler code generator was redesigned using the Visitor pattern.
• The idiom for declaring anonymous inner classes was changed (to asNew:).
• A variation of Kent Beck's SUnit test framework is now included in the class library.
• The org.ansi.smalltalk package was added to support compliance testing.

Software License

• Please review the license for details on permitted use of the published source code.
• The Bistro license was derived from that used by the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
• Hence, Bistro qualifies as Open Source software.

Project Status

• Bistro will eventually support round-trip conversions with the Smalltalk Interchange Format (SIF).
• To prepare for SIF, Bistro will first need to support pool dictionaries and globals.

• The Bistro class library includes behavior, magnitude, geometry, collection, stream, test, and example packages.
• The Bistro class library largely conforms to the message protocols in the ANSI Smalltalk standard.
• The Bistro class library is code complete, but it still needs ANSI compliance tests implemented.
• The Bistro collection class implementations depend on the Java™ collection class framework.
• So, Bistro requires a compilation environment compatible with Sun JDK v1.4 or later.
• The release archives include a complete set of library APIs generated by javadoc.
• The Smalltalk to Bistro conversion utility supports Squeak, Dolphin, Visual Smalltalk, and VisualWorks.

Research Papers

• See the overview for a brief introduction to Bistro and its features.
• See my latest paper for a deeper introduction to Bistro.
• See my first Bistro paper for details on my original motivations and directions for this project.

Acknowledgements - Special Thanks To:

• Terence Parr and the ANTLR team for a great set of compiler construction tools.
• Tracy Tondro for serving as a sounding board on language design issues.
• Aleksander Bandelj for inspired suggestions on Bistro improvements.
• Jean-Francois Cloutier for helping to name Bistro.
• Ian Bartholomew, Eric Clayberg, Ward Cunningham, Carl Gundel, Rick Hightower, James Robertson, Lorenzo Schiavina, Jeff Sutherland for moral support.

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Permission is granted to copy this document provided this copyright statement is retained in all copies.
Copyright 1999-2002 Nikolas S. Boyd.