#+title: ABCL 1.9.1 released
* abcl-1.9.1
If one has been hesitating about using the latest ABCL because one
"never uses a dot oh release", we have now sloughed off abcl-1.9.1 for
your appraisal from the depths of a Bear's long winter nap.  Now one
can use the somewhat less buggy version of the Tenth Edition of Armed
Bear Common Lisp, available, as usual, at
<https://abcl.org/releases/1.9.1/> or via Maven
<https://search.maven.org/artifact/org.abcl/abcl/1.9.1/jar>.

** News


N.b. that when running on openjdk17 and later runtimes, there is quite
a bit of necessary fiddling with command line arguments to "open"
various modules to the Bear's introspective gaze.  For example, see
<https://abcl.org/svn/tags/1.9.1/ci/create-abcl-properties.bash> for
the switches necessary to use CFFI to successfully run the CL+SSL test
suite.

As a reward for your patience, we mention the following notable
improvements:

*** CFFI compatibility

We improved the compiler to use wide indices for stack frame locals
for the ALOAD, ASTORE, ILOAD, ISTORE, LLOAD, and LSTORE opcodes, which
among other goodness, allows CFFI-TESTS to compile again.  In
addition, we have updated the jar artifact used by CFFI to jna-5.12.1
which includes support for native linkage on the Apple Silicon
and other exotic architectures.

*** (Alan Ruttenberg) Ability to discriminate generic function execution on sub-types of MOP:SPECIALIZER 

Following SBCL, CCL, and ECL, the Bear now accepts subtypes of
MOP:SPECIALIZER as a generic function discriminator.

*** Overhauled relationship to later openjdk threading models

Going back to the future of the original green thread models, recent
openjdk releases have started offering lightweight threading
implementations.  For the Bear, the ability to spawn virtual threads
is indicated by the presence of :VIRTUAL-THREADS in CL:*FEATURES*.
Setting the special THREADS:*THREADING-MODEL* to :VIRTUAL results in
THREADS:MAKE-THREADS spawning virtual threads.  On some openjdks one
may have to pass a command-line switch the JVM to enable virtual
threading.

*** (Uthar) Implement array types for JAVA:JNEW-RUNTIME-CLASS

Support for creating synthetic Java classes at runtime via
JAVA:JNEW-RUNTIME-CLASS has been improved by introducing machinery for
dealing with array types.

*** (Alejandrozf) Compiler uses of signals to fallback to interpreted form
 
We fall back to use an interpreted form for compilation results larger
than 65535 bytes, which fixes the loading of the FirCAS computer
algebra system.

*** (Alejandrozf) Further fixes to COMPILE-FILE-PATHNAME

We have restored the ability to compile Maxima by hopefully untangling
the lask kinks in the reworking of our COMPILE-FILE-PATHNAME logic.

*** (Tarn W. Burton) Avoid NIL in simple LOOP from CL:FORMAT directives

Simplify simple CL:LOOP requires only compound forms, in the place
where returning NIL is neither permitted nor desired.  
 
*** Broad testing and tweaks across Java Long Term Support (LTS) binaries 

We have extensively tested against recent openjdk8, openjdk11,
openjdk17, and openjdk19 binaries.  Unfortunately, for openjdk17+
runtimes one needs to pass additional runtime command line switches to
the hosting JVM which "open" Java modules to reflective actions.  

* Fuller details

More details can be found in <https://abcl.org/svn/tags/1.9.1/CHANGES>.

Enjoy, and please CONS responsibly…