[ANNOUNCE] XEmacs 21.0-beta37 "Pygmy" is released

The next edition of XEmacs 21.0 has been uploaded to the ftp site. ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/beta/xemacs-21.0/ CVS sources are at http://cvs.xemacs.org/ Installable Lisp packages are in: ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/beta/xemacs-21.0/packages/binary-packages/ The CVS tag for this beta is `r21-0b36'. It is likely that updated commits will be done through the week. To read about the Pygmy Goat please see http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/goats/pygmy/index.htm * Comments Over the week all the lists got converted to Majordomo and moved to the new server at tux.org (Erols). Thanks to Bob Weiner of Altrasoft for kicking things off, and thanks to David Niemi and John Martin for their coordination and assistance on the tux.org side, and thanks to Jason Mastaler the XEmacs Mailing List manager for making everything work on our end. Lots of bug fixes. Lots of updates for the various MS Windows configurations. There were some package updates done during the week, and the data in package-get-base.el should be current. We are in feature freeze, but until the MS Windows developers are happy, we are not yet in code freeze. Hopefully, soon. * Recent Changes There's a lot of new MS Windows support in this, including toolbar, processes, and Xpm. I'm happy with the package path/startup path stuff for the first time in a number of betas. Hopefully, we're past the worst of the changes. There's a lot of new MS Windows support in this, including toolbar, processes, and Xpm. All path stuffs should work again. The configure option --gung-ho now controls whether minimal tagbits and indexed lrecords are used. Please test the -elc tarball with this beta. I've generated it from a tty-only build for testing. While this should work (and the build now currently assumes it does work), and it seems to work for me, it needs as much testing as possible prior to release. Canna detection should work better. LDAP support should build and run. Multicast support should build and run. The default target of `make' is to build everything. This is almost what `make dist' used to do except that finder-inf.el (the finder database) gets properly bytecompiled. DLL support is now autodetected. The configure option `--with-dlmalloc' has been added so that gmalloc.c can still be used on systems with the Doug Lea new GNU Malloc. The Installation file format has changed slightly -- the version number is now printed in the summary, old copies are not retained, so if you wish old copies you will have to make the copy by hand. The Installation summary is available via the command M-x describe-installation. `XEmacs' can be used for X resources. This feature needs testing. dlmalloc now works with mmap'ping enabled for Linux Libc5 systems. I'm very interested in reports on how XEmacs' virtual memory footprint changes with time with dlmalloc. My own experiences with mmap disabled (only for glibc-2.0 and Mule) show a net win over 20.4. I'm hoping mmap improves things further. The source-packages subdirectory on the FTP site has been abolished in favor of distributing Lisp sources via CVS. The minimum required packages are the following: [Only xemacs-base updated since the last beta, the package version number is relatively unimportant] xemacs-base-1.18-pkg.tar This package contains core functionality not dumped into XEmacs. It includes things like the debugger, comint, overlay, ring, etc. mail-lib-1.10-pkg.tar This package contains core functionality common to mail and newsreading. None of these packages need to be installed if you intend to build the package lisp yourself. The only package you need to boostrap from source is the mule-base package. If you are building on a Sun with tooltalk and/or Sparcworks you will also need the Sun and tooltalk packages. These packages should be installed prior to dumping XEmacs. *NOTE:* As of beta30, you must use mule-base-1.10 or later. Note also, as of beta34, overlay.el has been moved to the fsf-compat package. If you are building with Mule, you will need to have the mule-base package installed *prior* to dumping XEmacs or you will lose. If you see messages about mule-charset not found, or get a bomb immediately after seeing a message about `loading ... dialog', then you need to stop and install the mule-base package. Other various packages need to be installed prior to dumping XEmacs. They are marked with `dump t' in the package description, see package-get-base.el and package-get.el for an interface. ** ImageMagick has gone away courtesy of Jareth Hein. ** The generalization of the XEmacs internals has continued. Quoting Kyle Jones: If you're feeling maximally gung, add -DUSE_MINIMAL_TAGBITS and -DUSE_INDEXED_LRECORD_IMPLEMENTATION to your compiler flags when you build 20.5. If all is well XEmacs should build and run normally. Update: These options are now enabled by specifying `--gung-ho'. -DUSE_MINIMAL_TAGBITS will be automatically set if using dlmalloc. NOTE: It should *never* be required to use these options for proper operation of XEmacs (with the single exception of -DUSE_MINIMAL_TAGBITS for dlmalloc). A failure _without_ these options set is a bug that needs to be fixed. ** Chinese and Korean Wnn server support has been added to LEIM. Someone familiar to cWnn and kWnn will need to test this out. I haven't heard any reports positive or negative yet. * Futures ** 21.0-beta38 is scheduled for Saturday, May 2. ** The highest priority is getting things ready for code freeze. ** Depending upon the level of patching activity, there will be several interim pre-betas for further testing. I wish to have things wrapped up for a late-May release. For those not acquainted with recent XEmacsen (things have changed since 20.3/21.0-b11), there are 4 files in the distribution. Each file has been PGP signed. *** xemacs-21.0-b36-21.0-b37.patch.gz This is a patch from the previous release. Please see the file etc/BETA for patching instructions. As of beta13 we're through the worst of the reorganizations and patching should be pretty smooth from here on out. *** xemacs-21.0-b37.tar.gz This is the core distribution without bytecompiled lisp and without processed texinfo manuals. If you are on a fast machine with a possibly slow connection to the FTP site, this is all you need for an XEmacs non-mule. Untar it, run configure, then run `make' and `make install'. *** xemacs-21.0-b37-info.tar.gz This the processed texinfo manuals. If you have makeinfo installed and your machine has any kind of decent speed, it is quicker to run `make info' from the toplevel and rebuild it yourself than it is to download and untar it. You will need a fairly recent version of makeinfo in order to be able process all the info documentation. At least `makeinfo (GNU texinfo 3.11) 1.68' is recommended. Note that the latest version of GNU texinfo is now 3.12. *** xemacs-21.0-b37-elc.tar.gz This is the bytecompiled lisp. It was freshly bytecompiled from scratch prior to distribution. to 21.0 beta37 "Pygmy" -- Bug fixes, generalization of image code from Andy Piper -- Installation/startup fixes from Michael Sperber -- Irix 5.3 dumping fix from Olivier Galibert -- Bug fixes from Martin Buchholz, Michael Sperber and Bob Weiner -- miscellaneous bug fixes -- More fixes from Didier Verna for Customization of options menu -- Miscellaneous patches from Kirill Katsnelson and Hrvoje Niksic -- More MS Windows toolbar stuffs from Kirill Katsnelson -- Custom-ization of the options menu from Didier Verna -- MS Windows toolbar stuffs from Andy Piper -- MS Windows build fixes from Kirill Katsnelson -- MS Windows process fixes from Kirill Katsnelson -- miscellaneous patches from Michael Sperber, Hrvoje Niksic, Martin Buchholz -- Gnuclient/gnudoit stdin support from Jan Vroonhof -- eldap fixes from Oscar Figueiredo -- Synching with InfoDock 3.7 -- info fixes from Oscar Figueiredo -- removed --sitelispdir configure option -- miscellaneous bug fixes