amber/CHANGELOG

Amber has been evolving furiously since the presentation at ESUG 2011 in Edinburgh less than 3 weeks ago.

This is a summary:
 
Language, compiler and runtime

- New 100x faster parser built using PEGjs instead of the old parser built using PetitParser.
- New much faster ChunkParser implementation in handwritten Amber instead of using PetitParser.
- Improved parsing error report with quoted source code plus marker pinpointing parsing error.
- Removed PetitParser since it is no longer needed by Amber itself.
- Added compiler optimizations in the form of speculative inlining of specific messages and control structures.
- Added support for dynamic Arrays, just like in Squeak/Pharo.
- Added support for similar dynamic Dictionaries, not seen in other Smalltalks.
- Added & and | as allowed binary selectors and implemented them in Boolean.
- Added a Set implementation.
- Added first basic support for real Packages with dependency information.

...and various extensions, enhancements and bug fixes to the library classes.


Development environment

- A working Debugger with integrated inspector, proceed etc.
- A new structure with 
- A working amberc command line compiler including a Makefile for recompiling the whole Amber.
- Enabled TestRunner in the IDE for running unit tests based on SUnit.
- Added "File in" button in Workspace to easily paste and filein source code in chunk format in the IDE.


Example code and ports

- Ported ProfStef interactive tutorial, available on Amber homepage but also in examples directory.
- Included the ESUG presentation as an example also in the examples directory.
- Several new examples running on Node.js and webOS included, all with Makefiles.
 
 
Various other things

- Issue tracker on github now used as primary source, closed a bunch of reported issues.
- Wiki pages on github with information on how to port code from other Smalltalks, lists of articles, tutorials, roadmap and more.