bertrand@eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer) (06/05/89)
In the next two days there will be a few notes from me on comp.lang.eiffel. The reason for what may appear as a sudden flurry of messages is that I will be away from net access for a few weeks and want to get a few Eiffel-related pieces of information before I leave. Besides, what is there to do in Santa Barbara on a Sunday afternoon in June other than typing news at your terminal? Eiffel: The next six months The following is a brief overview of forthcoming developments in Eiffel. Version 2.2 ----------- We are preparing to release version 2.2. The internal release date is June 15 and we shall start shipping by June 30 (July 15 in Europe). This is later than initially expected and we sincerely apologize to the Eiffel community for the delay. The reason is clear: we put into this version much more than initially planned. We thought that the added benefits would be worth the wait. We are extremely excited about this new version and we hope Eiffel users will be too. Version 2.2 brings a set of major improvements and extensions in areas such as graphics, persistency, class browsing tools, interactive debugging tools, flexibility and consistency of the type system, interface with C and other languages, existing libraries, new libraries (parsing, non-graphics windowing) etc. The documentation has also been revised, including in particular a first draft of the complete Eiffel language reference manual. Version 2.2 is a set of major individual improvements but did not imply any major overhaul of the compiler and environment. No language incompatibility is introduced with the exceptions of a few new keywords (which make the corresponding names illegal as identifiers). All current Eiffel users with an active maintenance agreement will receive 2.2 free of charge. Summer and Fall developments ---------------------------- Once 2.2 is out, our developments will be aimed at furthering the language and environment in both breadth and depth. I can only talk here about developments at Interactive Software Engineering, exclusive of any other organization working on Eiffel. We have for some time been working on a VMS version. It should be ready during the summer. An important immediate task is EIFFEL-TO-DOS, an extension of the current Eiffel-to-C cross-development system (package generator) to generate an MS-DOS package; currently the generated package assumes Unix by default. Such a package may be ported to MS-DOS, as has indeed be done by a number of users, with problems for large classes as described in the Microsoft C context by Craig Statchuk in a recent message (<6238@knuth.UUCP>). The purpose of EIFFEL-TO-DOS is to do the job once and for all. EIFFEL-TO-DOS is not yet a full implementation of Eiffel on DOS but a Unix -> DOS cross-development facility. The tentative target date is September; this is only an estimate, however, not a commitment. The major immediate porting effort will be targeted at MacEiffel: a full implementation of Eiffel on the Macintosh environment. This is the ``native'' MacOS, of course (having Eiffel on AUX, the Mac Unix, is trivial). Based on the considerable amount of unsolicited requests for a Mac version of Eiffel that we have received (many of them through the net) and a number of other considerations, we have now committed to making Eiffel available under the MPW. We are extremely excited about this and think we can do it fast: in fact the hope is to have MacEiffel out by the early Fall. A precise target date will be announced later. But the commitment to MacEiffel is final. A message will be posted shortly with respect to work on parallel facilities. Finally two new announcements are being posted to comp.newprod because they include significant non-technical aspects. They address: - The creation of a supporting organization for distributing (in Eiffel form, C form or both) Eiffel components contributed by others, which we view as a major step towards making software development a real industry. - Interactive's policy with respect to the use of Eiffel (the name, the language, the technology), a clear response to a question that has been asked a few times in this newsgroup but never answered properly by us. Please consult comp.newprod if you are interested in these issues. Version 3.0 ----------- The next major version is planned for early December. This is version 3.0, whose principal objective is to provide a quantum leap in the implementation. Externally the major benefits of 3.0 will be: 1. - Improvement of the generated code in time and space. 2. - Improvement of compilation speed through a finer grain of incremental recompilation. 3. - Fully graphical development environment (on suitable platforms). On point 2, the idea is to improve the current automatic incremental compilation mechanism of Eiffel (which we feel is a major advantage of the system) so as to use the routine, not the class, as the unit of recompilation. Ultimately the aim is to make users forget that they have a compiler (rather than, say, an interpreter). A few minor language changes are also planned for version 3.0; they are described in another message. The distribution of version 3.0 will be timed to coincide with a new edition of the book ``Object-Oriented Software Construction'' and with the first edition of a new book, ``Eiffel: The Language and Environment'', both by Prentice-Hall. -- -- Bertrand Meyer bertrand@eiffel.com
pnm@goanna.oz (Paul Menon) (06/10/89)
From article <152@eiffel.UUCP>, by bertrand@eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer): > > In the next two days there will be a few notes from me on > comp.lang.eiffel. The reason for what may appear as a sudden flurry of > messages is that I will be away from net access for a few weeks and > want to get a few Eiffel-related pieces of information before I leave. > Besides, what is there to do in Santa Barbara on a Sunday afternoon > in June other than typing news at your terminal? How about thinking kangaroo? We have been trying to get in touch with you or anyone at eiffel.com with no luck since your first response on May 2nd. We are eager to use the language here, but haven't been able to get to step one - getting the relevant acquistion documents/agreements/prices. We intend to use it as part of our undergraduate course, and our research programme. I can only assume an unreliable email link. We would appreciate the forwarding of the relevant literature. Thankyou, Paul Menon, Dept of Computer Science, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 124 Latrobe Street, Melbourne 3001, Victoria, Australia. PH: +61 3 660 2291 CSNET: pnm@goanna.rmit.oz BITNET/ARPA: pnm%goanna.rmit.oz@uunet.uu.net UUCP: ...!uunet!munnari!goanna.rmit.oz!pnm