Neko 1.2

posted on 2006-01-09

Neko 1.2 have just been released on http://nekovm.org

This include several major changes :

  • runtime exceptions : several operations that were returning “null” before are now raising an exception. This is the case for invalid function calls (not a function or invalid number of arguments), object field access (for example null.x) , array access (still null if outside of bounds) and numerical operations.
  • linker : using “nekoc -link” you can now link a lot of .n bytecode files together into a single standalone .n file
  • nekoboot : this utility enable you to create standalone executables from a single bytecode file
  • renaming : the neko virtual machine is now named “neko” (instead of nekovm) and both neko and nekoml compilers are named “nekoc” and “nekoml”. Compilers are built using nekoboot and are then standalon executables (this is more easy to use, simply “nekoc myfile.neko”).
  • TCO : tail recursion optimizations in Neko
  • Object Prototypes : object can now have chained prototype (see Language Reference Documentation)
  • standard library : added UTF8 support, improved XML parser, and other useful primitives as well
  • licence change : Neko 1.2 is now LGPL while Neko 1.1 was GPL

There is also some experimental JIT but it’s not yet stable and is currently very slow (the JIT-generator, not the generated code).

I’m looking for people interested in using Neko as a target for compilers and research papers, contact me directly or on Neko mailing list if interested.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.