| [ANN] LORIA ANNOUNCES RELEASE 1.0 OF SMARTEIFFEL, THE GNU EIFFEL COMPILER |
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By a member of the hurd, Section News
Posted on Wed Dec 18th, 2002 at 09:02:34 GMT |
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France -- 6 December, 2002 -- LORIA/INRIA-Lorianne, a leading research laboratory in information technology, is pleased to announce the release of SmartEiffel 1.0, the GNU Eiffel compiler. Formerly known as SmallEiffel, SmartEiffel is complete implementation of Eiffel with eight years of development behind it.
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Contact:
France -- 6 December, 2002 -- LORIA/INRIA-Lorianne, a leading research laboratory in information technology, is pleased to announce the release of SmartEiffel 1.0, the GNU Eiffel compiler. Formerly known as SmallEiffel, SmartEiffel is complete implementation of Eiffel with eight years of development behind it. SmartEiffel includes many new language features such as agents and tuples, an extensive standard library, and many support utilities. The compiler supports over 20 operating systems, including Linux. Indeed, SmartEiffel programs can be run on any platform that supports an ANSI C compiler or a JVM.
Along with the new name, the SmartEiffel team has extended its support program to offer premium support and consulting services. This release contains the following improvements over the last SmallEiffel release.
- The new Reference keyword is now implemented. Use reference INTEGER instead of INTEGER_REF. INTEGER_REF will become obsolete.
- The new INTEGER_GENERAL, INTEGER_8, INTEGER_16, INTEGER_32, INTEGER_64 types are now implemented.
- 64-bit architectures supported.
- Internal improvements in the type system (better C code produced)
- Buffered I/O. You may see big improvements in programs performing lots of file reading or writing (STD_INPUT and STD_OUTPUT are also buffered).
- The "tcc" C compiler is now supported, use release 0.9.14 or better.
- SmartZilla is now available for feature and bug-tracking!
- The new notation for free operators is now implemented.
- And many other improvements and bug fixes thanks to the SmartEiffel user community.
Dr. Bertrand Meyer invented Eiffel in the 1980's. Designed from the ground up to be an efficient, statically typed object-oriented
language, Eiffel is unique in its support for "Design by Contract (DbC)" -- sophisticated assertion mechanisms that aid the design,
development and documentation of Eiffel software.
Dr. Dominique Colnet began the GNU Eiffel project in 1994. "I do not claim that Eiffel is the language of the future (if any), but I think
that Eiffel is probably the best current tool for safe software production in the context of large teams. Another important point is
the SmartEiffel compilation strategy, which demonstrates that Eiffel code can run as fast as plain C code."
SmartEiffel is the basis for a large number of projects, such as the ELJ project that is actively developing SmartEiffel bindings to various
databases and GUI libraries, including wxWindows. Geoff Eldridge, who founded ELJ, likes Eiffel for it's clear syntax and semantics, and the self-documenting aspects of Eiffel contracts that reduces his need for reference materials. "So I am self-contained in my code development and hence have more time to think about the problem and its solution." Geoff also believes that DbC "is just brilliant. Once you have experienced DbC you feel exposed with other languages without the facility." Geoff also finds Eiffel to be very malleable, even though it is a statically typed language.
Uwe Sander, the lead developer of the ELJ project, agrees. "Design and development are closely related when working with Eiffel, not strictly separated foes." Uwe also appreciates SmartEiffel's support for interfacing to C and C++. "The integration with existing C code is now much better than it is in any other language I know, including C++. You can easily mess up a C++ project and let the old C style rule the project. Such a thing will never happen in an Eiffel project. It is always clear which language contains the top level logic."
Links
To download release 1.0, visit
http://smarteiffel.loria.fr/general/download.html
For more information about SmartEiffel, visit
http://smarteiffel.loria.fr
The SmartZilla database is at:
http://smartzilla.loria.fr/index.cgi
For more about premium support and contracting, visit
http://SmartEiffel.loria.fr/support/support.html
Subscribe to the SmartEiffel mailing list at:
http://smarteiffel.loria.fr/support/mailing-list.html
The home page for the ELJ project is here:
http://elj.sf.net/
For more resources and information on Eiffel in general, visit one of
these sites:
http://eiffel.com
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_eiffel.html
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