SmallEiffel 1.0 est sorti !

[Desnoix Guillaume]

Il y a une petite heurre que l'annonce officielle est sortie (voir ci-dessous). On va enfin pouvoir coder dans un "vrai" langage ;-)

Guillaume

PS: SmallEiffel genere du byte code pour la JVM.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

LORIA ANNOUNCES RELEASE 1.0 OF SMARTEIFFEL, THE GNU EIFFEL COMPILER

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, many support utilities, and improved Java Virtual Machine
(JVM) support.

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