Wren now has three classes of modules:
- The one magic "core" module that's built in and always needed.
- Auxiliary libraries like "meta" and "random". These do not have any
dependencies, so can be used even when you embed Wren inside an
application. But they're also optional and can be disabled if you
don't need them.
- CLI modules. These ones need libuv and are tied to the CLI wrapper
around the VM.
Primitives still have a return value to indicate normal value returning
versus runtime errors or fiber switching since it minimizes branches
in the common case of a normal value result.
Instead, Fn.call(...) is a special *method* type that has the same
special sauce. The goal is eventually to get rid of the primitive
result type entirely.
- Add Fiber.transferError(_).
- Primitives place runtime errors directly in the fiber instead of on
the stack.
- Primitives that change fibers set it directly in the VM.
- Allow a fiber's error to be any object (except null).
- Add an explicit va_list version. That lets variadic functions
forward to it.
- Fix a GC bug in wrenCall() with return values.
- Make the call API test not re-enter the VM.
- Test that a foreign method can return strings.
- Test that a foreign method can return a string with null bytes.
- Test wrenCall().
- Allow passing NULL for "v" to wrenCall().
- Allow "a" for passing an explicit length byte array to wrenCall().
Get rid of the separate opt-in IO class and replace it with a core
System class.
- Remove wren_io.c, wren_io.h, and io.wren.
- Remove the flags that disable it.
- Remove the overloads for print() with different arity. (It was an
experiment, but I don't think it's that useful.)
- Remove IO.read(). That will reappear using libuv in the CLI at some
point.
- Remove IO.time. Doesn't seem to have been used.
- Update all of the tests, docs, etc.
I'm sorry for all the breakage this causes, but I think "System" is a
better name for this class (it makes it natural to add things like
"System.gc()") and frees up "IO" for referring to the CLI's IO module.
The .count getter on string returns the number of code points. That's
O(n), but it's consistent with the rest of the main string API.
If you want the number of bytes, it's "string".bytes.count.
Updated the docs.
Fixes 68. Woo!
Now that I'm starting to write a real async scheduler on top of Wren's
basic fiber API, I have a better feel for what it needs. It turns out
run() is not it.
- Remove run() methods.
- Add transfer() which leaves the caller of the invoked fiber alone.
- Add suspend() to return control to the host application.
- Add Timer.schedule() to start a new independently scheduled fiber.
- Change Timer.sleep() so that it only transfers control to explicitly
scheduled fibers, not any one.
Most of the pieces are there:
- You can declare a foreign class.
- It will call your C function to provide an allocator function.
- Whenever a foreign object is created, it calls the allocator.
- Foreign methods can access the foreign bytes of an object.
- Most of the runtime checking is in place for things like subclassing
foreign classes.
There is still some loose ends to tie up:
- Finalizers are not called.
- Some of the error-handling could be better.
- The GC doesn't track how much memory a marked foreign object uses.
