The Gerbil v0.19 development cycle

[vyzo]

The Gerbil v0.19 development cycle

Gerbil v0.18 was a singularity release that brought major changes to the language;
it all happened very much with one giant leap. The next planned "major"
release is v0.19, but it won't be a big bang this time. "Nimzowitsch"
has set a solid foundation, and we can iterate in much smaller "minor"
releases in this cycle.

We have already released v0.18.1, which brought some nice new features and bug fixes.

The Gerbil v0.18.2 release plan

The next planned release will be v0.18.2, which brings some important new functionality:

• we have reworked the MOP and it is now fully bootstrapped as proper Gambit types,
  while class inheritance linearization is performed using a derivative of the formal C3
  algorithm that we dub C4.
• we have new, SMP read-safe hash tables, implemented as an interface with multiple
  backends. That means you can also write your own hash table or mapping, implement
  the interface, and the hash-* API will just work for your new table!
• interfaces have been integrated in Gerbil core, and gain instance specializers with
  spectacular performance results for certain OO heavy programming patterns.
• we have implemented the standalone httpd,
  which brings a long desired (low level) web application development
  framework in Gerbil without having to roll your own everything with
  the embedded httpd.

Looking forward to the release, we have a couple more projects coming together:

• Using the httpd, @drewc and @ober are spearheading the effort to
  self-host the cons.io site, and finally provide the
  sorely missing availability of release specific documentation apart
  from master.
• Further down the road, @fare is working at integrating his Prototype
  Object Model with Gerbil metaclasses, bring an exciting new aspect to
  the Objective Gerbil and type classes.

v0.18.3 and beyond

There are quite a few initiatives in place for the next iterations:

• @belmarca is spearheading the effort to bring an integrated LSP server
  to Gerbil. Reach out to us in gitter if you want to help us test and polish the experience with editor integration.
• @drewc is spearheading the effort to make our docs shiny and lovely
• @vyzo is working on bringing the first iteration of Typed Gerbil to life,
  providing a gradual static typing approach and deep dots for fearless object
  orientation.

So when is v0.19?

It will be ready when it's done!
In the end it will be just a polish release after the iterations in v0.18.x. Stay tuned!