archives

Next Neko Features ?

Hello,

Neko is an intermediate high-level dynamicly typed programming language. It has been designed to provide a common runtime for several different languages (dynamicly as well as staticly typed).

Some people were interested in Neko evolution, so I'm posting here the new features that are part of the just-released 1.2 version (see http://nekovm.org) :

  • 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

I would like to get feeback from people that are interested in Neko. What are the features that are missing in Neko for you to target it ? Is there something in the design/other that prevent you from using Neko ? I'll work on next release to fix theses points if any.

Currently there is continuations on my TODO list.