[Oberon] Release with new object file format

[Ulrike Glavitsch]

Dear BB users,

A new crazy-fresh release ready for download is available under 
www.bluebottle.ethz.ch. This release is the first big step towards a 
garbage collector that explicitly knows where pointers are on the stack. 
This will make the garbage collector safer and as a consequence BB more 
reliable.
The object file format has been changed in the following way:
1.) Addition of information that will be used by the future garbage 
collector
2.) The compiler is not limited any longer to 16-bit offsets, offsets 
have been extended to 32 bits.
3.) Integer numbers are stored in a compressed format to be as general 
as possible. By this, small numbers will be consume only little space 
whereas large numbers will need more bytes.

ATTENTION: All your application programs will need to be recompiled in 
order to work !!!

Remark: AosDecoder.Mod has been adapted to the new object file, the 
Decoder under Oberon (Decoder.Mod), however, has not been changed. If 
there is strong desire to also adapt Decoder.Mod, I will do it.

I wish everyone good luck with the new release.

Ulla Glavitsch

PS: A big "thank you" goes to Sven Stauber and Florian Negele who helped 
me to go through the tricky release process.

-- 
ETH Zürich
Ulrike Glavitsch Eggler
Institut für Computersysteme
Clausiusstrasse 59
CH-8092 Zürich
Tel.: +41 44 632 70 49
Fax : +41 44 632 13 07