bison-2.6.90 released [beta]

[Akim Demaille]

The Bison team is happy to announce the forthcoming release of Bison
2.7.  There are many nice new features (especially in the way the
diagnostics are produced, and in the graph representation of the
parser), implemented by Théophile Ranquet for most of them.  See the
list below.

Please, do check this tarball on your projects, so that we can make a
trustable release Bison 2.7 next week.

Cheers!

Here are the compressed sources:
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-2.6.90.tar.gz   (2.9MB)
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-2.6.90.tar.xz   (1.6MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-2.6.90.tar.gz.sig
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-2.6.90.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify bison-2.6.90.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 0DDCAA3278D5264E

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.69
  Automake 1.12.5
  Flex 2.5.37
  Gettext 0.18.1
  Gnulib v0.0-7734-gc457e70

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.90 (2012-12-07) [beta]

** Bug fixes

  Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.

** %language is no longer an experimental feature.

  The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The --language
  option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.

** New format for error reports: carets

  Caret errors have been added to Bison, for example (taken from the
  documentation):

    input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
     exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
                        ^^^^
    input.y:3.1-3:       refers to: $exp at $$
     exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
     ^^^
    input.y:3.6-8:       refers to: $exp at $1
     exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
          ^^^
    input.y:3.14-16:     refers to: $exp at $3
     exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
                  ^^^

  The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless explictly
  asked with -fall of -fcaret. However, in a later release, it will be made the
  default behavior (but may still be deactivated with -fno-caret).

** New value for %define variable: api.pure full

  The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
  for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser resulted
  in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a parameter. With this
  new value, the user may request a better pure parser, where yyerror does take
  a location as a parameter (in location-tracking parsers).

  The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
  "%define api.pure full".

** Changes in the format of error messages

  This used to be the format of many error reports:

    foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
    foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration

  It is now:

    foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
    foo.y:4.13-27:     previous declaration

** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)

  The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
  release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
  before re-throwing the exception.

  This feature is somewhat experimental.  User feedback would be
  appreciated.

** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)

  The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
  for locations.  When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
  and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
  then responsible to define her type.

  This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
  and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
  them.

  This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
  under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
  compatibility).

  For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
  position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
  api.position.type.

** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT

  The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
  now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
  numbered and left-justified.

  The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
  diamond shaped nodes.

  These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
  processing, with minor (documented) differences.

  Two nodes were added to the documentation: Xml and Graphviz.

** Documentation

  The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
  have been fixed and extended.