Gawk Roadmap

This page is an unofficial, subject to change, work in progress, roadmap for gawk development. Having this page is an experiment, I hope it will be a productive one.

Stage 1 - Byte Code Execution Engine and Debugger - Make a Second Test Release

In 2003, a gentleman by the name of John Haque implemented a byte-code execution engine and debugger (woo hoo!) for gawk. It also included built-in file inclusion.This was done for a development version in between gawk 3.1.3 and 3.1.4. It languished, unintegrated into the mainline code, because it was a big change and I didn't have the time to review it.

Around September 2009 or so, Stephen Davies, one of my portability testers, volunteered to help bring the code into the present. This meant getting it integrated into 3.1.7 (the then current official release) and getting it to work (passing make check on all currently supported systems).

One test release, based on 3.1.7, was made.

In June 2010, or so, John Haque rejoined the project, supplying newer code from what I had and integrating it into 3.1.8, which is now the released version. This version is almost ready for a second test release; the last few portability issues are being ironed out now.

Remaining tasks:

• Make a second test release
• Provide minimal documentation of the file inclusion feature - being worked on by a volunteer
  
• Provide minimal documentation of the debugger - being worked on by a volunteer
  

Stage 2 - Merge Into the Development CVS

The two change sets from 3.1.8 and the byte-code diffs will then be merged into the development version of gawk in the gawk-devel CVS branch on savannah.gnu.org.

At that point, further feature development can proceed in the development branch.

I may switch to using git instead of CVS at this point.

Stage 3 - Make a Release

The development version will likely be 4.0. A big task here is making sure there's enough documentation and that it's up-to-date and correct.  Other plans include:

• Removing old options, such as --compat and --copyleft
• Removing all unsupported systems, such as Atari, Amiga, BeOS, MS-DOS, non-POSIX Tandem and any others
• Removing all antiquated systems, such as SunOS 4.x, and anything else that doesn't support at least C89 and <stdarg.h>
• Thorough review and update of gawk.texi (in progress)
• Code review and clean-up

Volunteer needed: I would love to find someone to build gawk with Visual Studio (at least 2008) under Windows and maintain a native Win32 version.

Stage 4 - Other Stuff

There are no concrete plans after the above steps.

However, here are some ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while:

• Improve or revamp the C API for dynamically loadable modules
• Provide a syntax instead of function call for loading modules
• Think about some sort of namespace mechanism for variables and/or functions in modules
• Add support for MPFR so that gawk can use infinite precision numbers. This is a big job
• More code review and clean-up

Bookkeeping

Copyright © 2009, 2010, Arnold David Robbins. All Rights Reserved.

First started: 19 December, 2009.

Last updated: 3 August, 2010.