From rossberg at ps.uni-sb.de  Fri May  4 16:19:42 2007
From: rossberg at ps.uni-sb.de (Andreas Rossberg)
Date: Fri May  4 16:19:40 2007
Subject: Alice 1.4 released
Message-ID: <f1ffdn$h4a$1@james.ps.uni-sb.de>

We are happy to announce version 1.4 of the Alice Programming
System:

     http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/alice/

Alice ML is a functional programming language that enriches the
statically typed, closed functional world of ML with extensive
support for type-safe programming of concurrent, distributed
and open systems. It also features cutting-edge constraint
programming technology based on the Gecode library.

Alice ML is a mostly conservative extension of Standard ML
featuring:

  Futures
     selective laziness and light-weight concurrency with
     implicit dataflow synchronisation
  Higher-order modules
     higher-order functors and abstract signatures
  Packages
     dynamically typed ML modules as first-class values
  Pickling
     type-safe, generic & platform-independent marshalling,
     including code, types and entire modules
  Components
     type-safe lazy dynamic linking across the Internet
  Distribution
     type-safe remote functions and network mobility
  Constraints
     constraint propagation and programmable search for
     solving hard combinatorial problems with Gecode
  Virtual Machine
     portable implementation with just-in-time compilation
  Interactive tools
     easy to use interactive toplevel with graphical interface
     and graphical browsers for data structures and search spaces

The highlights of this release are:

  First-class Components and Sandboxing
     Alice ML now features syntax for first-class components and
     an experimental sandboxing infrastructure
  Improved SML Conformance
     the most significant gaps regarding SML conformance have been
     closed, particularly signature inclusion and equality types
  Potential Successor ML Features
     integrated additional proposals for Successor ML
  Improved Toplevel
     a number of additions to the toplevel's GUI meant to improve
     "user experience", especially for beginners

For a detailed list of changes please see:

     http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/alice/download/CHANGES

Alice is open source under a BSD-style license. Source and binary
packages are currently available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

Enjoy,

        - The Alice Team