10.17.1 New Features

• On 32-bit architectures, prior to release 3.10, the total data space could not exceed 256 MB. As of release 3.10, this limit only applies to the Prolog stacks, whereas other objects (static and dynamic code, symbol tables, etc.) can be stored anywhere in virtual memory.

  The fix involves a partial redesign of the memory allocator. The API function SP_set_memalloc_hooks() has changed incompatibly. See Initializing the Prolog Engine.

  As a consequence of the changes to the memory allocator, the sicstus option -m and the spld option --memhook are no longer meaningful. They are ignored for compatibility but will be removed in some future release.

  As another consequence of the changes, the “aligned pointer” concept and all such requirements in the foreign language interface have been dropped.

  Under Windows and Linux the memory for the Prolog stacks are now pre-allocated when initializing the SICStus run-time. This makes it less likely that the memory allocations of other parts of the application, such as Java, will conflict with the allocation needs of SICStus.

  This pre-allocation affects applications that use more than one SICStus run-time in the same process, e.g. from Java. The first initialized SICStus run-time will typically reserve all memory usable for Prolog stacks. This means that subsequent SICStus run-times initialized in the same process will fail. Set the environment variable PROLOGMAXSIZE to a suitable value to work around this problem. See Environment Variables.

  As part of the memory manager re-design, the SICStus API functions SP_malloc(), SP_calloc(), SP_realloc() now take size_t size arguments instead of unsigned int, just as their standard C equivalents.

• spld option --more-memory. This option modifies the linker script on x86 Linux so that almost 256MB can be used by the Prolog stacks. It is ignored on other platform. This option should be considered experimental.
• Support for AIX 5L 5.1 32-bit and 64-bit.
• The Application Builder spld takes new options:

  --resources-from-sav

  --no-resources-from-sav

  Automatically extract foreign resource names from embedded .sav file. Thus you do not need to know what foreign resources are used by the loaded Prolog code. This is now the default for static executables when no other resources are specified apart from an embedded saved-state. To turn off this feature, use --no-resources-from-sav.
  

  -E

  --extended-rt

  Create an extended runtime system. In addition to the normal set of built-in runtime system predicates, extended runtime systems include the compiler. Extended runtime systems require the extended runtime library, available from SICS as an add-on product.

  See The Application Builder.
• A new environment variable SP_LIBRARY_DIR is set during SICStus initialization to the location of the SICStus library files. This is similar to SP_APP_DIR and SP_RT_DIR. See Environment Variables.
• In the Jasper package the interface Term has a new method toString(Term options). The implementing class SPTerm calls write_term/3.
• Under Windows NT/2000/XP, library(timeout) now measures the user mode time of the SICStus thread. Under Windows 95/98/ME, the time is still walltime.
• Under Windows NT/2000/XP, statistics(runtime, ...) now measures the user time of the SICStus thread. This is the same as process user time for a single-threaded program but makes statistics(runtime, ...) meaningful also in a program with several threads (such as when using Java or multiple SICStus runtimes).
• library(bdb): now requires Berkeley DB 4.1.24 instead of 4.0.14. The predicate db_sync/1 is new.
• library(clpfd):
  • The constraints assignment/2 and global_cardinality/2 take new options, associating with the constraint a cost, which is reflected into a domain variable.
  • The constraint lex_chain/[1,2] expresses the fact that several vectors of domain variables are in ascending lexicographic order.
  • The predicate fd_global/3 has been extended with new options.