RELEASE-NOTES for Qore 0.7.6

release summary: 32 bug fixes and major new features over 0.7.5

• BUG FIX: updated is_writable() and is_readable() to always return True if called by effective UID 0 (root)
• BUG FIX: fixed a race condition in deleting objects by marking objects atomically as inside destructor
• BUG FIX: updated sleep() to continue sleeping for the remaining time if interrupted by a signal
• BUG FIX: changed decompression routines to a string to preserve binary data, especially trailing nulls
• BUG FIX: fixed C++ QoreString constructor when taking ownership of a string buffer to ensure that the buffer is null terminated when the allocated buffer is exactly equal to the string length
• BUG FIX: fixed scanner to ignore quoted text in comments (i.e. "*/" will be ignored)
• BUG FIX: updated the Socket class implementation to retry connect(), accept(), recv(), send(), and select() (Socket::isDataAvailable(), Socket::connect() with timeout, etc) if interrupted by a signal
• BUG FIX: updated the File class implementation to retry read(), write() and fcntl() with F_SETLKW (File::lockBlocking()) if interrupted by a signal
• BUG FIX: fixed set_signal_handler() to accept a closure as per the documentation
• BUG FIX: fixed internal C++ library function test_funcref_param() to return a value for call references and closures
• BUG FIX: fixed broken access to private members of an object outside the class; before it was possible to delete and reassign private members from outside the class which should have been illegal
• BUG FIX: fixed a crashing bug in the File::open2() method
• BUG FIX: fixed class method registration so that static method names and non-static method names have independent namespaces (i.e. a static method may now have the same name as a non-static method).  Static methods may still be called with normal method call syntax, however if there is a non-static method with the same name, then it will be called instead.
• BUG FIX: when an HTTP header is received more than once, return all values as a list under the header name in the resulting hash
• BUG FIX: fixed a potential race condition that could cause a crash in very rare circumstances in internal C++ QoreClass::numMethods() and QoreClass::numStaticMethod() functions; to make a crash a program would have to be running and parsing new code into the program in a separate thread as well; this is explicitly supported by Qore, but very rarely done
• BUG FIX: fixed an XML-RPC parsing bug caused by a side-effect in a debugging statement
• BUG FIX: fixed a bug setting the character encoding in strings produced with makeXMLFragment() and makeFormattedXMLFragment() when the default character encoding is not UTF8
• BUG FIX: fixed concatentation of strings with embedded nulls
• BUG FIX: fixed split() to work on strings with embedded nulls
• BUG FIX: fixed method resolution for in-object method calls when the target method is static
• BUG FIX: fixed a crash in parsing when a class with no parent classes references a base class method of an existing class
• BUG FIX: fixed static method calls at the top level of a program
• BUG FIX: fixed type comparisons with new qore types implemented in external modules
• BUG FIX: fixed configure to ensure compiling in 32-bit mode on Darwin/OSX if 32-bit mode is selected
• BUG FIX: fixed configure to assume 64-bit mode by default on Darwin 10 (OSX Snow Leopard)
• BUG FIX: fixed $ARGV and $QORE_ARGV variables to always be of type list as according to the documentation
• BUG FIX: fixed Socket::connect() with timeout (affects all classes using sockets for communication
• BUG FIX: fixed DatasourcePool handling when a driver-handled auto-reconnect fails (previously would cause a crash)
• BUG FIX: added QDOM_TERMINAL_IO to TermIOS class (previously this class would be available even if PO_NO_TERMINAL_IO was in force)
• BUG FIX: fixed a bug parsing XML-RPC array data with empty value elements; i.e.: <value/>
• BUG FIX: fixed a bug waiting on a Condition variable when thread read lock is held by multiple threads (for RWLock)
• BUG FIX: fixed a bug calculating the time offset for waiting on a Condition object
• BUG FIX: fixed millisecond formatting using "ms" with format_date()
• BUG FIX: fixed a crashing bug when a Condition object waits on a RWLock with the read lock held
• BUG FIX: fixed a bug setting the exception location when throwing thread resource exceptions when shutting down the qore library
• NEW FEATURE: added XmlDoc, XmlReader, and XmlNode classes for more robust XML parsing and document iteration
• NEW FEATURE: added support for validation with RelaxNG schemas: new functions: parseXMLWithRelaxNG() and parseXMLAsDataWithRelaxNG() as well as new method: XmlDoc::validateRelaxNG()
• NEW FEATURE: added a new binary_to_string() function to convert a binary object directly to a string type
• NEW FEATURE: implemented binary object concatentation with the + and += operators
• NEW FEATURE: the -= operator now operates on objects (with string and list operands) like it does with hashes
• NEW FEATURE: added static method TermIOS::getWindowSize() to get the current terminal window size (rows and columns)
• NEW FEATURE: new C++ APIs are available supporting a generic calling convention to facilitate the development of the new Qt4 module using libsmoke; the latest module API is now 0.8
• NEW FEATURE: added the HTTPClient::isConnected() method
• NEW FEATURE: added the rename() function to rename or move files
• NEW FEATURE: case expressions now support the == operator for soft comparisons
• NEW FEATURE: updated split() to work on binary objects just like on strings, but will return a list of binary objects split by the marker
• BUILD CHANGE: minimum libxml2 version required for compiling and linking is now 2.6.0