Fastruby roadmap up to 0.5.0

Fastruby development (up to 1.0.0 release) will be divided into two main phases:

• Incremental Proof of Concept. Transition from a base spike/PoC (version 0.0.1) to usable gem (version 0.1.0).
  
• Usable versions. Transition from minimally usable gem (version 0.1.0) to stable API release (version 1.0.0)
  

This is a rough roadmap and might change in the future if new ideas or optimizations are discovered

PoC Incremental Versions

Version 0.0.8: lambdas (already released)

• Implementation of DAG stack including GC mark of local variables residing on it
  
• lambda support
• refactor of break implementation
  

Version 0.0.9: proc

• proc support using the same functionality as for lambda
  

Version 0.0.10: Gem packaging fixes

Version 0.0.11: for, retry, redo

• refactor of non-local jumps to use ruby API
  
• trivial implementation of for
• implementation of retry and redo as non-local retro-jumps (like the implementation of loop/while)
  

Version 0.0.12: Full exception support

Version 0.0.13: Methods with variable number of arguments

Version 0.0.14: Support for method replacement

Version 0.0.15: continuation objects


Etc...

Version 0.1.0: First usable release

• Any ruby code executable by MRI can be executed by fastruby
  

Usable Versions (Following semantic versioning)

Zero used as mayor version number is used when API is changed every day without backward compatibility (despite the fact that will be backward compatibility when possible). Also, on 0.X.X versions the API is completely undefined.
Bugs and spec un-compliance of 0.1.0 release will be fixed on subsequent stabilization releases (0.1.1, 0.1.2, etc...)

Version 0.1.0: Execution of Ruby

Features:

• Any executable code in ruby is executable via fastruby and gives the same results
  
• Interoperation between ruby and fastruby is granted
  

Version 0.2.0: Fast execution of ruby, internal optimizations

Features

• All internal optimizations documented up to 0.1.0 release
  
  • Linear stack when possible using nonlambda qualifier
    
  • Method dispatcher cache (to speedup calls from ruby)
    
  • Optimization of C frames to make ruby return using C return when possible (useful on small methods)

Version 0.3.0: Fast execution of ruby, C extension API

• C extension points
  • API to define methods in C, by class, method name and signature allowing replacement of ruby standard lib implementation in the future.

Version 0.4.0: Fast execution of ruby, C extension API 2

• C extension points
  • Macro methods (keeping dynamism). Examples:
    
    1. Fixnum#+(x:Fixnum) => INT2FIX(FIX2INT(self)+FIX2INT( x) )
    2. String#[](x:Fixnum) => rb_str_new2(RSTRING(self)->ptr[FIX2INT(x)],1)
    3. String#[]=(x:Fixnum,y:Fixnum) =>
       RSTRING(self)->ptr[FIX2INT(x)]=FIX2INT(y)
       

Version 0.5.0: Faster standard lib

• Ruby standard lib re-implemented in a separated gem optimized for fastruby
• Fastruby works with and without optimized stdlib