
                   NEW FEATURES in version 0.9.0.

This version is almost complete rewrite. There is no new functionality 
in this release, but the internals were considerably reorganized. JEL
became smaller and faster. It also generates better code in some cases. 
The new gnu.jel.ClassFile class allows to create almost arbitrary Java
classes (there is no support for Exceptions yet) with a high level
calls.

The new version does not support constants of reference types anymore
(except java.lang.String) which allows it ti generate a stock Java class
files with no tricks.

The specialized expressions serialization interface (gnu.jel.ExpressionBits)
 is gone. This is because now there is no necessity to store reference
type constants. JEL generated code can be requested as an ordinary byte
array to be  saved/restored at will.


                   BUGS

*   Under JDK 1.2.2 pre 1 on Linux JEL's testsuite kills the java VM at
    exceptions test. This is bug 4300897 in JDK. Workaround is to disable
    JIT.

*   JEL does not run under IBM JDK 1.1.8 on Linux with JIT on if it was
    compiled by JDK 1.1 compiler with -O flag. This is either problem of
    javac or IBM's JIT. Note that distributed version is compiled with
    jdk 1.2 compiler and works with IBM JDK 1.1.8 JIT.

*   In Microsoft JVM with JIT enabled "d2i" instruction was not implemented
    correctly. To see if this BUG is fixed in Your JVM run the JEL
    testsuite, it has corresponding test.
    

                       PLANNED FEATURES

1. More examples to come.

Detailed changes since previuos versions are summarized in 
the file : ./src/gnu/jel/ChangeLog

Sat Feb 12 18:31:37 CET 2000 
           Konstantin Metlov.