July 29, 2022

New Red binaries

Since many years, we are offering pre-built binaries for the Red toolchain, as a more convenient way to use Red, even if it is not strictly needed, as Red can be run from its sources, the toolchain being run by a Rebol2 interpreter. As the Red REPL and toolchain are not run by the same engine, the console (REPL) used to be compiled on first run of the `red` executable (when no arguments was provided or a Red script was passed). This resulted in a significant delay on the first use of the console (both for the GUI and CLI versions). 

We have now decided to change that by providing separate pre-built binaries for the consoles and toolchain. This is a temporary split until Red gets self-hosted, at which point we can recombine everything into a single binary.

Another change is the temporary dropping of the semantic versioning until version 1.0 and related "stable" releases, as it seems to be too confusing to some users (Red being still in alpha stage). This also will remove a tendency from some users to care more about version increments than feature availability and work being done overall. We will now be proposing only pre-built binaries for latest commit, though older binaries will still be available if that can be of any help to anyone.

So the pre-built binaries now are:
  • Red GUI : Red interpreter + View + GUI console
  • Red CLI : Red interpreter + CLI console
  • Red Toolchain : Encapper for Red + Red/System compiler

We are also considering ways to merge the GUI and CLI consoles into a single binary which can work even if no GUI API is available, falling back on CLI mode. We will also have the console(s) act as a front-end for the toolchain, even downloading it for you in the background when needed. Though for that we need a proper asynchronous `call` function implementation. More news about this soon.

In the meantime, enjoy running Red consoles almost instantly from just a click on the Download page!


5 comments:

  1. Been following for a very long time! Version 1.0 on the horizon and two posts in 30 days... I just wet myself!!!

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  2. Looking forward to 1.0 and 64-bit binaries, as my prefers OS for development is macOS, and they dropped support for 32-but binaries many versions ago.

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  3. I will check in another 5 years to see how the plans got distracted by another stuff and maybe in 8 years to see 0.99 version.

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    Replies
    1. Wow, this dill is really easy to spot after you first notice his corrosive behaviour and infantile tantrums. Anyone care to play "psychoanalyse the troll" for a bit of fun?

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  4. It's been about 9 months since this post, any progress since then?

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