Wednesday, 23 July 2003 Announcement ============ The members of the Components Team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are pleased to announce the beta release of Babel, version 0.8.6. What's New ========== The following features have been added, or completed, in this release: * partial support for AIX (server-side python is not working) (see notes in INSTALL before attempting AIX configure/build) * support for Absoft, Lahey, Intel and PGI F90 on Linux x86 (see notes for compiling with Intel's compilers on Linux) * arrays of enumerated types are supported in C, C++ and Python. * upgrade autoconf, automake and libtool to 2.57, 1.7.4 and 1.5 respectively * upgrade to Xerces 2.4.0 (an XML parser) * support Kaffe's virtual machine * bugfixes and consistency improvements in configure + improved support for disabling languages + can enable compilers not found in PATH + more "influential environment variables" documented in `configure --help` + NOTE: some options to configure have changed names/behavior * bugfixes in babel-config (minor) (Also refer to the CHANGES file for more details.) What Babel Is ============= Babel is designed to address problems of language interoperability, particularly in scientific/engineering applications. At the simplest level, Babel generates glue code so that libraries written in one programming language are callable from other programming languages. Babel generates this glue code from an interface description written in SIDL, our Scientific Interface Definition Language. Babel supports full Object-Oriented features and exception handling even in non-OO languages such as C or Fortran77. Supported Languages =================== Babel currently supports calling libraries written in C, C++, Fortran77, Fortran90, or Python from drivers written in either C, C++, Fortran77, Fortran90, Python or Java. (Python support also requires the Numerical Python set of extensions at http://numpy.sourceforge.net/ ) Supported Platforms =================== Linux Solaris AIX (except Python) (More expected in next few months.) Broken Platforms (hopefully to be resurrected) ============================================== Cygwin Caveat ====== Babel is research in progress. This is a beta release looking for more friendly users and now some power users. Babel has been used on a few real projects now, there are still too few examples, but the documentation is improving. Availability ============ The software is available for free download at http://www.llnl.gov/CASC/components User Resources ============== Two email lists have been set up for the Babel community: babel-users@llnl.gov (unmoderated discussions) babel-announce@llnl.gov (announcements only) To subscribe to one or both of these email lists, send email to with the text "subscribe babel-announce", "subscribe babel-users", or both (one per line). Contacting the Authors ====================== If you have any questions or concerns with the installation process or usage of Babel, feel free to contact the project team at components@llnl.gov. To report bugs or suggest feature enhancements, please submit a report in the bug database at http://www-casc.llnl.gov/bugs/ . $Id: ANNOUNCE-0.8.6.txt 845 2003-07-23 17:21:45Z kumfert $