Hi all, 

Commit ad068f27d819465c78c574019f32a2e1d30ca5ff [1] is available for testing, with a view toward releasing 292. 

291 was released back in August. There are 75 new commits. 

Draft release notes:

                                    TXR 292
                                   2023-11-??

  Features

  - Build:
    - speed up compilation of stdlib with optimal compilation
      order of several key files.
    - Revised confusing build instructions in ./configure script.
    - Makefile improvements:
      - cruft removed; dependency generation simplified.
      - mkdir invocations factored out to rule.
      - DELETE_ON_ERROR: used now.

  - Streams:
    - A new protocol between the close-stream function and its
      lower-level implementation allows delegate streams to
      implement a reference counting discipline for closing.
    - open-file now supports a "T" mode for O_TMPFILE (on Linux,
      or anywhere else O_TMPFILE is supported).

  - Sequences:
    - New functions nested-vec and nested-vec-of for easily
      constructing (simulated) multi-dimensional arrays.
    - New mref accessor for multi-dimensional access.
      - also has a side job calling curried functions.
    - New csort-group function:
      - Like sort-group, but uses csort instead of sort for key caching.
    - New hist-sort function: make histogram of sequence, and sort
      by descending frequency.
    - New length-list-< function  for testing whether a list is
      shorter than a given length without traversing it beyond
      that length.
    - New length-< function for testing any sequence's length
      against a value without traversing/forcing the sequence
      to calculate its length.
    - ref now documented as accessor, not just function.
    - del operator now allowed on places that index into sequences
      implemented by structures:
      - requires both lambda and lambda-set methods.

  - Strings:
    - New str-esc function for generic character escaping.
    - New shell escaping functions: sh-esc, sh-esc-all, sh-esc-dq
      and sh-esc-sq.

  - Packages
    - New feature: local symbol renaming
      - Symbols can be imported under alternative names.
      - New use-sym-as function and :use-syms-as defpackage clause.
      - Better idea than nicknaming packages (package-local nicknames).

  - Functional library:
    - New: left-inserting pipeline operators: lflow, lopip, loand.
    - New: macros orf and lorf for condensing certain op syntax.
    - New: tap macro, for expressing side effects in pipelines while passing
      through the value.

  - Syntactic places:
    - New: ensure macro evaluates an expression and stores its value
      into a place, if that place's current value is nil.

  - Pattern matching:
    - some match-case instances are now transformed into casequal.

  - FFI:
    - Now provides a setjmp macro, longjmp function as well
      as a jmp-buf utility function that allocates a jmp-buf.
    - Now possible to interact with libraries that use longjmp
      for error aborts like libpng and such.

  - POSIX:
    - chdir function takes stream or file descriptor, which are
      handled via fchdir.
    - New glob* function to complement glob:
      - glob* supports the ** (double star) operator for recursing,
        via its own implementation, not relying on glob providing that.
      - glob* has its own implementation of brace expansion.
    - New rlink function which is like link, but resolves the target path
      if it denotes a symlink.

  - Listener:
    - *listener-sel-inclusive-p* is now default, since most terminals
      have block cursors by default.
    - New feature: auto compound expression mode lets you omit
      the parentheses.

  - Math:
    - The tofloat and toint functions are now generic via the
      user-defined arithmetic struct mechanism.

  - JSON:
    - Allow integer objects to be printed rather than insisting on
      numbers being floating-point.
    - Allow lists (including lazy lists) to print as [ ... ]
      rather than insisting on vectors.

  - Windows Installer:
    - Does not require admin privileges any more; will install for
      just the current user if the user isn't admin.

  - Documentation:
    - big change: new hashing scheme for navigation and doc lookup.
    - section titles now hashed in a more robust way that is resistant
      against most kinds of edits.
    - stdlib/doc-syms.tl file is now gone: one less thing to maintain.
    - Numerous fixes in manual.

  Bugs

  - Compiler:
    - numbers now externalized sanely in .tlo files:
      - compile-file makes sure base 10 is used for integers
      - floating point numbers written with sufficient precision

  - Loading:
    - load-args-process bugfix: :compile action must load.

  - Streams:
    - close-stream caches only successful result from underlying
      function.
    - a few close functions underneat close-stream were returning
      nil in the successful case.

  - OOP:
    - Fix segfault looking up special method after the static slots
      table of the type has been resized.

  - Pattern matching:
    - Missing autoloads for match-error and sys:match-pat-error,
      causing compiled files containing pattern matching not to load.

  - Awk macro:
    - prn returns nil

  - Search trees:
    - bug: tree-delete-specific-node not using key fun.

  - Lib:
    - Two bugs in flatten* function.
    - Bug in deletion of (ref ...) place: incorrect when object is list.

  - Crypt:
    - less strict error token detection for wider platform support.

  - Build:
    - Misspelled PLATFORM_LDLIBS corrected.
    - Fix for _TIME_BITS being tied to _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
    - Address autoload circular dependency involving stdlib/error.tl
      that can fail builds under some library build orders.

  - Vim:
    - Fix lack of recognition for char escapes in quasilit.
 

Links:
------
[1] https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/commit/?id=ad068f27d819465c78c574019f32a2e1d30ca5ff