This is a mainly a bug fixing release with several issues and bugs in float numbers handling solved.

In addition to that:

• Libc is now much better integrated with Red/System, the __libc_start_main C internal initialization function is now correctly handled by Red/System on all supported platforms. This ensures that all libraries relying heavily on C will now work as well as if called from a C program. Thanks to Andreas for the nights spent on digging and debugging that.
• The IA-32 floats backend has been improved to keep last float value in FPU rather than passing it to CPU. This change not only simplifies the backend code emitter but also reduces significantly the generated code size for floats. As a side effect, float-intensive programs are now twice as fast as with v0.2.4. The same change could be applied to ARM backend, but with less gains as ARM can easily transfer data between CPU and FPU, as opposed to IA-32 architecture, which requires an intermediary step through memory when using x87 FPU.

By the way, that’s our first birthday (technically ten days ago) since Red project was announced for the first time at the ReBorCon 2011 conference in Amsterdam. The initial schedule has been changed several times since then, to better adapt to the very rapid changes that are occurring in the computing world (massive move to mobile devices to name the main one).

After 900+ commits and thanks to all the contributors, we now have solid foundations to build upon, much better than what I expected to have, one year ago. The focus from now is getting the Red language layer up and running as soon as possible. A large window of opportunities is opening in 2012, so let’s not miss it!

Cheers!