[ANN] Syck 0.41 -- 95% Support, Bytecode, Bugfixes

friends, countrymen:

Happy to announce Syck 0.41.  Syck is the YAML toolkit, the undying
force that backs Ruby 1.8's YAML support.  This distribution provides
support for YAML parsing in Python, PHP, and Ruby 1.6.x/1.7.x as well.

This latest release is a world of improvement over the 0.35 release.
Numerous bugfixes from users, improvements that bring the parser to
approximately 95% of the YAML spec, and preliminary support for YAML
bytecode parsing.  In addition, Clark Evan's bytecode emitter is
included.

Please note that the Python extension is in some disarray as stream
parsing and type handling are in the works still.   Some of this code is  still
beta software and here's my disclaimer as far as that goes:  I'm not
going to say "Use at your own risk" because I don't want this library to
be risky.  If you trip on something, I'll share the liability by
repairing things as quickly as I can.  Your responsibility is to report
the inadequacies.  All the quicker we can those pieces out of beta.

Release notes below.

_why

---
released: { name: Syck, version: 0.41 }
for: [ Ruby, PHP, Python ]
by: why the lucky stiff
about: >

  Syck is a YAML parser, an extension for scripting
  languages, written in C.  

  So what is YAML?  YAML is a new language for data.
  Describe objects in plain text.  Load the data into
  your scripting language as arrays, dictionaries,
  classes, or primitives.

links:
  YAML: http://www.yaml.org/
  YAML Cookbook: http://yaml4r.sf.net/cookbook/
  YAML Type Repository: http://yaml.org/type/
  YAML Specification: http://yaml.org/spec/
  Syck: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/syck/
  Syck Benchmarks: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2003/03/19
  Tarball @ SourceForge: http://aleron.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/yaml4r/syck-0.41.tar.gz

status: >

  Syck is about 95% compliant with the YAML spec.  Largely, small
  issues remain.

  The extensions are quite usable.  Ruby, PHP and Python
  can load from a string containing YAML.

  Ruby has support for stream loading, type handling, YPath, Okay.
  This release includes an amount of Ruby code comprising the 0.60 
  release of YAML.rb.

benchmarks: >

  Syck is quite speedy, although not as swift as most language's
  native serialization.

  Syck runs at about:

  30-35% of the speed of Ruby's Marshal.
  35-90% of the speed of PHP's deserialize().
  600% of the speed of Python's Pickle.
  33-40% of the speed of Python's cPickle.

  (Based on various types of structured data.)

installation: >

  Syck contains working extensions for the Ruby, PHP, and Python
  languages.  Each requires compilation of the libsyck library,
  followed by compilation of the extension.

  To compile libsyck, first download libsyck.

    tar xzvf syck-0.41.tar.gz
    cd syck-0.41
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install

  To install the Ruby extension:

    cd ext/ruby
    ruby install.rb config
    ruby install.rb setup
    sudo ruby install.rb install

  To install the Python extension:

    cd ext/python
    python setup.py build
    sudo python setup.py install

  To install the PHP extension:

    sh make_module.sh
    sudo make install (if you weren't root during make_module.sh)
    php -q syck.php

examples:

  To load this document in Ruby: |

     ($:~)$ irb
     >> require 'yaml'
     => true
     >> YAML::load( File.open( 'syck-0.41.yml' ) )
     => {"status"=>"Syck is about 60% compliant ..."}

  To load this document in PHP: |

     ($:~)$ php -a
     Interactive mode enabled

     <? dl( 'syck.so' ); print_r( syck_load( implode( '', file( 'syck-0.41.yml' ) ) ) ); ?>
  
     .. php then outputs ..

     X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.3
     Content-type: text/html
     
     Array
     (   
         [released] => Array
             (   
                 [name] => Syck
                 [version] => 0.41
             )

     .. and so on ..

  To load this document in Python: |

     ($:~)$ python
     Python 2.1.3 (#1, Jul 11 2002, 17:52:24) 
     [GCC 2.95.3 20010315 (release) [FreeBSD]] on freebsd4
     Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
     >>> import syck
     >>> f = open( 'syck-0.41.yml' )
     >>> syck.load( f.read() )
     {'by': 'why the lucky stiff', ... }