Supported Forth engines
FFL will run on and is tested with the following forth engines :
For these forth engines there is a config file present in the distribution package.
Unsupported Forth Engines
FFL will not run on the following forth engines :
| Engine | Version | Reason |
| kForth | | Missing ANS words |
| ciforth | 4.0.6 | Missing ANS words |
| pforth | | Missing ANS words |
| isforth | | Missing ANS words |
| 4th | | Missing ANS words |
| helforth | 2.51 | Missing ANS words |
Not yet checked Forth Engines
Environmental dependencies
A few modules have environmental dependencies. As a result they will not be present for some forth engines. For these modules you should test the presence of the version constant after loading the module (see Getting started).
| | GForth | BigForth | PFE | Win32Forth | MinForth | iForth | SP-Forth | lxf/ntf | VFXForth |
| Argument Parser (arg) | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Distributed Random Number Generator (rdg) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Timer (tmr) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GTK-server interface (gsv) | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Some notes for the GTK-server interface:
- gsv is for the moment only tested on Linux.
- PFE will sometimes get stuck or report a broken pipe.
- BigForth and MinForth have problems with the long names of the GTK functions.
Benchmarks
Version 0.8.0
| | GForth | BigForth | PFE | Win32Forth | MinForth | SP-Forth | lxf | VFXForth |
| Compile Time (msec) | 1087 | 251 | 459 | 1467 | 4280 | 2680 | 344 | 500 |
| Compile Size (bytes) | 247784 | 210820 | 222204 | 218196 | 231732 | 214777 | 211599 | 356392 |
| Test Time (sec) | 4.2 | 2.9 | 11.2 | 8.7 | 48.6 | 5.6 | 2.1 | 2.1 |
Version 0.7.0
| | GForth | BigForth | PFE | Win32Forth | MinForth | SP-Forth | lxf |
| Compile Time (msec) | 850 | 328 | 517 | 1248 | 3780 | 2530 | 310 |
| Compile Size (bytes) | 224912 | 196089 | 209764 | 203748 | 215676 | 201260 | 206142 |
| Test Time (sec) | 4.1 | 3.4 | 11.2 | 11.3 | 49.0 | 5.6 | 2.0 |
Version 0.6.0
| | GForth | BigForth | PFE | Win32Forth | MinForth |
| Compile Time (msec) | 1774 | 352 | 720 | 2630 | 9440 |
| Compile Size (bytes) | 169560 | 146406 | 166704 | 97176 | 106600 |
| Test Time (sec) | 7.9 | 8.2 | 24.1 | 15.3 | 140.2 |
Version 0.5.0
| | GForth | BigForth | PFE | Win32Forth | MinForth |
| Compile Time (msec) | 1020 | 220 | 374 | 1760 | 6100 |
| Compile Size (bytes) | 132724 | 115090 | 133796 | 75696 | 83128 |
| Test Time (sec) | 6.8 | 8.2 | 23.6 | 14.3 | 132.9 |
Version 0.4.0
| | GForth | BigForth | PFE | Win32Forth |
| Compile Time (msec) | 690 | 158 | 255 | 1200 |
| Compile Size (bytes) | 103132 | 89710 | 112628 | 59660 |
| Test Time (sec) | 3.8 | 6.2 | 9.2 | 9.6 |
Legenda:
- The Compile Time is the time required to include all modules in the dictionary.
- The Compile Size is the space required in the dictionary to include all modules.
- The Test time is the time required to include and run all the test scripts.
Notes:
- Benchmarks for versions 0.4.0 till 0.6.0 were done on a Celeron 700 MHZ.
- Benchmarks for version 0.7.0 and higher were done on an Athlon 64 X2 1800MHZ
Porting
As already stated the FFL is mostly written in ANS forth. If the forth engine you are using, is not listed on the Engines page and it conforms to the ANS-standard, you can try porting ffl to your forth engine by adding words to and removing words from the ffl/config.fs file. If you succeed, you can send me the config.fs file so that I can add it to the distribution.
