[ANN] Fuel release version 1.7

Hi folks!

We have released the new version 1.7 of Fuel, a binary serialization framework for Pharo that provides extremely fast deserialization. More information on our home page. Again, I thank ESUG for sponsoring me through the SummerTalk program.

You can download this version in Pharo 1.2.1 or 1.3 with:

Gofer new
        squeaksource: 'Fuel';
        package: 'ConfigurationOfFuel';
        load.
((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfFuel) project version: '1.7') load.

The list of changes includes performance optimizations, design clean-ups, and new features.

- The FLSerializer and FLMaterializer API has changed. They are no longer implementing the algorithms but are a kind of Façade.

- Developer guides with examples: Getting Started and Customizing the graph.

- Serialization substitutions: "Store this object instead of me."

- Global sends: "Restore me by sending this selector to this global"

- Versioning the stream: We prefix the stream with a version number that should match when loading.

- Performance optimizations on instances of:

-- Word-like classes. (We thank a lot to Henrik Sperre Johansen for your help!)

-- ByteString and Symbol.

-- Date, Time, Duration and DateAndTime.

-- Point and Rectangle.

-- MethodDictionary. Now materialization is 2000x faster, thanks to its new rehash without become.

- Huge clean-up in Tests package.

Cheers!

Martín Dias