At the London Show, ROOL released DDE 28. DDE is a key development tool for RISC OS so it very important to see regular new releases for it.
 
The software was sent out to show purchasers as a time-limited link to download (I got my copy on sunday morning after the show!). You can now get it via the ROOL store.
 
The change logs record changes to 13 tools in the software specific to the DDE software and the readme lists changes to other software (like !srcEdit). Most of the changes are minor. For example, !AMU is now 5.32 - up from 5.31 in DDE27) and now correctly reads a timestamp). Some items have not changed in this release (for example !ABC).
 
There have been some major changes in the Compiler, which actually introduced a bug in compilation. This was quickly fixed with a patch release from ROOL, containing just the changed files. So you will need both to patch your existing version - hopefully ROOL have updated the original DDE28 build for new downloads.
 
This is quite a technical release and there is a good and detailed discussion of the technical changes on the ROOL forums. There is also an interesting discussion on the bug introduced. It is good to see the software is being evaluated and used by developers and full credit to ROOL for the quick fix.
 
The package also comes with a full collection of documentation in PDF format and this has all been updated to latest versions.
 
If you are a non-technical user, this release essentially continues to improve the software and ensure it supports the ARM platforms as well as possible. If you are looking to get into programming, it is also a fully featured collection of all the tools and documentation you need with lots of examples to get you started (and a great way to support ROOL).
 
ROOL store