SBCL 2.6.7 lands: interactive manual, AVX-512 support, and ARM64 SIMD gains

Steel Bank Common Lisp, the widely used open-source Common Lisp compiler and runtime, has shipped its 2.6.7 release as part of its regular monthly cadence. The headline addition is SB-MANUAL, a new contrib module that embeds the SBCL manual directly into docstrings tied to section definitions. This lets developers browse the documentation interactively from their editor (for example via Slime’s M-.), and it opens the door to alternative renderings through third-party tools. DOCUMENTATION now also supports the DECLARATION doc-type, and the manual gained a dedicated index for declarations.

On the platform side, this cycle expands SIMD reach considerably: AVX-512 instructions are now supported on x86-64, the SB-SIMD contrib works on ARM64, and UTF-8 string encoding and decoding get faster paths using enhanced SIMD routines. The release also fixes a SAP-REF-N miscompilation on ARM64 and adds low-level work for MIPS, LoongArch, and big-endian PowerPC.

The rest is the usual maintenance polish: corrected miscompilations of MULTIPLE-VALUE-CALL and CONCATENATE type errors, better handling of quiet NaN inputs to LOG, and consing reductions in several list and numeric operations. A handful of minor incompatible changes—such as FDEFINITION now returning the outermost TRACE/PROFILE wrapper—may affect code that leaned on prior behavior.