Return-Path: jeffrey Return-Path: Received: by cygnus.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA13793; Tue, 20 Oct 92 13:40:38 PDT Date: Tue, 20 Oct 92 13:40:38 PDT From: jeffrey (Jeffrey Osier) Message-Id: <9210202040.AA13793@cygnus.com> To: engnews-distrib Subject: Inside Cygnus Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vol 1 No 10 INSIDE CYGNUS ENGINEERING October 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inside Cygnus Engineering (ICE) is published monthly for customers of Cygnus Support. Our objective is to provide a relevant but informal summary of news and ongoing activities. Please send all comments, suggestions, and subscription requests to engnews@cygnus.com. PRODUCTS AND RELEASES --------------------- 1. Progressive Update We have now shipped nearly two dozen early progressive tapes (or ftp distributions) to customer sites. These cover 1 native and 14 cross platforms. As we expected, a number of minor installation problems came up and have been fixed. We expect to ship the final updated version at the end of October. Progressive release statistic: it takes about 5 gigabytes of disc space to do a full build of all of the supported crosses on our matrix. 2. Motorola Syntax Support in Gas Historically, the GNU assembler supported only "MIT syntax" used by the assembler provided by Sun Microsystems and a number of Unix vendors for the Motorola 68k family of microprocessors. A number of our cross development customers have expressed strong interest in support for the "Motorola syntax" in gas; i.e., "move.l %a0,%d0" rather than "movl a0,d0". We have now added Motorola syntax support to gas, and it will be shipped in the progressive release this month. 3. Not All Schedules Slip In the last issue of ICE, we announced G++ for Solaris 2 (SPARC) availability at the end of December. Thanks to the commitment of our engineering staff, we are now able to offer this platform ahead of schedule, in the current progressive release. NEW AND ONGOING DEVELOPMENTS ---------------------------- We are implementing some of these only for certain platforms, so for the moment, they are not all tested or available for generic use. 1. The Next Progressive Our view of the progressive offering is a series of quarterly releases that provide stable, productized versions of the GNU software. As the current release makes its way out the door to our customers, we are beginning the work for the next release at the end of December. SCO Unix native support will be added, along with a few more host-target combinations from the current matrix. It is intended mainly as a bug-fixing and stabilizing release. 2. Memory Saving Linker A recent enhancement for the linker is the ability to strip off symbol tables on a file by file basis. Previous versions of the linker could only strip all symbols, or only debug symbols. This is important for reducing memory requirements in embedded applications using operating systems which support incremental loading (and thus retain the symbol tables), e.g., VxWorks from Wind River Systems. As a result, disc space usage, and memory usage by the linker and other binary utilities, are also reduced. SUPPORT ACTIVITIES ------------------- In addition to new developments, a significant part of our engineering resources is devoted to answering questions, fixing problems in the GNU software, and providing a range of support services to our customers. 1. Software maintenance status The maintenance statistics for the last 5 weeks are shown in the following table. We continue to ask for your help in letting us know when a problem has been fixed so that we can move it from a "feedback" state to a "closed" state. # # # # # # Date Open Analzd Fdback Closed Suspnd Total ------------------------------------------------------------ 09/14/92 274 69 227 793 104 1467 10/12/92 285 73 271 835 101 1565 ------------------------------------------------------------ Change +11 +4 +44 +42 -3 +98 OTHER ITEMS ----------- 1. New Address Progress for our move to our Mountain View location, already nicknamed 'The Fishbowl', continues. The move will take place October 31 weekend. This is our new address effective November 1: Cygnus Support 1937 Landings Drive Mountain View CA 94043 (415) 904-1400 Our email address will remain unchanged. Our network access will be upgraded from 56 Kbits/sec to T1 (1.5 Mbits/sec), which will make us much more accessible to customers who use FTP. To avoid any inconvenience, our current postal address and telephone number will remain in effect for at least a month after the move. We do not expect any interruptions to our services or activities. 2. Open House To help us celebrate the new space, we will be having an Open House Thursday, November 12, from 6 to 9 pm at our new location. We will be sending you an invitation via US mail shortly. Hope to see you there! 3. Show Update Cygnus made quite a debut performance at the Embedded Systems Conference in Santa Clara in September. Almost 10% of all conference attendees stopped by our small booth to find out about our GNU software support, and we periodically had people lined up in the aisles. The wide range of platforms supported in our boxed progressive product was received with enthusiasm. Our next stop is InterOp at the end of October in San Francisco, and you still have a chance to drop by and register to win a t-shirt. 4. Customer Forum We value your inputs, and would like to ask for your response to the following questions (to engnews@cygnus.com). We will publish summaries of answers of general interest in the following issue. Last month's questions elicited a number of interesting answers. We are repeating these questions this month in hopes of getting some additional ideas on the general issue. 1. What other free software packages would you like us to support? 2. What additional documentation if any would you like us to provide for our current software products? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Cygnus Support 814 University Avenue One Kendall Square Palo Alto, CA 94301 Cambridge, MA 02139 +1 415 322 3811 voice +1 617 494 1040 voice +1 415 322 3270 fax +1 617 494 1325 fax ---------------------------------------------------------------------