Return-Path: jeffrey Return-Path: Received: from rtl.cygnus.com by cygnus.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA21125; Thu, 19 Nov 92 11:26:34 PST Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 11:26:34 PST From: jeffrey (Jeffrey Osier) Message-Id: <9211191926.AA21125@cygnus.com> Received: by rtl.cygnus.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02681; Thu, 19 Nov 92 11:26:33 PST To: engnews-distrib Subject: Inside Cygnus Engineering Reply-To: smlieu@cygnus.com Organization: Cygnus Support, Palo Alto CA; Phone +1 415 322 3811 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vol 1 No 11 INSIDE CYGNUS ENGINEERING November 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. GDB 4.7 GDB 4.7 was released to the net at the end of October. New native hosts supported include i386 SCO Unix and various BSD ports, and SPARClite is now supported as a target. Some of the other new features are listed below: 1. Major internal restructuring has been done to untangle the support for hosts and remote targets. As a result, GDB can now be configured for any combination of host and target. 2. The performance of symbol lookups when C++ symbol mangling is necessary had been greatly improved since GDB 4.6. It is still not up to our expectations, so we intend to continue work in this area. Cfront style name mangling is also supported, and GDB can automatically determine which style of symbol mangling is being used. 3. The performance of the remote serial line protocol has been improved, especially for targets with many registers. The protocol now supports a new `expedited status' ('T') that allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB needs rather than the entire register set for each instruction that is being stepped through. 4. There is a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. Written originally for support the SPARClite processor, it will run on any stand-alone SPARC processor with a serial port. 5. A relatively complete reference to the stabs symbol information used by GDB has been added. It is the only published document that we know of on this topic, and we would like to encourage you to compare it to the stabs information on your system, and send the differences, and improvements on the document in general to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu. 2. Reno 1.0 The first release from Reno, our g++ renovation project, will be available at the end of November. This will include fully functional implementations of templates and nested classes, and we expect ANSI exception handling in the following release. Since the project began, we have contributed almost 1 megabyte of changes to the g++ distribution. An important part of the Reno 1.0 release is the first version of the g++ user manual. This is not meant to be a primer on the C++ language, but describes instead implementation specific aspects such as pragma directives, function inlining, templates, etc. It also includes a discussion on g++ conformance to the ANSI C++ standard. 3. Progressive "P4" Now that the "P3" progressive is safely out the door and in our customers' hands, we have turned our attention to the next release. Designated P4, this is a stabilization release that will be available at year end. (Actually, we hope it will be done before Christmas so that everyone can have a relaxing holiday season.) Solaris 2.x cross to m68k a.out will be included, making it the first Solaris cross compiler available. We will also be adding SCO Unix as a new native platform, and SCO Unix cross to the i386 a.out target. 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. Z8000 GNU Tools and Simulator We have ported the GNU tools to target the Zilog Z8002 microprocessor. This supports the 64 kbyte small memory model. Work to port to the Z8001, which supports the large memory model (23 bit address), is in progress and should be in beta by the end of the year. As part of the porting effort, we have developed a Z8000 simulator. Written in C, this currently runs on the SPARCstation ELC running Sun OS 4.1.x and the HP9000/400 running Apollo Domain OS. It behaves as a virtual machine on the host: Z8000 programs run in user mode; system calls are trapped and passed to the host O/S system calls. Since the simulator was written based on accurate simulation of the chip (down to the cycle level), virtual timing of instructions is preserved. Statistics such as program execution time and frequency of instructions usage can be generated. The simulator running on a SPARCstation ELC currently matches the performance of a Z8002 running at 4 mHz. 2. Deja Gnu Update We have received quite a few inquiries about the availability of Deja Gnu, our testing framework. For our new customers who may not have heard of this before, our test automation efforts began with a g++ regression test suite named Deja Gnu. Since then, we have evolved the effort into a general purpose test framework that can incorporate tests for various programs and be used for both native and cross development. We currently expect to release Deja Gnu to the net at the end of the year, as an "0.9" early release. Although it is a fully operational product, we expect significant enhancements from the net community to follow in short order, and have chosen the 0.9 designation to reflect the expected changes. The Deja Gnu release will support all of our P4 platforms, since it is being used for our own testing efforts. It will include the "C torture test" compiler tests currently being used as part of the Free Software Foundation's GCC-2 testing, the GDB tests developed at Cygnus, and sample tests for other programs such as g++ and the binutils. Tcl and Expect, the tools on which Deja Gnu is built, will also be part of the distribution. It will also have full configuration and online documentation support, as in our compiler tools releases. 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 ------------------------------------------------------------ 10/12/92 285 73 271 835 101 1565 11/16/92 323 70 347 868 102 1710 ------------------------------------------------------------ Change +38 -3 +76 +33 +1 +145 OTHER ITEMS ----------- 1. New Home Over a hundred people came by and helped us celebrate our move into the new Mountain View location of our California office on November 12. A good time was had by all, but some of us were rather puzzled to come in the next morning and find an inflatable rat hanging from the rafters 30 feet above the floor. As we settle into our new home, thanks again to you, our customers, for enabling us to make this happen. 2. Hallowe'en Surprise The last issue of ICE printed an erroneous telephone number. For those of you who called and connected with the 1st Nationwide Bank of California, we apologize for the inconvenience. It seems that the phone company played a Hallowe'en trick on us and assigned us the wrong prefix. Here are the correct phone numbers: Main line (415) 903-1400 FAX (415) 903-0122 3. Sun Users Group The Sun Users Group Meeting December 8-10 at the San Jose Convention Center will have strong support from Cygnus. Michael Tiemann will give the luncheon keynote speech, "Open Systems: The Next Ten Years", on Wednesday, December 9. Brendan Kehoe will be giving a paper on creating a fully functional operating system and environment using only free software at 11 am, Thursday, December 10. See you there! If you would like a free pass to the Exhibits Section, please contact Pati Palmer at pati@cygnus.com, or at (415) 903-1400. 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. In the last 2 issues of ICE, we asked about what other free software packages and documentation you would like to see from Cygnus. Here are the answers we have received so far. (Any additional inputs would be most welcome.) Software: bash cvs suite (cvs, gnu diff, rcs) OI user interface tools support in g++ perl TeX visual debugger, x11ups Documentation: m68k register conventions and stack layout used by gcc patch and configure templates TeX The g++ documentation that comes with the Reno 1.0 release will begin to address the templates question. We are seeing a number of requests for a GUI to GDB and for cvs, and have begun to investigate the technical and market issues. Other questions: 1. The Cygnus progressive releases are made on a quarterly basis. Is this too frequent or too infrequent? How often would you like to update your toolchain? 2. If we make ftp access available, would you prefer to use that or to continue to receive a tape? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Cygnus Support 1937 Landings Drive One Kendall Square Mountain View, CA 94043 Cambridge, MA 02139 +1 415 903 1400 voice +1 617 494 1040 voice +1 415 903 0122 fax +1 617 494 1325 fax ---------------------------------------------------------------------