Return-Path: jeffrey Return-Path: Received: from poseidon.cygnus.com by cygnus.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA25516; Mon, 22 Mar 93 20:12:17 PST Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 20:12:17 PST From: jeffrey (Jeffrey Osier) Message-Id: <9303230412.AA25516@cygnus.com> Received: by poseidon.cygnus.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02766; Mon, 22 Mar 93 20:11:10 PST To: engnews-distrib Subject: Inside Cygnus Engineering -- March 1993 Reply-To: jeffrey@cygnus.com Organization: Cygnus Support, Mountain View, CA; +1 415 903 1409 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vol 2 No 3 INSIDE CYGNUS ENGINEERING March 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 --------------------- It's been a busy month of producing and releasing software at Cygnus. We put four new releases onto the Internet as net releases. These have either been part of the Cygnus progressive offerings, or will be incorporated into products in the near future. All of these net releases are currently available from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), on prep.ai.mit.edu in /pub/gnu. However, because of load considerations on prep, please use nearby archive sites wherever possible. If you would like a list of these archives, please contact us at engnews@cygnus.com. The file names for the releases are shown below. The lower case 'z' means that it has been compressed by the program 'gzip'. You can also get gzip from prep or from one of the mirror sites. PRMS gnats-3.00.tar.z gas gas-2.0.tar.z binutils binutils-2.1.tar.z Deja GNU DejaGnu-0.9.tar.z expect-3.24.0.tar.z gzip gzip-1.0.5.tar.z 1. PRMS, aka GNATS Version 3.0 of PRMS (Problem Report Management System) was released to the net in early March. As a new program in the GNU pantheon, the FSF and Cygnus both wanted to give it a name in keeping with the GNU tradition on the net. After some headscratching and many email discussions, we decided upon GNATS, a recursive acronym standing for GNats, A Tracking System; a gnat of course, is a small two-winged bug of the fly family. Since our customers are all used to the name PRMS, we will continue to use this for the Cygnus version. So far we have received a lot of positive responses, including an installation in Israel that sent a PR on PRMS back to us within days of the release. We are treating this as a beta release, and are working on cleaning up the details and productizing in the next few weeks. Support availability and pricing information will be published in the April issue of ICE. Contact your Cygnus sales rep, or send email to info@cygnus.com if you are interested in getting support for PRMS. Thanks are due to Wendell Baker at UC Berkeley who was one of the first supporters of the PRMS productization effort. 2. Gas 2.0 This month we released the long awaited version 2.0 of gas, the GNU assembler to the net. Since the 1.38.1 net release was released over a year ago, Cygnus and other contributors have made many changes. Most notably, we have separated the code dealing with the host system, target CPU, and target file format. Gas now handles some of the object file formats by calling the BFD (binary file descriptor) library. Gas also supports COFF and IEEE-695 object file formats in addition to the standard a.out format. We also added the option of listing input source file (including high level source code such as C) along with the generated object code. Of course, Cygnus customers have seen most of these improvements in gas over the last year in our progressive releases. However, since we receive a lot of contributions from the net community, it is important for us to make sure these efforts are returned to the public. 3. Binutils 2.1 Binutils 2.1 was released to the the net at the end of February. It includes these new features: * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix. * ar now automatically creates a symbol table if there are any object files in the archive, so running ranlib is now redundant (unless the non-standard q command is used). This is required for POSIX.2 conformance. * The archive-reading code reads both BSD-style and SYSV-style archives regardless of the selected target format. * strip and copy have options to remove debug-symbols and/or local symbols only. * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) has been implemented. 4. Deja GNU The official net release of Deja Gnu 0.9 was made in early March. We had originally planned this for a month earlier, but making sure we had all the correct copyrights took longer than expected. The building blocks, Tcl and expect, came from UC Berkeley and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), respectively. Many of the test cases came from various contributors on the net. Although Cygnus has been the central figure in the effort, it is a true demonstration of the cooperation and leverage of free software. There are currently about 3500 tests in Deja Gnu, including 1300 for gdb, 1200 for gcc, 1200 for Tcl and expect. We plan to add at least another 400 g++ test cases before the 1.0 release. Deja Gnu is available from the usual ftp sites for GNU software. It has also generated a lot of public interest. We expect to be publishing a number of articles on Deja GNU, and will be presenting it at several conferences. Support availability and pricing information will be published in the April issue of ICE. Contact your Cygnus sales rep, or send email to info@cygnus.com if you are interested in getting support for Deja GNU. 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. MIPS ECOFF Support We began work on MIPS ECOFF gas, ld, and the binary utilities in January, and will have a beta version by the end of April. When this is completed, it will allow us to provide a full native toolchain for MIPS based workstations running Ultrix from Digital Equipment and running Irix from Silicon Graphics. In addition, it will allow us to support cross compilation for MIPS based target systems. We expect to add Sun 4 cross to MIPS ECOFF tools with the Q2 release at the end of June. This work was made possible in part by the donation, for public use, of the relevant header files by MIPS Corporation and Third Eye Software. This donation originally allowed GDB to read the MIPS debug format, and is now enabling the development of a full cross development toolchain targeting the MIPS processor. This is another example of the leverage of free software at work. 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 following table shows the maintenance statistics for the last four weeks. We continue to need your help: please let us know when you agree that 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 ------------------------------------------------------------ 02/22/93 356 129 472 1,050 111 2,118 03/22/93 403 139 543 1,094 113 2,292 ------------------------------------------------------------ Change +47 +10 +71 +44 +2 +174 2. Postscript Files of Cygnus Documentation A number of our customers have mentioned difficulties in printing additional copies of our documentation from the online Texinfo sources. (TeX 3.14 or later is required.) As a result, we have added a tape of postscipt page image files for all documentation to our product offerings. The tape will be ready in early April as part of the Q1 progressive release. This is priced at $200 per copy. However, we will send it free of charge to our leveraged and group customers upon request. 3. Upgrade Policy from SunOS 4 to Solaris 2 With the availability of Solaris 2.1, we are beginning to see an increase in Solaris users and conversions from SunOS 4 to Solaris 2. If you currently have SunOS 4 native support and want to switch to Solaris, you can do so at no additional cost provided 1. You switch at a calendar quarter boundary (end of March, June, September, or December). 2. You notify us 15 days before the end of the quarter. 3. You do not expect concurrent support of both OS's. Since our progressive releases occur on these quarter boundaries, it is easy for us to ship you the new Solaris progressive tape and switch over the support. This upgrade policy applies only to native toolchains at this time. We will make it available for cross hosts later in the year. 4. Software Update Reminder The Q1 progressive release is planned for the end of March. We will be sending you update request cards in about a week. Please verify your supported platforms, contact name, and other information and let us know if you would like to get an update by returning this form. OTHER ITEMS ----------- 1. LGPL Survey A number of our embedded systems customers have expressed concern to us about the use of libg++ and any other library software covered under the Library General Public Licence (LGPL) because of some of its requirements. We have discussed the concern with the Free Software Foundation, and they are currently doing a survey to evaluate the effectiveness of LGPL. Following are the relevant sections of the text posted to info-gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu. Both libg++ and libc* are covered by the GNU Library General Public License. Do you use either of these libraries in a proprietary application under the terms of the LGPL? Do you know of someone else who does? FSF would like to know to help evaluate whether the LGPL is doing the job it was designed to do. Please send mail to lgpl-query@gnu.ai.mit.edu with the details. FSF is looking for this information as part of the evaluation of it's ongoing experiment with the LGPL. We are also interested in hearing specific reasons why a company rejected use of libg++ or libc for use in a proprietary application. This data will help FSF decide what, if any, changes are needed in the LGPL. In particular, the FSF is interested in finding out what specifically Cygnus customers found wrong with the LGPL. We encourage all concerned customers to contact the FSF directly and respond to these questions. * Note that this is a verbatim quote from the FSF posting. Cygnus customers use a non-copylefted version of libc and libm provided by Cygnus Support directly, and is only affected by LGPL where libg++ is concerned. 2. Customer Forum We value your suggestions, 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 a following issue. 1. Can we provide added value through training courses on the GNU tools? If so, for which tools? 2. Are there other members of your team who would like to get a subscription to ICE? --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------