Return-Path: smlieu Return-Path: Received: by cygnus.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA09874; Tue, 20 Apr 93 18:57:23 PDT Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 18:57:23 PDT From: smlieu (Sun Ming Lieu) Message-Id: <9304210157.AA09874@cygnus.com> To: engnews-distrib Subject: Inside Cygnus Engineering - April 1993 Reply-To: smlieu@cygnus.com Organization: Cygnus Support, Mountain View CA; Phone +1 415 903 1400 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vol 2 No 4 INSIDE CYGNUS ENGINEERING April 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 --------------------- 1. DejaGnu and PRMS Pricing We are now in the final stages of preparation for production releases of DejaGnu and PRMS. Prices for each product are given below, and can be prorated to run to the ending date of your existing support contract. Please contact your sales representative if you would like to obtain support for either of these. If you do not know the name of your representative, send us a support request through send-pr or contact us via email at contracts@cygnus.com. DejaGnu* - 1 year support Available May 17, 1993 On all progressive platforms except SCO and DOS hosts Single Support: Each addnl l 2 users user --------------------------------------------------- Native platform $3000 $1000 Cross platform $5000 $2000 Group support is available also at standard group pricing: $25,000 for the first platform, $15,000 for the second, and $10,000 for any additional platforms. * The DejaGnu product includes a release of Tcl and Expect. Currently we will only support these programs as used in conjunction with the DejaGnu test framework. Please let us know if you have a strong need for Tcl and Expect support independent of DejaGnu. PRMS - 1 year support Available April 19, 1993 On Sun3, Sun4, Solaris, DECstation, IBM RS6000, and SGI Iris Single Support: Each addnl l 2 users user* --------------------------------------------------- Per platform $2000 $300 Group support is available for sites with more than 30 users. Please contact your sales representative for a quotation. * A user is defined as a someone who is responsible for the resolution of problem reports, not someone who is submitting them. For example, if you have a 3 system administrators supporting 150 users and use PRMS to track support requests, you have 3 PRMS users, not 153. 2. PRMS 3.01 Since PRMS 3.0 was released to the net last month, there has been a flurry of positive responses. We have apparently tapped into a need for a report tracking system in the free software community. In mid-April, we made a new Net release of PRMS, our Problem Report Management System (known to the Net as `GNATS'). This new release, version 3.01, consists of bug fixes and improvements, including quite a number of contributions from the Net. PRMS 3.01, with the possible addition of a few more bug fixes, will be offered as our first production release of PRMS available April 19. Future product releases will include greater customizability, including configurable state values and problem report fields, and the ability to use regular expressions to determine assignment of problem category or responsible person. 3. Reno 1.1 In a few weeks, we will be making a new release of the work done by our C++ Renovation Project, or `Reno'. This release, version 1.1, is again aimed towards greater reliability and stability in the compiler. Improvements in functionality over the Reno 1.0 release include better support for templates, proper handling of increment and pointers to members, and correct overloading resolution for prefix and postfix `operator++' and `operator--'. A number of bug fixes will be included. There will also be a new and improved compiler manual which documents a number of C++-specific features that had been omitted in the past. We will include Reno 1.1 in our progressive release available at the end of June (the Q2 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. Solaris CDWare Volume 5 We have just completed a release of our Q1 progressive tools for native SunOS 4.x and Solaris 2.x toolchains in volume 5 of the Sun Microsystems Catalyst CDware distribution. As with CDware volume 4, this is a fully functional set of tools, unlike many of the other programs included on the CD-ROM disc. Both C and C++ compilers are included, as is the complete set of source code. Catalyst CDware volume 5 is expected to be available from Sun later this summer. Note that with the new "gzip" compression technology, we were able to fit four releases (C and C++ for both SunOS 4.x and Solaris 2,x) in the same space that was required for a single release (C for Solaris 2.x) release on CDware volume 4. 2. Chill: New Language Front-End for gcc In addition to the portability demonstrated by the number of supported platforms, gcc was designed to support different programming languages. In 1988, Cygnus founder Michael Tiemann wrote g++, the first new front-end for GNU C. GNU Modula 3 (at the University of Massachusetts), GNU Ada (at New York University), GNU Pascal (at the Helsinki University of Technology), GNU Fortran (from Craig Burley) as well as a number of other front ends have been developed. We have just begun beta testing of a new front end for the CHILL language on the SPARC Sun OS 4.x and i386 SVR4 platforms. CHILL is a Pascal-like language that was standardized in 1980 for telecommunications programs. Many telecommunications systems are still running CHILL codes on outdated microprocessors. With GNU CHILL, it will be possible for telecommunications companies to port the millions of lines of CHILL code developed over the past decade to modern microprocessors, increasing switching bandwidth and reducing costs. SUPPORT ACTIVITIES ------------------- In addition to new development, 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. Solaris Early Adopters Program We announced our Early Adopters Program for the Solaris C compiler in February last year, and received a stream of subscribers before we made the official product shipment on July 21. Recently, we have received a number of inquiries from these Early Adopters about the expiration date of their support contracts. Since the official shipment was July 21, we started all Early Adopter support contracts August 1, 1992 (except for the few customers who requested delayed shipments). Therefore, they expire July 31, 1993. We are considering a price decrease for our Solaris native support. For your planning purposes, our current "Single" rates are shown in the table below. Each additional 2 users user ------------------------------------------------------ C only $3000 $1000 C and C++ $4500 $1500 We expect any new pricing to be lower than these rates. and to be applicable for all July renewals. If you would like to renew, or are uncertain of the expiration date of your contract, please send us a support request via send-pr, or contact us by email at contracts@cygnus.com. 2. FTP from Cygnus In an attempt to keep improving services to our customers, as well as to the Net at large, our ftp service will move from cygnus.com to a less loaded machine, ftp.cygnus.com. This is effective immediately. Please use the new name (`ftp.cygnus.com' instead of `cygnus.com') to ensure that you will not experience any interruptions in service. `ftp.cygnus.com' is currently the same machine as `cygnus.com', but the two will diverge in the near future. If you use BIND for your name lookups and connect only to `ftp.cygnus.com', you should not notice the change. If you have a static host table, or use YP (which caches on BIND lookups), you may have to manually change to the new location, majipoor.cygnus.com, IP address 140.174.1.88, when cygnus.com refuses your ftp connection. 3. Software maintenance status The following table shows the maintenance statistics for the last five 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 ------------------------------------------------------------ 03/22/93 403 139 543 1,094 113 2,292 04/19/93 416 155 604 1,187 123 2,485 ------------------------------------------------------------ Change +13 +16 +61 +93 +10 +193 OTHER ITEMS ----------- 1. Customer Forum We value your suggestions, and would like to ask for your response to the following question (to engnews@cygnus.com). We will publish summaries of answers of general interest in a following issue. * In the Q1 progressive release notes, we included a list of bugs fixed since the last release rather than the list of known bugs. Which is more useful for you? 2. Customer Responses to Recent Questions The following are selected answers received from customers in response to questions in recent issues of ICE. * Which workstation would you like us to support next? Emacs under HPUX. * Would you like to see the GNU tools ported to DSP (digital signal processing) chips? If so, which one(s)? I would be interested in gcc support of the TI TMS320C2x TMS320C5x lines of DSPs (especially the C5x line). * We are considering enlarging the Cygnus Network Security offering. In addition to Kerberos, do you use "cops"? What other security software do you use or would you like to see? Yes, we do use cops. We also use various kinds of tcp-wrappers (software that checks the incoming TCP-connection's origin address and possibly drops the connection). * Would you be interested in obtaining support for Tcl and/or "expect" for general use at your site? We intend to support these tools to the extent that DejaGnu is built on them, but are wondering if there is a broader set of needs that we could also address. If you are interested, would you also want Tk support? Yes. I suppose we would be interested in Tcl/Tk support. Probably not so much in expect support. (I think that expect implementation -- well -- could be much better). * Can we provide added value through training courses on the GNU tools? If so, for which tools? I and the people in my organization would most definitely benefit from some form of training classes or lectures. In particular we would be most interested in GDB. We like gdb and use it in several cross development efforts... --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------