--- trunk/RELEASE 2007/10/08 16:19:56 24 +++ trunk/RELEASE 2007/10/08 16:20:40 30 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.0 +Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.2 ================================================================ Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare. @@ -10,55 +10,42 @@ systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine. The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can -be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best supported guest operating +be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats. -The most important change between release 0.3.8 and 0.4.0 is: +Changes between release 0.4.1 and 0.4.2 include, among other things: - o) The emulation of MIPS processors has been completely rewritten; - it now uses the same portable dynamic translation system as the - ARM and PowerPC emulation modes. + o) The NetWinder emulation mode now works well enough to let + NetBSD/netwinder run from a disk image. - On Alpha and i386 hosts (and AMD64 hosts running in 32-bit mode), - GXemul previously used translation into native code. This release - will perform worse than 0.3.8 on those host architectures. + (NetBSD/netwinder has to be installed manually, though, because + there is no installation ramdisk kernel. The GXemul documentation + has an example of how to install NetBSD/netwinder using an emulated + NetBSD/pmax machine.) - On all other hosts (including AMD64 running in native 64-bit mode), - 0.4.0 is likely to be faster than 0.3.8, when emulating MIPS, at - least for R3000 emulation. + o) Algorithmics P5064 emulation works well enough to let NetBSD/algor + run from a disk image. (Similar to NetBSD/netwinder, it has to + be installed manually, using another emulated machine.) - I think that in the long term, moving towards full portability like - this is a good idea. + o) PCI configuration register writes can now be handled, which allows + NetBSD/Malta (evbmips) 3.0.1 and NetBSD/cobalt 3.0.1 to run from + PCI IDE harddisk images. (Previously, only NetBSD 2.1 worked for + the Malta and Cobalt emulation modes.) -(Since the MIPS emulation mode has been rewritten from scratch, and I have -not really had much time over for debugging, there are most likely new -bugs in 0.4.0 that were not present in 0.3.8. However, I feel that it is -better to make a quick release now than to wait even longer.) + o) Some performance increases: -There have also been many other changes, including, but not limited to: + The virtual translation table update routine has been simplified + to work the same way for 32-bit and 64-bit emulation, and this + apparently results in a speedup for all 64-bit modes. - o) The "test machine" functionality is more well-defined than before, - and some tutorial-like demos have been added. These could be useful - e.g. in operating system construction courses. - - o) NetBSD/sgimips 3.0 works now. This is most likely due to the rewrite - of the MIPS emulation mode. Previous releases of GXemul only worked - with NetBSD/sgimips 2.1. - - o) I have begun implementing rudimentary support for GDB remote serial - protocol connections. This means that you can run e.g. the Data - Display Debugger, and connect it to a GXemul instance. - - No advanced GDB functionality is working yet, but starting and - stopping the emulated machine and single-stepping should work. + For 32-bit MIPS, some more instruction combinations have been added. Please read the HISTORY files for more details. Files included in this release are: - BUGS List of known bugs for this release. HISTORY Detailed revision history / changelog. LICENSE Copyright message / license. README Quick start instructions, for the impatient. @@ -172,10 +159,6 @@ Juan Romero Pardines, Alec Voropay, Göran Weinholt, Alexander Yurchenko, and everyone else who has provided me with feedback. -Special thanks to Alec Voropay for testing this release with Linux -kernels, and on Cygwin, and also thanks to Ondrej Palkovsky for testing -with HelenOS. - If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se.