/[gxemul]/trunk/RELEASE
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revision 8 by dpavlin, Mon Oct 8 16:18:19 2007 UTC revision 24 by dpavlin, Mon Oct 8 16:19:56 2007 UTC
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1  Release notes for GXemul 0.3.3.2  Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.0
2  ================================  ================================================================
3    
4  Copyright (C) 2003-2005  Anders Gavare.  Copyright (C) 2003-2006  Anders Gavare.
5    
6    
7  GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. It can be  GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
8  used to run binary code for (among others) MIPS-based machines. Several  emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
9  emulation modes are available. For some emulation modes, processors and  hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
10  surrounding hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified  systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine.
11  operating systems run as if they were running on a real machine.  
12    The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can
13  I have verified that the following "guest" operating systems can run  be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best supported guest operating
14  inside the emulator:  systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.
15    
16      Guest operating system             Emulated machine  
17      ----------------------             ----------------  The most important change between release 0.3.8 and 0.4.0 is:
18      NetBSD/pmax 2.0 (and 1.6.2)        DECstation 5000/200  
19      OpenBSD/pmax 2.8-BETA              DECstation 5000/200      o)  The emulation of MIPS processors has been completely rewritten;
20      Ultrix 4.2-4.5                     DECstation 5000/200          it now uses the same portable dynamic translation system as the
21      Sprite demo harddisk image         DECstation 5000/200          ARM and PowerPC emulation modes.
22      Debian GNU/Linux for DECstation    DECstation 5000/200  
23      Redhat Linux 7.1 for mips          DECstation 5000/200          On Alpha and i386 hosts (and AMD64 hosts running in 32-bit mode),
24      NetBSD/arc 1.6.2                   Acer PICA-61          GXemul previously used translation into native code. This release
25      OpenBSD/arc 2.3                    Acer PICA-61          will perform worse than 0.3.8 on those host architectures.
26      NetBSD/hpcmips 2.0                 NEC MobilePro 770, 780, 800, 880  
27      NetBSD/cobalt 2.0                  Cobalt          On all other hosts (including AMD64 running in native 64-bit mode),
28            0.4.0 is likely to be faster than 0.3.8, when emulating MIPS, at
29  A couple of other emulation modes exist. Some of these modes are almost          least for R3000 emulation.
30  working well enough to run complete guest operating systems, but most are  
31  just skeletons. The modes that work are listed in the documentation.          I think that in the long term, moving towards full portability like
32            this is a good idea.
33  The emulator can also be used in other experiments; it does not have to  
34  run entire guest operating systems. It is important to remember, though,  (Since the MIPS emulation mode has been rewritten from scratch, and I have
35  that GXemul does not simulate things smaller than an instruction; this  not really had much time over for debugging, there are most likely new
36  means that pipe-line stalls, penalties caused by branch-prediction misses,  bugs in 0.4.0 that were not present in 0.3.8. However, I feel that it is
37  and other effects are not simulated.  better to make a quick release now than to wait even longer.)
38    
39  Summary of changes between release 0.3.2 and 0.3.3.2:  There have also been many other changes, including, but not limited to:
40    
41          x)  When booting from an ISO9660 (CDROM) filesystem image, the kernel      o)  The "test machine" functionality is more well-defined than before,
42              can now in some cases be read directly from the image, so there is          and some tutorial-like demos have been added. These could be useful
43              no need any longer to supply an external kernel. (It is a quick,          e.g. in operating system construction courses.
44              buggy, and very ugly hack, but it sometimes works.)  
45        o)  NetBSD/sgimips 3.0 works now. This is most likely due to the rewrite
46          x)  Mixing more than one disk image type (SCSI, IDE, PC-style floppy)          of the MIPS emulation mode. Previous releases of GXemul only worked
47              within one emulated machine is now possible. (There is however no          with NetBSD/sgimips 2.1.
48              stable emulation mode yet that uses this.)  
49        o)  I have begun implementing rudimentary support for GDB remote serial
50            protocol connections. This means that you can run e.g. the Data
51            Display Debugger, and connect it to a GXemul instance.
52    
53            No advanced GDB functionality is working yet, but starting and
54            stopping the emulated machine and single-stepping should work.
55    
56    Please read the HISTORY files for more details.
57    
         x)  Many minor updates and bugfixes.  
58    
59  Files included in this release are:  Files included in this release are:
60    
61    BUGS                        A list of known bugs.    BUGS                        List of known bugs for this release.
62    HISTORY                     Detailed revision history / changelog.    HISTORY                     Detailed revision history / changelog.
63    LICENSE                     Copyright message / license.    LICENSE                     Copyright message / license.
64    README                      Quick start instructions, for the impatient.    README                      Quick start instructions, for the impatient.
65    RELEASE                     This file.    RELEASE                     This file.
66    TODO                        TODO notes.    TODO                        TODO notes.
67    configure, Makefile.skel    sh and make scripts for building GXemul.    configure, Makefile.skel    sh and make scripts for building GXemul.
68      demos                       Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality.
69    doc                         Documentation.    doc                         Documentation.
70    experiments                 Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)    experiments                 Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)
71    src                         Source code.    src                         Source code.
   tests                       Regression tests.  
72    
73  To build the emulator, run the ./configure script, and then run make.  To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This
74    should work on most Unix-like systems.
75    
 Building the emulator should work on most Unix-like systems. (One system which  
 is specifically known to NOT work is Ultrix/RISC inside the emulator; Ultrix  
 chokes on the configure script and the default cc in Ultrix doesn't work.)  
76    
77  Regarding files in the src/include/ directory: only some of these are written  Regarding files in the src/include/ directory: only some of these are written
78  by me, the rest are from other sources (such as NetBSD). The license text says  by me, the rest are from other sources (such as NetBSD). The license text says
# Line 133  them like this is in order: Line 138  them like this is in order:
138    
139      This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz.      This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz.
140    
141        This product includes software developed by Brini.
142    
143        This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe
144        for the NetBSD Project.
145    
146        This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH.
147    
148        This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer.
149    
150        This product includes software developed by the Alice Group.
151    
152        This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA.
153    
154    Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following:
155    
156        Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University.
157        All rights reserved.
158    
159        Author: Keith Bostic, Chris G. Demetriou
160    
161        Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
162        its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright
163        notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the
164        software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions
165        thereof, and that both notices appear in supporting documentation.
166    
167  See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul  See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
168  or reuse code.  or reuse code.
169    
170  Thanks to everyone who has provided me with feedback.  
171    Thanks to (in no specific order) Joachim Buss, Olivier Houchard, Juli Mallett,
172    Juan Romero Pardines, Alec Voropay, Göran Weinholt, Alexander Yurchenko, and
173    everyone else who has provided me with feedback.
174    
175    Special thanks to Alec Voropay for testing this release with Linux
176    kernels, and on Cygwin, and also thanks to Ondrej Palkovsky for testing
177    with HelenOS.
178    
179  If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments  If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments
180  or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se.  or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se.

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