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Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.0 |
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================================================================ |
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Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare. |
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GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several |
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emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding |
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hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating |
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systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine. |
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The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can |
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be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best supported guest operating |
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systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats. |
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The most important change between release 0.3.8 and 0.4.0 is: |
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o) The emulation of MIPS processors has been completely rewritten; |
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it now uses the same portable dynamic translation system as the |
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ARM and PowerPC emulation modes. |
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On Alpha and i386 hosts (and AMD64 hosts running in 32-bit mode), |
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GXemul previously used translation into native code. This release |
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will perform worse than 0.3.8 on those host architectures. |
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On all other hosts (including AMD64 running in native 64-bit mode), |
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0.4.0 is likely to be faster than 0.3.8, when emulating MIPS, at |
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least for R3000 emulation. |
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I think that in the long term, moving towards full portability like |
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this is a good idea. |
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(Since the MIPS emulation mode has been rewritten from scratch, and I have |
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not really had much time over for debugging, there are most likely new |
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bugs in 0.4.0 that were not present in 0.3.8. However, I feel that it is |
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better to make a quick release now than to wait even longer.) |
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There have also been many other changes, including, but not limited to: |
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o) The "test machine" functionality is more well-defined than before, |
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and some tutorial-like demos have been added. These could be useful |
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e.g. in operating system construction courses. |
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o) NetBSD/sgimips 3.0 works now. This is most likely due to the rewrite |
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of the MIPS emulation mode. Previous releases of GXemul only worked |
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with NetBSD/sgimips 2.1. |
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o) I have begun implementing rudimentary support for GDB remote serial |
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protocol connections. This means that you can run e.g. the Data |
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Display Debugger, and connect it to a GXemul instance. |
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No advanced GDB functionality is working yet, but starting and |
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stopping the emulated machine and single-stepping should work. |
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Please read the HISTORY files for more details. |
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Files included in this release are: |
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BUGS List of known bugs for this release. |
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HISTORY Detailed revision history / changelog. |
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LICENSE Copyright message / license. |
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README Quick start instructions, for the impatient. |
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RELEASE This file. |
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TODO TODO notes. |
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configure, Makefile.skel sh and make scripts for building GXemul. |
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demos Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality. |
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doc Documentation. |
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experiments Experimental code. (Usually not needed.) |
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src Source code. |
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To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This |
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should work on most Unix-like systems. |
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Regarding files in the src/include/ directory: only some of these are written |
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by me, the rest are from other sources (such as NetBSD). The license text says |
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that "All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software" |
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must display acknowledgements. Even though I do NOT feel I mention features or |
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use of the header files (the "software") in any advertising materials, I am |
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still very grateful for the fact that these people have made their files |
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available for re-use, so regardless of legal requirements, I guess thanking |
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them like this is in order: |
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This product includes software developed by the University of |
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California, Berkeley and its contributors. |
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This product includes software developed for the |
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NetBSD Project. See http://www.netbsd.org/ for |
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information about NetBSD. |
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This product includes software developed by Jonathan Stone for |
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the NetBSD Project. |
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This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project |
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by Matthias Drochner. |
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This product includes software developed by the NetBSD |
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Foundation, Inc. and its contributors. |
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This product includes software developed by Christopher G. Demetriou. |
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[for the NetBSD Project.] |
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This product includes software developed by Adam Glass. |
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This product includes software developed by the PocketBSD project |
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and its contributors. |
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This product includes software developed by Peter Galbavy. |
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Carnegie Mellon University (multiple header files, |
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no specific advertisement text required) |
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This product includes software developed by Charles M. Hannum. |
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This product includes software developed under OpenBSD by Per Fogelström. |
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This product includes software developed by Per Fogelström. |
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This product includes software developed at Ludd, University of |
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Luleå, Sweden and its contributors. |
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This product includes software developed by Hellmuth Michaelis |
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and Joerg Wunsch |
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The font(s) in devices/fonts are Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994 |
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by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch. ("This product includes software |
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developed by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch", well, the font |
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is maybe not software, but still...) |
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impactsr-bsd.h is Copyright (C) 2004 by Stanislaw Skowronek. |
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This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project by |
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Wasabi Systems, Inc. [by Simon Burge] |
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arcbios_other.h is Copyright (c) 1996 M. Warner Losh. |
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This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz. |
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This product includes software developed by Brini. |
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This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe |
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for the NetBSD Project. |
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This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH. |
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This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer. |
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This product includes software developed by the Alice Group. |
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This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA. |
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Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following: |
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Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University. |
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All rights reserved. |
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Author: Keith Bostic, Chris G. Demetriou |
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Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and |
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its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright |
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notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the |
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software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions |
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thereof, and that both notices appear in supporting documentation. |
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See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul |
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or reuse code. |
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Thanks to (in no specific order) Joachim Buss, Olivier Houchard, Juli Mallett, |
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Juan Romero Pardines, Alec Voropay, Göran Weinholt, Alexander Yurchenko, and |
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everyone else who has provided me with feedback. |
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Special thanks to Alec Voropay for testing this release with Linux |
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kernels, and on Cygwin, and also thanks to Ondrej Palkovsky for testing |
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with HelenOS. |
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If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments |
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or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se. |
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