upstream/0.4.0/RELEASE

Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.0
================================================================

Copyright (C) 2003-2006  Anders Gavare.


GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
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 
systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.


The most important change between release 0.3.8 and 0.4.0 is:

    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.

        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.

        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.

        I think that in the long term, moving towards full portability like
        this is a good idea.

(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.)

There have also been many other changes, including, but not limited to:

    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.

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.
  RELEASE                     This file.
  TODO                        TODO notes.
  configure, Makefile.skel    sh and make scripts for building GXemul.
  demos                       Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality.
  doc                         Documentation.
  experiments                 Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)
  src                         Source code.

To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This 
should work on most Unix-like systems.


Regarding files in the src/include/ directory: only some of these are written
by me, the rest are from other sources (such as NetBSD). The license text says
that "All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software"
must display acknowledgements. Even though I do NOT feel I mention features or
use of the header files (the "software") in any advertising materials, I am
still very grateful for the fact that these people have made their files
available for re-use, so regardless of legal requirements, I guess thanking
them like this is in order:

    This product includes software developed by the University of
    California, Berkeley and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed for the
    NetBSD Project.  See http://www.netbsd.org/ for
    information about NetBSD.

    This product includes software developed by Jonathan Stone for
    the NetBSD Project.

    This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project
    by Matthias Drochner.

    This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
    Foundation, Inc. and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed by Christopher G. Demetriou.
    [for the NetBSD Project.]

    This product includes software developed by Adam Glass.

    This product includes software developed by the PocketBSD project
    and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed by Peter Galbavy.

    Carnegie Mellon University   (multiple header files,
    no specific advertisement text required)

    This product includes software developed by Charles M. Hannum.

    This product includes software developed under OpenBSD by Per Fogelström.

    This product includes software developed by Per Fogelström.

    This product includes software developed at Ludd, University of
    Luleå, Sweden and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed by Hellmuth Michaelis
    and Joerg Wunsch

    The font(s) in devices/fonts are Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994
    by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch.  ("This product includes software
    developed by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch", well, the font
    is maybe not software, but still...)

    impactsr-bsd.h is Copyright (C) 2004 by Stanislaw Skowronek.

    This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project by
    Wasabi Systems, Inc.  [by Simon Burge]

    arcbios_other.h is Copyright (c) 1996 M. Warner Losh.

    This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz.

    This product includes software developed by Brini.

    This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe
    for the NetBSD Project.

    This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH.

    This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer.

    This product includes software developed by the Alice Group.

    This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA.

Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following:

    Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University.
    All rights reserved.

    Author: Keith Bostic, Chris G. Demetriou

    Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
    its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright
    notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the
    software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions
    thereof, and that both notices appear in supporting documentation.

See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
or reuse code.


Thanks to (in no specific order) Joachim Buss, Olivier Houchard, Juli Mallett,
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.

1	dpavlin	24	Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.0
2	dpavlin	20	================================================================
3	dpavlin	2
4	dpavlin	22	Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare.
5	dpavlin	2
6
7	dpavlin	14	GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
8			emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
9	dpavlin	12	hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
10			systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine.
11	dpavlin	2
12	dpavlin	22	The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can
13			be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best supported guest operating
14			systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.
15	dpavlin	2
16	dpavlin	20
17	dpavlin	24	The most important change between release 0.3.8 and 0.4.0 is:
18	dpavlin	12
19	dpavlin	24	o) The emulation of MIPS processors has been completely rewritten;
20			it now uses the same portable dynamic translation system as the
21			ARM and PowerPC emulation modes.
22	dpavlin	2
23	dpavlin	24	On Alpha and i386 hosts (and AMD64 hosts running in 32-bit mode),
24			GXemul previously used translation into native code. This release
25			will perform worse than 0.3.8 on those host architectures.
26	dpavlin	10
27	dpavlin	24	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			least for R3000 emulation.
30	dpavlin	2
31	dpavlin	24	I think that in the long term, moving towards full portability like
32			this is a good idea.
33	dpavlin	2
34	dpavlin	24	(Since the MIPS emulation mode has been rewritten from scratch, and I have
35			not really had much time over for debugging, there are most likely new
36			bugs in 0.4.0 that were not present in 0.3.8. However, I feel that it is
37			better to make a quick release now than to wait even longer.)
38	dpavlin	2
39	dpavlin	24	There have also been many other changes, including, but not limited to:
40	dpavlin	2
41	dpavlin	24	o) The "test machine" functionality is more well-defined than before,
42			and some tutorial-like demos have been added. These could be useful
43			e.g. in operating system construction courses.
44	dpavlin	20
45	dpavlin	24	o) NetBSD/sgimips 3.0 works now. This is most likely due to the rewrite
46			of the MIPS emulation mode. Previous releases of GXemul only worked
47			with NetBSD/sgimips 2.1.
48
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
58
59	dpavlin	2	Files included in this release are:
60
61	dpavlin	24	BUGS List of known bugs for this release.
62	dpavlin	2	HISTORY Detailed revision history / changelog.
63			LICENSE Copyright message / license.
64			README Quick start instructions, for the impatient.
65			RELEASE This file.
66			TODO TODO notes.
67	dpavlin	4	configure, Makefile.skel sh and make scripts for building GXemul.
68	dpavlin	24	demos Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality.
69	dpavlin	2	doc Documentation.
70			experiments Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)
71	dpavlin	4	src Source code.
72	dpavlin	2
73	dpavlin	24	To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This
74	dpavlin	22	should work on most Unix-like systems.
75	dpavlin	2
76	dpavlin	24
77	dpavlin	4	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
79	dpavlin	2	that "All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software"
80			must display acknowledgements. Even though I do NOT feel I mention features or
81			use of the header files (the "software") in any advertising materials, I am
82			still very grateful for the fact that these people have made their files
83			available for re-use, so regardless of legal requirements, I guess thanking
84			them like this is in order:
85
86			This product includes software developed by the University of
87			California, Berkeley and its contributors.
88
89			This product includes software developed for the
90			NetBSD Project. See http://www.netbsd.org/ for
91			information about NetBSD.
92
93			This product includes software developed by Jonathan Stone for
94			the NetBSD Project.
95
96			This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project
97			by Matthias Drochner.
98
99			This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
100			Foundation, Inc. and its contributors.
101
102			This product includes software developed by Christopher G. Demetriou.
103			[for the NetBSD Project.]
104
105			This product includes software developed by Adam Glass.
106
107			This product includes software developed by the PocketBSD project
108			and its contributors.
109
110			This product includes software developed by Peter Galbavy.
111
112			Carnegie Mellon University (multiple header files,
113			no specific advertisement text required)
114
115			This product includes software developed by Charles M. Hannum.
116
117			This product includes software developed under OpenBSD by Per Fogelström.
118
119			This product includes software developed by Per Fogelström.
120
121			This product includes software developed at Ludd, University of
122			Luleå, Sweden and its contributors.
123
124			This product includes software developed by Hellmuth Michaelis
125			and Joerg Wunsch
126
127			The font(s) in devices/fonts are Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994
128			by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch. ("This product includes software
129			developed by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch", well, the font
130			is maybe not software, but still...)
131
132			impactsr-bsd.h is Copyright (C) 2004 by Stanislaw Skowronek.
133
134			This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project by
135			Wasabi Systems, Inc. [by Simon Burge]
136
137			arcbios_other.h is Copyright (c) 1996 M. Warner Losh.
138
139			This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz.
140
141	dpavlin	14	This product includes software developed by Brini.
142
143			This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe
144			for the NetBSD Project.
145
146	dpavlin	20	This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH.
147
148			This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer.
149
150	dpavlin	22	This product includes software developed by the Alice Group.
151
152	dpavlin	24	This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA.
153
154	dpavlin	12	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	dpavlin	2	See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
168			or reuse code.
169
170	dpavlin	24
171	dpavlin	22	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	dpavlin	2
175	dpavlin	24	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	dpavlin	2	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.
181