path: root/Changes

For version 0.13.0.

> Added '-g' to gcc options, make sure install has '-s' to strip symbols.

> Grrrr, missing files in bootblocks directory, I didn't have them all.
  OK, as part of the dist script I'll have to do a 'make other' ...
  Some other bits there too ...

> Minor alteration to opening files in ld to fix problem when share.exe
  loaded under dos.

> Added Config.dflt for default libc configuration flags. I can now
  re-introduce Joel's standard I/O functions ... but they haven't
  been updated in a while ...

> Addition to minix.c to use allow BB to determine the track size by
  trial and error (not intuit from superblock) to allow mis-sized
  filesystems on a floppy. Also add some error retries to the floppy
  version.

> Can now do 'use16 8086' in assembler instead of 'use16 86' also
  'use16 80386'

> Add 'make install-ln', this installs _symbolic_links_ to the dev
  directory in the normal directories. This means you don't have
  to do a make install after re-compiling. But it also means the
  'install' is dependent on the dev dirs.

> Add ability to use overrides on the comand line of the initial make,
  and have them saved, for CC, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, PREFIX, BINDIR and LIBDIR.
  Includes minor alteration to bcc.c and as86_encap.

> Added in 'objchop' as an option in the ld directory.

> Removed too eager 'typeconv.c' warning.

For version 0.12.0.

> Notice the change in the version numbers, as long as I'm releasing the
  upto the minute patches I thought I'd better give everyone a way of
  keeping track. So now the 0.X.0 are the main releases, the 0.X.Y are
  interim patches.

> I've added a new output binary for ld86, it can now do the broken
  relocatable a.out that bin86 produces. I don't like this but it
  does let me move ld86 back to /usr/bin without breaking DOSEMU.
  Note! If you've installed vsn 0.0.11 or earlier you will need to
  uninstall it before installing this one.

> Altered makefiles for GNU-make 3.74, GNU-make no longer generates
  automatic 'rm' commands so I have to do it manually.

> Altered makefiles again, starting to get non GNU makefile working.

> Added some cleanups to ifdef.c. (voids etc)

> Assembler now understands monadic '-' and '+' operations (for copt).

> Improved the type conversion functions, they should now work on most
  machines. There may still be some problems with sizeof(long) == 8 tho,
  added some warnings/traps.

> Improved the auto-detection and auto-rejection of <a.out.h> ld is more
  likely to compile even if a.out.h is completely incompatible (leaving
  out native support).

> Fix for stdio, there was a problem if the OS only did a partial write.

> Alter align() macros to use ssize_t iff both __STDC__ and _POSIX_SOURCE
  are defined.

> Add some changes for compiling under AIX. Assember and BCC appear to work,
  ld has problems with AIX's 'ar' command - problem: AIX's make and gmake
  won't like the smell of a standard following ar86 command ... hmmm.

> Changes in bootblocks, minix.c can now be compiled for a hard disk (works
  on dosemu, dunno about the real thing tho), fixes for mbr.s re preboot
  facility. Addition to minix.c to fix number of sectors in bpb for floppy.

For version 0.0.11.

> New, most recent, version of unproto inserted.

> AAARG! First_arg_in_ax breaks stdarg.h! As a consequence printf wasn't
  working, now why didn't _you_ notice! OK. printf now uses varargs, that
  is more likely to work and does for printf & scanf.

> Added -Mc for 'caller saves' _without_ first_arg_in_ax. As this uses the
  normal libc there are likely to be problems with library -> user callbacks.

> Added -Ml for 386 'Large linux' compile.

> Added -Mn for 'normal' elks compiles so the default for dos can be -Md

> Brand new, an optimiser has been added, it's in its early stages yet
  the 8086 (plain -O) version seems ok. The 386 generator (-O3) is definitly
  missing some requirements. It's probably not a good idea to use -Ml and -O.
  (Later: The 8086 can generate bad code it seems, oh well)

> Some changes to the makefile, minix make will now _try_ to compile bcc,
  it doesn't seem to succeed yet though. Also because of this I've gone
  back over the headers, should be better on non-ansi or non-posix systems
  now.  BTW: minix make has no chance with compiling libc so I've added
  another zip archive containing just the compiled libcs.

> Add the -a-, -j-, -g-, -u- and -w- flags to as86; specifically for -w-
  to allow easy enabling of assembler warnings while using bcc.

> Bugfix for assembler 'ifc' pseudo op.

> Bugfix for preprocessor and unterminated last line of included file.

> Add minix syscall detector to elksemu, I may make it into an emulator ...

> I've split of the 8086 ELKS and i386 Linux libc stuff into seperate
  directories. I expect Chad will want to take over the 8086 one for a while.
  Plus some other files moved around to help new users.

For version 0.0.10.

> Some serious changes to the makefiles, practically a rewrite of them.
  'make', 'make all', 'make install', 'make clean' and 'make realclean'
  do the expected things. 'make distribution' should let you create the
  partial and binary dirtributions from the full source.

> The makefiles now allow multiple libc binaries to co-exist.

> The makefiles now allow a _full_ compile without installing anything.

> In part because of the makefile changes a lot of files in the library
  have been moved, this is a large portion of the patch size.

> ifdef.c added as part of makefile changes, I'm not quite sure if I like
  this way of doing things but it's ok for the mo.

> MSDOS, in the output of *.bin files from as86 skipped areas have zeros
  written not semi-random bytes.

> MSDOS (+ other machines where sizeof(char*) != sizeof(int)) problem with
  macros resolved, they appear to work correctly now.

> NCC added, this is a different version of bcc with libs and include dirs
  in the same format as the MSDOS driver.
  This is used for 'uninstalled' compiling and also if you do:
      $ ln -s `pwd`/bcc/ncc $HOME/bin/bcc
  The bcc will use the 'uninstalled' include and library files for when you
  don't have root access.

> -H option added to ld86, this controls the size of the heap or 'chmem'
  field in the executable.

> BOOT-Blocks, makeboot can be compiled as a DOS COM, bootblock for msdos
  filesystem completed, this will allow lilo, monitor.out or any Linux-86
  standalone executable to be executed from an msdos floppy. Makeboot
  can also install several other types of bootblock.

> Monitor.out not includes 'bzimage' command, which will boot a Linux-i386
  bzImage with command line and initrd.

> 'skip.s' bootblock fixed.

> A few more functions now work in 'standalone' mode, malloc() especially.

-Rob

For version 0.0.9.

> The debian stuff has been removed again, Christoph want's to keep contol
  of the debian specific files.

> I've done some changes to the makefiles, it'll now honour CC=XXX on the
  make command line.

> The assembler now works again compiled under bcc, it tried to allocate
  too much memory.

> Major change to the assembler, '-j' not auto-sizes jumps this requires
  a change to at least 3 passes. Sometimes it'll say it needs another -j
  because lengthing jumps cause others to fail, two -j's will give it lots
  of passes :-)

> The second large change is an effort to identify when instructions are
  not right for a specific processor and generate a warning. The use16
  and use32 instructions now have an optional argument of a processor
  type (86,186..686). Also bcc has a '-W' to remove the -w it passes to
  the assembler.

> Altered the way bcc deals with LOCALPREFIX, now under DOS it picks this
  up based on the path to the executable.

> Fixed a bug introduced by the 'cpp in asm' change in 0.0.8, bcc-cc1 
  wasn't compiling under bcc.

> Two new bootblocks in the 'examples' mbr.s is an MBR (no really :-))
  msdos.s is unfinished but even this far allows lilo to be used on an
  MSDOS filesystem floppy.

> Changed ld to _check_ the magic on files inside an archive, this cures
  the problem caused by long names inserted by gnu-ar. Also it notices
  if an archive has been included in an archive and will link that too.

> Changed ld to do a final check that it knows what sort of a.out.h file
  it's got, if this fails '-N' is disabled.

> Ld changed so for 16 bit exes the heap is limited to 32k.

> getcwd and execvp added, sash should now work. Also added to the 386-lib
  except execvp won't run scripts without '#!'

> Nasty bug with syscalls of > 3 args in 386 code fixed, none of them would
  have been working correctly.

For version 0.0.8.

> Christoph Lameter <clameter@debian.org> has provided a patch for
  installation using the debian packaging, I've probably broken it :-)

> Doselks has been added in, it's not that big really.

> Triggered by the debian stuff the makefiles can now create a pure
  binary installation tree, nothing needed in /usr/src. If kinclude is
  configured out the include directory will reference /usr/src/linuxmt

> Some good changes to the linker today, it will generate a Linux-386
  (That's right, growed up linux) executable. It's still very fragile
  but it does work. The '-r' option now works, but unlike bin86-0.3
  it creates a _Linux_ OMAGIC file. This means that bcc -G works, the
  names are mangled by ld86 such that if it was compiled with ELF the
  OMAGIC will successfully link in an ELF environment.  Beware older
  versions of GCC-binutils can segfault in this situation.

> Bit of sneakyness for the assembler, org will accept negative values ...

> Made a few changes to idcc, I think I'll translate it to C soon.

> Fixed a couple of problems with the preprocessor WRT hashes not at the
  start of a line and quotes in ifdef'd out code.

> Missed a bet in the kernel patch and module, the old one wouldn't
  execute impure executables it will now.

> Fixed matching bug in elksemu, A piece of code was commented out for
  some reason ... oops.

> Some of the error reporting in the linker has improved, if it can't
  open libc it now says so!

> Some 386 specific stuff has been added to libc, mainly the syscall
  generator, startup stuff and BCC's 386 floating point code.

> Change in malloc, Linux-386 limits +ve brk() changes to 32Mb, the malloc
  will now allow for this ...  Phew! grab.c will grab about 3Gb of virtual
  memory, with 1Gb chunks, when compiled in 386 mode! One oddity, glibc
  (quite an old one) hangs when trying to free if grab.c is compiled static.

> Hunted down the most important 16 bit dependancies in dis88, it seems to
  generate a reasonable output file now. Plus a couple of fiddles in the
  disassembler, personally I prefer Hex and I've added a couple of markers
  for 386 code (use opr32, use adr32, seg fs/gs) and the -f flag to force
  disassembly of any file.

> The i386 compile uncovered a bug in alloca, In fact the move to 386 has
  been amazingly painless, practically everything so far has worked first
  time or nearly so ... Wow!

> Added minimal dirent to i386-lib, elksemu now compiles under BCC-386
  AND WORKS!

> Trying to compile bash, it does some hackish stuff with the preprocessor
  and uncovered a couple of problems, fixed. Now I need more float stuff.

> Added for bcc-cc1, code between #asm and #endasm _is_ scanned for #defined
  words and functions, it didn't effect the libc at all. Of course we now
  need some way to put multiple instructions in one #define, I've nominated
  '^' as the statement terminator, I didn't have many choices :-(

> Added '-t' for bcc-cc1 when bcc gets -S

-Rob

For version 0.0.7.

I've been making quite a few changes to the assembler:
   The 'include' or 'get' command now works.
   The '-b' and '-s' options are now quite useful for bootblocks
      or encapsulated code.
   The standard input is now a valid source for the assemble
      (but only on 'big' machines).
   Various other functions now work, macros, 'jmp near',
      'jmpi qword $100000,$1000', and other bug fixes.
   As86_encap script added.
   Some of the 256 char line limits have been removed for non-bcc compiles.

The linker will now fail more gracefully for reversed 'org's and complain
about too large segments.

Bcc-cc1 will now compile under itself, with some limitations, and appears
to generate correct output.  There are problems tho in that I think the
heap<->stack saftey margin is too short and I've disconnected all code for
floating point features.

The components will all compile and seem to work quite well using MSC 5.1
under dos and will probably compile using other dos compilers. BCC cannot
compile itself under dos because the libs to fake the unix syscalls under
dos are currently too large.

A number of fixes have been added that were apperently in another version
of the tools to aid operation on other machines, there's now a better chance
of these programs working on 'big-endian' machines.

Various bits and pieces have been added to the libs, including some time
functions (but these need a _small_ way of dealing with "DST").

-Rob