Changelog

This is version 1.3.6 of the nesC compiler.

Changes in nesC 1.3.6
=====================
- use the version of gcc specified in ./configure when invoking nescc
- support compiling with new versions of emacs
- update alignment type to support Mac OS X

Changes in nesC 1.3.5
=====================
- improved man pages
- new option (-Wnesc-implicit-conn) to warn when using implicit connections
  (interface = commponent)
- fix interfaces mutiply-parameterized interfaces
  (http://sourceforge.net/p/nescc/bugs/69/)
- make lookups of symbols using the magic __nesc_keyword_ prefix lookup the
  non-prefixed symbol (fixes https://github.com/tinyos/nesc/issues/4)
- nescc-mig, nescc-ncg now recognize --param, -imultilib, -isysroot and
  -Xpreprocessor as options taking arguments

Changes in nesC 1.3.4
=====================
- support gcc 4.7.x (issue 3381025)
- fix issues 3519555, 3473487, 3468269

Changes in nesC 1.3.3
=====================
- fixed mig when used with perl 5.12 (sourceforge bugs 3122329, 3066006)
- work around potential gcc 4.6 behavior change (sourceforge bug 3153727)
- support gcc's -H option (print #included file names)

Changes in nesC 1.3.2
=====================
- changed Intel Open Source License files to dual BSD/GPL license
- improved support for non-gcc targets: -fnesc-gccize flag,
  optionally identify "async" function in nescc output
- bug fixes (sourceforge bugs 3013497, 3017203, 3019357 and others)
- disable use of Apple-specific "blocks" C extension

Changes in nesC 1.3.1
=====================
- updated reference manual for language changes since version 1.2.0
- support gcc's -include option when compiling a nesC application
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.3.0
=====================
- C preprocessor is integrated into nesC, which should significantly speed
  up compilation (esp. on Windows)

- support for the Deputy type-safety-for-C system (see
  deputy.cs.berkeley.edu). To use Deputy, you add type annotations to
  your nesC code, then compile with the -fnesc-deputy flag. A bunch of
  small changes to nesC support the use of deputy.

  Flags to nescc:
  -fnesc-deputy: use Deputy in this compilation. You need to have
   a version of Deputy customized for use with nesC installed for
   this to work.
  -fnesc-deputy-args: extra arguments to pass to Deputy.
  -fnesc-default-safe/-fnesc-default-unsafe: the default safety for
   C functions and nesC modules (with no option specified,
   -fnesc-default-unsafe is assumed)

  Type annotations: NONULL, COUNT(...), etc (see the Deputy-for-nesC
  documentation for full details), which are actually macros which
  expand to nesC attributes (@nonnull(), @count(...), etc. Using macros
  allows Deputy-annotated code to be used with earlier versions of nesC.

  Type annotations in nesdoc comments: to reduce clutter for non-Deputy
  users, Deputy's annotations can be placed within a nesdoc comment
  rather than in a function signature (which then looks like a regular
  C signature):
    /** ... @param 'int *@count(n) x' x is an array of n ints ... */
    void f(int *x, int n);
  is the same as
    void f(int *@count(n) x, int n);
  Macros can be used in the comment, so the above could also be
    /** ... @param 'int *COUNT(n) x' x is an array of n ints ... */
    void f(int *x, int n);
  where COUNT(expr) expands to @count(expr).

- internal support (in nesc1) for Deputy based on @deputy_scope() and
  @macro("NAME") attributes, and a -fnesc-genprefix=<line> option.

- @macro() and -fnesc-genprerix= may be useful in other contexts too:
  if a nesC attribute declaration has an @macro() attribute:
    struct @myattr @macro("MYMACRO") { int x; char *y; };
  then uses of @myattr in nesC source are output as calls to MYMACRO in
  nesC's intermediate C output. For instance
    int x @myattr(23, "fun");
  becomes
    int x MYMACRO(23, "fun");
  The -fnesc-genprefix=<line> adds <line> to the start of the generated C
  output, e.g., it could be a #define definition for MYMACRO, or a
  #include of a file with appropriate definitions.

- wide strings in XML output now show up as arrays of bytes (and follow
  the target's byte-level representation of wide strings)

- ability to process a C file through nesC (this provides support in C for
  external types, atomic statements and unique), as follows:
    nescc <options> -x nesc <filename>.c
  This forces nescc to pass the C file <filename>.c through the nesC compiler
  (normally it would be sent to the regular C compiler), which will process
  the nesC extensions and then compile the generated C code with the regular
  C compiler (or whatever compiler was specified with -fnesc-gcc=...)

- inside a module, you can now write void f(void) or void f() interchangeably


Changes in nesC 1.2.9
=====================
- added uniqueN constant function to allocated N consecutive numbers
- fix -fnesc-separator
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.8a
======================
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.8
=====================
- -fnesc-cppdir option to save preprocessed output
- -fnesc-separator option to change symbol separator from $ in generated code
- little-endian bitfields now supported in network types (thanks to
  Matti Juhani Ã–hman <mohman@cc.hut.fi> for the approach and some of the code)
- internal errors try to report current source location (can be helpful in
  tracking down problems, but only works for errors that occur during parsing)
- updated vim mode from Cory Sharp (cory@moteiv.com)
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.7a
======================
- nescc-diff removed (it was unsupported, ran only on AVR, and depends on guile
  being installed to work)

Changes in nesC 1.2.7
=====================
- gcc's mode attribute support (this requires a new word_size specification
  in the env target)
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.6
=====================
- external types now support bitfields (big-endian only - mixing bit-field
  endianness within a struct would be extremely confusing and/or tricky)
- -conly option to just compile to C
- better struct/union layout code, which requires a slightly more detailed
  target machine description (see src/machine.h)
- #pragma statements are saved and dumped at the end of the generated C code
  (if you or your compiler uses #pragma, you'll probably have to move these
  somewhere else; however, this cannot be done without understanding of
  the pragma itself; hence the nesC compiler leaves this process to a
  user-supplied tool)
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.5
=====================
- nescc-mig now generates C (ncg has supported C since 1.1.2)
- add __builtin_offsetof keyword to make recent gcc's happy,
  and update the gcc-specific asm syntax to reflect recent
  gcc changes
- allow types defined in interface files to be used immediately in generic
  interface arguments (e.g., interface Timer<TMilli>, where TMilli is
  defined in Timer.nc)
- updates to automatic inlining - code should be slightly smaller
- @spontaneous() attribute is automatically added to the __nesc_XXX
  functions used by the compiler
- atomic optimisation (experimental): if you specify -fnesc-optimize-atomic,
  two optimisations are performed:
  o outermost atomics call __nesc_disable/enable_interrupt, which can assume
    that interrupts are initially enabled
  o "simple" atomic statements have no overhead (interrupts are not disabled)
    simple atomic statements are those:
    - with no accesses to shared state
    - or, at most one access to one byte of shared state
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.4
=====================
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.3
=====================
- provide network type information in nesC dump output
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.2
=====================
- nescc-wiring tool to check wiring constraints - see man page for details
- python mig, ncg support
- XML schema update (should now match nesC dump output)
- Java code now made available in compiled form as nesc.jar (rather than
  in source form)
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2.1
=====================
- external types (nx_...) can now be passed as parameters and returned as
  results
- updates to XML dump information to support nesdoc
  in particular, remember typedef names
- bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.2
===================
- generic components and interfaces. See doc/user/generics-1.2.txt.
  nesdoc does not support generic components and interfaces (this should be
  supported in the next release).
- configuration implementations and component specifications can now
  include type and constant declarations; configuration implementations
  can refer to these types and constants. These changes are described
  alongside the generic component changes, in doc/user/generics-1.2.txt.
- attributes (Java 1.5-style). See doc/user/attributes.txt.
- binary components. See doc/user/binary-components.txt.
- external types, a revamp of nesC 1.1.3's network types. See
  doc/user/network-types.txt.
- "includes" is deprecated - use #include instead; note that you
  must use #ifndef/#define/#endif for #include'd files in the usual
  C style.
- macros in included files now work in ways that are similar to C
  (as long as you use #include instead of includes).
- support for compiling task/post into an interface + wiring: this
  allows the scheduler to be implemented as a component.
- return can be used in atomic statements (implicitly terminating
  the atomic statement).
- the patched AVR assembler has been unbundled from nesC.
- the ncc, mig and nesdoc scripts have been unbundled from nesC (they
  are now distributed with the other TinyOS tools).

Changes in nesC 1.1.3
=====================
- network types: platform-independent types to support heterogeneous
  networking. See doc/network-types.txt.
- support passing assembler options for nesC programs with -Wa, as usual w/ gcc
- support -I- correctly (see gcc manual)
- initialiser bug fix (some initialisers crashed nesC)

Changes in nesC 1.1.2
=====================
- Misc bug fixes (in particular, work around latest-cygwin weirdness which
  causes file corruption)
- Recognise the gcc noinline attribute and don't automatically inline such
  functions (patch contributed by Klaus Madsen, nesc@hjernemadsen.org)
- Mac OS X support; avr-gcc not needed when compiling nesC
- Support gcc's -I- idiom to prevent searching current dir for components,
  interfaces, etc.
- 64-bit platform support: compile with -DLARGE_ADDRESSES, and
  edit the MEMSLICE1 constant in src/libcompat.regions.c to be the number
  of unused high-order bits on your platform
- ncg supports C (note that there's no C mig support yet)

Changes in nesC 1.1.1
=====================
- Support for platforms and sensorboards in directories other than
  tos/platforms and tos/sensorboards: a platform or sensorboard
  can be used if its directory is specified with an explicit -I directive
  (see doc/ncc.html for details).
- support for Tython
- support -Wparentheses (warnings on statements like 'if (var = value) ...',
  and other similar C pitfalls)
- nesC editing modes for emacs, vim and kde (kate, kwrite, kdevelop):
  these are in tools/editor-modes, and get installed to
  <installdir>/lib/ncc/editor-modes. Read the appropriate readme.txt file
  for installation directions
- msp430 and env targets (env gets the machine specification from an
  environment variable and is intended to ease implementation of new
  platforms, see doc/envtarget.html for details)
- new hwevent, atomic_hwevent attributes to tell nesC which functions
  are interrupt entry points (hwevent: interrupt entry point, invoked
  with interrupts enabled; atomic_hwevent: interrupt entry point, invoked
  with interrupts disabled) - these should ease porting to new platforms
- new keywords (future use): abstract, component, extends, generic, new
- A few small bug fixes

Changes in nesC 1.1
===================
- Support for new language features:
  o atomic sections
  o compile-time data race detection
  o explicit marking of asynchronous (aka interrupt) code (async keyword on
    commands and events)
  o automatic combining of results of multiply-wired functions
  o initialisers now supported on module variables
  o uniqueCount(<string>) function to complement unique(<string>), returning
    the number of uses of the latter (useful for dimensioning arrays...)

- new nesC warning flags/changes:
  o -W[no-]unexpected-docstring is now -Wnesc-docstring, and defaults to off
  o -W[no-]nesc-fnptr: warn for uses of function pointers
  o -W[no-]nesc-data-race: turn on[off] compile-time data race detection
  o -W[no-]nesc-async: warn [bug in alpha: error] if asynchronous code calls
    synchronous code
  o -W[no-]nesc-combine: warn when multiply wired functions do not have
    a combining function defined on the result type. See tos.h for the
    the combining function definition for result_t
  o -Wnesc-all: same as -Wnesc-data-race -Wnesc-async -Wnesc-fnptr and
                -Wnesc-combine

- The NESC preprocessor symbol is defined to XYZ, where X is the major
  version, Y the minor and Z the patchlevel. So nesc 1.1 defines NESC as 110

- Tool chain changes:
  o ncc has been split into two files: ncc and nescc
    TinyOS-specific code is in ncc, nescc is a "generic" nesC compiler
    (nescc does not automatically include tos.h, and does not automatically
     add the TinyOS directory structure to the search path)
  o the -fnesc-include=<filename> option includes a C file before compiling
    the requested component (used by ncc to include tos.h...)
    You can specify several -fnesc-include=... options
  o A hardware platform X can now more easily be added:
    - create directory .../tos/platforms/X
    - place a .platform file in .../tos/platforms/X. Look at existing
      .platform files for inspiration.
  o A sensor board Y can add directories to the search path if there is
    a .sensor file in the .../tos/sensorboards/Y directory
    (as with .platform, .sensor is just perl code so can modify the
    variables used by ncc to achieve whatever effect is necessary)
  o set-mote-id works for programs greater than 64K

- New tool to extract (enum) constants from C code: ncg. Usage is similar
  to mig.
- Debugging on mica supports with the Atmel JTAG ICE and the AvarICE
  project (at http://sourceforge.net/projects/avarice)

- Some improved error messages, miscellaneous bug fixes