[vmips] VMIPS 1.3 Released!

[Brian R. Gaeke]

   VMIPS 1.3 has been released. VMIPS is a MIPS R3000 virtual machine
simulator with support for a serial console and GNU cross-compiler tools.
This release primarily focuses on improvements to existing features and
code clean-up. 

   You can download VMIPS 1.3 from any of the following sites:

* ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/sourceforge/vmips/
* ftp://ftp.dgate.org/vmips/releases/vmips-1.3/
* http://download.sourceforge.net/vmips/
* http://www.dgate.org/vmips/releases/vmips-1.3/
* http://vmips.sourceforge.net/releases/vmips-1.3/

   VMIPS is free software available under the GNU General Public
License; for details, please read the file "COPYING". For installation
instructions, please read "INSTALL". VMIPS was built by Brian Gaeke and
others; for details, please see the files "AUTHORS" and "THANKS". New
features since the last publically released version are detailed in
"NEWS".

   The home page for VMIPS is "http://www.dgate.org/vmips". For bug
reporting instructions, please see the VMIPS Manual.

   User-visible changes in version 1.3 (since version 1.2.2):

   * The VMIPS code base has been cleaned up substantially. The most
     important visible effect of this is that VMIPS compiles much more
     quickly now.

   * A new, experimental executable-file loader has been integrated.
     Presently it is only usable for loading ECOFF files into the
     kernel segments (0x80000000-0xbfffffff). The ROM monitor has a new
     `call' command you can use to take advantage of this.

   * Vmipstool can now disassemble binary instructions from the command
     line, e.g.  `vmipstool --disassemble-word <pc> <instr>'.

   * The `excmsg' option used to report all exceptions, including
     things like clock interrupts. This made using `excmsg' in any
     nontrivial kernel code almost impossible. Now you must also specify
     'reportirq' to get reports of interrupt exceptions.

   * The `haltjrra' option has been removed.

   * The DECstation 5000/200-compatible CSR device now supports delivery
     of interrupts from devices attached to CSR interrupt lines, such
     as the DZ11 serial device.

   * The DZ11 serial device now supports interrupt-driven I/O properly.
     It previously only worked correctly if polling was used.

   * The documentation has received the usual slight adjustments. In
     addition, the test-suite documentation has been extensively
     revised and integrated into the programmer's manual.

   * The options-processing code has been revised slightly to print a
     better error message when an invalid option is specified.

   To get the code from CVS as any bug fixes are added, checkout from branch
"vmips-1_3-branch". VMIPS 1.3 itself can be checked out using the tag
"release-1-3".

   Please refer to the bug reporting instructions in the VMIPS manual
if you have trouble using the software.

-Brian Gaeke and the VMIPS developers <vmips at dgate.org>

-- 
Brian R. Gaeke, brg at dgate.org -- GnuPG encrypted mail gleefully accepted