[GXemul-users] GXemul 0.6.0 has been released

[Anders G. <ga...@gm...>]

GXemul 0.6.0 has been released, 2010-02-14.

The main change between release 0.4.7.2 and 0.6.0 is:

    * Since late 2007, a complete rewrite of the emulator's base
      framework has been going on. GXemul 0.6.0 is a very early
      release of the new framework. So far, only the testm88k machine
      mode has been rewritten to use the new framework, all other
      machine modes run in legacy mode using the old framework (which
      is still included). 
        
      In other words: For most emulation modes, 0.6.0 will be exactly
      like 0.4.7.2. 
        
      The new testm88k mode is much less complete than the old
      testm88k; the reason for concentrating on this mode is to be
      able to make an initial release of the new framework within a
      reasonable time frame. 
        
      Compared to the other emulation modes, there are lots of things
      left to do before the new framework can be considered working:
      There are no lookup tables for fast loads/stores, no fast
      pc-to-pointer lookups, no interrupt/trap/exception handling, no
      timers, no breakpoint support, no general expression parsing, no
      I/O (serial controllers nor graphical output handlers), no disk
      or ethernet support, no MMU/virtual memory translation, and
      snapshotting (for reverse debugging) isn't implemented yet.
      Still, it is probably better to make many smaller releases
      (0.6.x) than to wait until everything is in place. 
        
      There is also a (bogus) testmips machine which will be
      implemented using the new framework. To use the old testmips
      machine, please use the name oldtestmips instead.

In addition to the new framework, a couple of other changes are worth
mentioning:

    * Many unused, rarely used, and bogus emulation modes and features
      were removed, to reduce the maintenance burden. 
        
    * Some operating systems listed on the guest OS page have had new
      releases; the documentation has been updated to reflect this. 
        
    * New source code (but not the legacy part) is documented using
      Doxygen comments, and there is a unit testing framework in
      place. 
        
    * There is now finally an install Makefile target, and the -j make
      option can be used to parallelize builds. 


The idea is to make a quick release now, even though nothing really
works, and make many small releases during development of the new
framework.


Release notes:
http://gxemul.sourceforge.net/gxemul-stable/doc/RELEASE.html

Download:
http://gxemul.sourceforge.net/download.html


Anders