This is version 1.3.2 of the nesC compiler.
Installation instructions are in INSTALL.
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 Ãhman <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
