The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of both Linaro GCC 4.5 and Linaro GCC 4.6.
Linaro GCC 4.5 2011.04 is the ninth release in the 4.5 series. Based
off the latest
GCC 4.5.2+svn171921, it adds new optimisations, support for Android,
and fixes for many of the issues found in the last month.
Linaro GCC 4.6 2011.04 is the second release in the 4.6 series. Based off the
latest GCC 4.6.0+svn171921, it is the first supported release of the
new series and includes a significant number of mainstreamed patches
from 4.5.
Interesting changes in 4.6 include:
* Updates to 4.6.0+r171921
* Adds conditional store sinking to the vectoriser
* Brings in a significant number of the Linaro GCC 4.5 patches that
are in mainline
Interesting changes in 4.5 include:
* Updates to 4.5.2+r172013
* Disables the shrink wrap optimisation by default
* Adds support for swing-modulo scheduling (SMS) on ARM
* Adds support for Android and the Bionic C library
* Optimises -fvar-tracking, greatly reducing memory used when
compiling large files (seen in QEMU)
Fixes:
* 'volatile' being ignored on volatile struct members
* A potential register clobber in arm_negdi2
* An error in libgcc that prevented it being built with -Os
* Multiple shrink wrap bugs (LP: #731665, 721023, 736081, 758082,
730860, 736439, 721023)
* LP: #730440 incorrect immediate for movt (seen in Firebird)
* LP: #728315 extension elimination pass mishandles subregs of
promoted variables (seen on MIPS)
* LP: #675347 volatile int causes inline assembly build failure (seen
in Qt)
SMS is an optimisation that works on innermost loops and reorders the
instructions by overlapping different locations. An example is that
the values for the next loop may be loaded during the current loop,
making the values already ready when the next loop starts.
SMS is disabled by default. To try it, add the options '-fmodulo-sched
-fmodulo-sched-allow-regmoves'.
The source tarball is available from:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro/+milestone/4.5-2011.04-0https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro/+milestone/4.6-2011.04-0
Downloads are available from the Linaro GCC page on Launchpad:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro
-- Michael
The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of Linaro QEMU 2011.03-1.
Linaro QEMU 2011.03-1 is the second release of qemu-linaro. Based
off upstream (trunk) qemu, it includes a number of ARM-focused
bug fixes and enhancements.
This release includes a model of the ARM Versatile Express
platform. This is still experimental but may be of use to people
who want a model supporting up to 1GB of RAM with graphics and
networking. Instructions for getting started with it are on the
wiki: https://wiki.linaro.org/PeterMaydell/QemuVersatileExpress
Other interesting changes include:
- The OMAP emulation bug which was causing hangs if Linux tried
to enable a swapfile is fixed
- The OMAP UART model has been improved; this fixes the problem where
kernels using the new omap-hsuart serial drivers stopped serial output
halfway through boot.
- As usual, various minor correctness fixes and other upstream changes
Known issues:
- The beagle and beaglexm models do not support USB, so there is no
keyboard, mouse or networking (#708703)
The only change over the shortlived 2011.03-0 is that the last
minute bug #731093 has been fixed (versatilepb models would crash
on startup.)
The source tarball is available at:
https://launchpad.net/qemu-linaro/+milestone/2011.03-1
Binary builds of this qemu-linaro release are being prepared and
will be available shortly for users of Ubuntu.
When ready, Natty packages of qemu-linaro 2011.03-1 will be in the
Ubuntu archive. Packages for users of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu
10.10 will be in the linaro-maintainers tools ppa:
https://launchpad.net/~linaro-maintainers/+archive/tools/
More information on Linaro QEMU is available at:
https://launchpad.net/qemu-linaro
The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of Linaro GDB 7.2.
Linaro GDB 7.2 2011.03-0 is the fourth release in the 7.2 series.
Based off the latest GDB 7.2, it includes ARM-focused bug fixes and
enhancements.
Interesting changes include:
* Hardware watchpoint support
* Backtracing while in the Linux kernel trampoline frame
Hardware watchpoints use the support built into ARM devices to watch
for changes in values in memory with little performance impact. A
2.6.37 or later kernel is required.
The source tarball is available at:
https://launchpad.net/gdb-linaro/+milestone/7.2-2011.03-0
More information on Linaro GDB is available at:
https://launchpad.net/gdb-linaro
-- Michael
The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of both Linaro GCC 4.5 and Linaro GCC 4.6.
Linaro GCC 4.5 is the eighth release in the 4.5 series. Based off the
latest GCC 4.5.2+svn170352, it includes many ARM-focused performance
improvements and bug fixes.
Interesting changes include:
* Adds a new 'shrink wrap' optimisation
* Improves performance by making better use of the LDM/STM instructions
* Fixes a segfault crash in Qt applications (LP: #705689)
* Fixes a mis-compilation in the SPEC2006 gromacs benchmark (LP: #693502)
* Fixes to the NEON intrinsics exposed through a NEON test suite (LP:
#710623, LP: #710652)
* Fixes an internal compiler error when tuning for XSCALE (LP: #721021)
* Fixes a problem with loading zero using a NEON conditional load (LP: #709453)
Shrink wrapping is an optimisation that delays writing out the prologue until it
is first needed. This helps functions that exit early by reducing the
amount of data pushed out to memory. It is enabled by default at -O1
and can be disabled using '-fno-shrink-wrap'.
Linaro GCC 4.6 is an alpha release of the upcoming 4.6 series, and is
intended for distributions or integrators who wish to start packaging
and testing the compiler early.
Note that no changes were made to Linaro GCC 4.4. 4.4-2010.02-0 stays
the current release.
The source tarballs are available from:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro/+milestone/4.5-2011.03-0
and
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro/+milestone/4.6-2011.03-0
Downloads are available from the Linaro GCC page on Launchpad:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro
-- Michael
The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of Linaro GDB 7.2.
Linaro GDB 7.2 2011.02-0 is the third release in the 7.2 series. Based
off the latest GDB 7.2, it includes a number of ARM-focused bug fixes
and enhancements.
Interesting changes include:
* Backtracing is more reliable through using the ARM specific
exception tables for unwinding
* Better supports debugging functions compiled with GCC's -fstack-protector
* Multiple testsuite related fixes
The source tarball is available at:
https://launchpad.net/gdb-linaro/+milestone/7.2-2011.02-0
More information on Linaro GDB is available at:
https://launchpad.net/gdb-linaro
-- Michael
The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of both Linaro GCC 4.4 and Linaro GCC 4.5.
Linaro GCC 4.5 is the seventh release in the 4.5 series. Based off the
latest GCC 4.5.2, it includes many ARM-focused performance
improvements and bug fixes.
Interesting changes include:
* Improved code generation in the __sync primitives
* Better modelling of the Cortex-A9 NEON pipeline
* Added a performance improvement that converts a tree of ifs into a switchs
* Many bug fixes
Linaro GCC 4.4 is the seventh release in the 4.4 series. Based off the
latest GCC 4.4.5, it is a maintenance release that fixes one fault
found with offsets on NEON loads.
The source tarballs are available from:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro/+milestone/4.5-2011.02-0https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro/+milestone/4.4-2011.02-0
Downloads are available from the Linaro GCC page on Launchpad:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-linaro
-- Michael
The Linaro Toolchain Working Group is pleased to announce the release
of Linaro QEMU 2011.02-0.
Linaro QEMU 2011.02-0 is the first official release of qemu-linaro. Based
off upstream qemu, it includes a number of ARM-focused bug fixes and
enhancements.
- This initial qemu-linaro release includes all the ARM code generation
fixes from the qemu-meego tree; these are mainly Neon related
- The OMAP3 support from qemu-meego is also included
- Various bugs which prevented newer Linaro snapshots from booting
on the beagle model have been fixed
- Bugs causing linaro-media-create to print warnings about unimplemented
syscalls and ioctls have been fixed
Known issues:
- There is no support for USB keyboard or mouse, so only a serial console
is usable (#708703)
- Images built with linaro-media-create's --swap_file option will not
boot (#713101)
The source tarball is available at:
https://launchpad.net/qemu-linaro/+milestone/2011.02
Binary builds of this qemu-linaro release are available for users of
Ubuntu. Natty users can find qemu-linaro 2011.02-0 in the Ubuntu archive.
Users of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10 can find packages in the
linaro-maintainers tools ppa:
https://launchpad.net/~linaro-maintainers/+archive/tools/
More information on Linaro QEMU is available at:
https://launchpad.net/qemu-linaro
On behalf of the Linaro Infrastructure team I'm pleased to announce the
release of Linaro Image Tools 0.4.2.
Linaro Image Tools offer a set of tools for use with Linaro images.
Highlights of this release:
* Support for Gumstix Overo boards has been added.
* Support for Freescale mx51evk (Babbage) boards has been fixed.
* Support for ARM Versatile Express boards has been fixed.
* The fdisk command is not required anymore.
* The UUID of the rootfs is not pre-computed anymore; this allows btrfs to
be used for the root filesystem.
* Linaro Image Tools are now released as a standalone tarball; you need
https://launchpad.net/python-distutils-extra to run setup.py.
* Support for 10.11 / linaro-m images has been restored.
* The hardware pack handling code is now GPLv2+
Linaro Image Tools 0.4.2 is in Ubuntu natty and the source tarball is
available from:
https://launchpad.net/linaro-image-tools/+milestone/0.4.2
Backports to Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 10.10 will be provided shortly.
--
Loïc Minier
