From: Nicholas Nethercote Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 04:20:44 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Change textwidth, and also add a note about the shortcomings when X-Git-Tag: svn/VALGRIND_3_0_0~109 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=dbd9157a68351e8ebd454239a058fa9c0099e698;p=thirdparty%2Fvalgrind.git Change textwidth, and also add a note about the shortcomings when running 32 bit processes on 64 bit machines. git-svn-id: svn://svn.valgrind.org/valgrind/trunk@4209 --- diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index 89713c85cb..ad5e2c9d53 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -3,28 +3,36 @@ Release 3.0.0 ([[TODO: add release date]]) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -3.0.0 is a major overhaul of Valgrind. The most significant user-visible -change is that Valgrind now supports architectures other than x86. -The new architectures it supports are AMD64 and PPC32, and the -infrastructure is present for other architectures to be added later. +3.0.0 is a major overhaul of Valgrind. The most significant +user-visible change is that Valgrind now supports architectures other +than x86. The new architectures it supports are AMD64 and PPC32, and +the infrastructure is present for other architectures to be added later. The AMD64 support works well, but has some shortcomings: - - It generally won't be as solid as the x86 version. For example, support - for more obscure instructions and system calls may be missing. We will - fix these as they arise. +- It generally won't be as solid as the x86 version. For example, + support for more obscure instructions and system calls may be missing. + We will fix these as they arise. - - Address space may be limited; see the point about position-independent - executables below. +- Address space may be limited; see the point about + position-independent executables below. -The PPC32 support is very basic. It may not work reliably even for small -programs, but it's a start. Many thanks to Paul Mackerras for his great -work that enabled this support. +- If Valgrind is built on an AMD64 machine, it will only run 64-bit + executables. If you want to run 32-bit x86 executables under Valgrind + on an AMD64, you will need to build Valgrind on an x86 machine and + copy it to the AMD64 machine. And it probably won't work if you do + something tricky like exec'ing a 32-bit program from a 64-bit program + while using --trace-children=yes. We hope to improve this situation + in the future. + +The PPC32 support is very basic. It may not work reliably even for +small programs, but it's a start. Many thanks to Paul Mackerras for his +great work that enabled this support. Other user-visible changes: -- No longer building Valgrind as a position-indendependent executable (PIE) - by default, as it caused too many problems. +- No longer building Valgrind as a position-indendependent executable + (PIE) by default, as it caused too many problems. Without PIE enabled, AMD64 programs will only be able to access 2GB of address space. We will fix this eventually, but not for the moment. @@ -36,31 +44,32 @@ Other user-visible changes: VALGRIND_STACK_REGISTER, VALGRIND_STACK_DEREGISTER and VALGRIND_STACK_CHANGE client requests for trickier cases. -- Support for programs that use self-modifying code has been improved, in - particular programs that put temporary code fragments on the stack. - This helps for C programs compiled with GCC that use nested functions, and - also Ada programs. This is controlled with the --smc-support flag, - although the default setting should work in most cases. +- Support for programs that use self-modifying code has been improved, + in particular programs that put temporary code fragments on the stack. + This helps for C programs compiled with GCC that use nested functions, + and also Ada programs. This is controlled with the --smc-support + flag, although the default setting should work in most cases. -- Output can now be printed in XML format. This should make it easier for - other tools (such as GUI front-ends) to use Valgrind output as input. - The --xml flag controls this. - [[TODO: describe the related CLOs added (eg. --log-file-qualifier)]] +- Output can now be printed in XML format. This should make it easier + for other tools (such as GUI front-ends) to use Valgrind output as + input. The --xml flag controls this. [[TODO: describe the related + CLOs added (eg. --log-file-qualifier)]] - Programs that allocate many heap blocks may run faster, due to improvements in certain data structures. -- Addrcheck is currently not working. We hope to get it working again soon. - Helgrind is still not working, as was the case for the 2.4.0 release. +- Addrcheck is currently not working. We hope to get it working again + soon. Helgrind is still not working, as was the case for the 2.4.0 + release. - [[TODO: add more here]] Changes that are not user-visible: - The JITter has been completely rewritten, and is now in a separate - library, called Vex. This enabled a lot of the user-visible changes, such - as new architecture support. It may run slower than the old JITter; - feedback about this would be useful. + library, called Vex. This enabled a lot of the user-visible changes, + such as new architecture support. It may run slower than the old + JITter; feedback about this would be useful. - The code has been modularized significantly, and should be easier to navigate and understand.