changes.txt

acpi tools for linux include acpiexec and acpixtract

2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

Modified the parser to allow the names IO, DMA, and IRQ to be used as 
namespace identifiers with no collision with existing resource descriptor 
macro names. This provides compatibility with other ASL compilers and is 
most useful for disassembly/recompilation of existing tables without parse 
errors. (With assistance from Thomas Renninger)

Disassembler: fixed an incorrect disassembly problem with the 
DataTableRegion and CopyObject operators. Fixed a possible fault during 
disassembly of some Alias operators.

----------------------------------------
12 May 2006. Summary of changes for version 20060512:

1) ACPI CA Core Subsystem:

Replaced the AcpiOsQueueForExecution interface with a new interface named 
AcpiOsExecute. The major difference is that the new interface does not have 
a Priority parameter, this appeared to be useless and has been replaced by a 
Type parameter. The Type tells the host what type of execution is being 
requested, such as global lock handler, notify handler, GPE handler, etc. 
This allows the host to queue and execute the request as appropriate for the 
request type, possibly using different work queues and different priorities 
for the various request types. This enables fixes for multithreading 
deadlock problems such as BZ #5534, and will require changes to all existing 
OS interface layers. (Alexey Starikovskiy and Bob Moore)

Fixed a possible memory leak associated with the support for the so-called 
"implicit return" ACPI extension. Reported by FreeBSD, BZ #6514. (Fiodor 
Suietov)

Fixed a problem with the Load() operator where a table load from an 
operation region could overwrite an internal table buffer by up to 7 bytes 
and cause alignment faults on IPF systems. (With assistance from Luming Yu)

Example Code and Data Size: These are the sizes for the OS-independent 
acpica.lib produced by the Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 32-bit compiler. The 
debug version of the code includes the debug output trace mechanism and has 
a much larger code and data size.

  Previous Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  79.7K Code, 17.7K Data,  97.4K Total
    Debug Version:     160.1K Code, 65.2K Data, 225.3K Total
  Current Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  79.8K Code, 17.7K Data,  97.5K Total
    Debug Version:     160.5K Code, 65.1K Data, 225.6K Total



2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

Disassembler: Implemented support to cross reference the internal namespace 
and automatically generate ASL External() statements for symbols not defined 
within the current table being disassembled. This will simplify the 
disassembly and recompilation of interdependent tables such as SSDTs since 
these statements will no longer have to be added manually.

Disassembler: Implemented experimental support to automatically detect 
invocations of external control methods and generate appropriate External() 
statements. This is problematic because the AML cannot be correctly parsed 
until the number of arguments for each control method is known. Currently, 
standalone method invocations and invocations as the source operand of a 
Store() statement are supported.

Disassembler: Implemented support for the ASL pseudo-operators LNotEqual, 
LLessEqual, and LGreaterEqual. Previously disassembled as LNot(LEqual()), 
LNot(LGreater()), and LNot(LLess()), this makes the disassembled ASL code 
more readable and likely closer to the original ASL source.

----------------------------------------
21 April 2006. Summary of changes for version 20060421:

1) ACPI CA Core Subsystem:

Removed a device initialization optimization introduced in 20051216 where 
the _STA method was not run unless an _INI was also present for the same 
device. This optimization could cause problems because it could allow _INI 
methods to be run within a not-present device subtree. (If a not-present 
device had no _INI, _STA would not be run, the not-present status would not 
be discovered, and the children of the device would be incorrectly 
traversed.)

Implemented a new _STA optimization where namespace subtrees that do not 
contain _INI are identified and ignored during device initialization. 
Selectively running _STA can significantly improve boot time on large 
machines (with assistance from Len Brown.)

Implemented support for the device initialization case where the returned 
_STA flags indicate a device not-present but functioning. In this case, _INI 
is not run, but the device children are examined for presence, as per the 
ACPI specification.

Implemented an additional change to the IndexField support in order to 
conform to MS behavior. The value written to the Index Register is not 
simply a byte offset, it is a byte offset in units of the access width of 
the parent Index Field. (Fiodor Suietov)

Defined and deployed a new OSL interface, AcpiOsValidateAddress. This 
interface is called during the creation of all AML operation regions, and 
allows the host OS to exert control over what addresses it will allow the 
AML code to access. Operation Regions whose addresses are disallowed will 
cause a runtime exception when they are actually accessed (will not affect 
or abort table loading.) See oswinxf or osunixxf for an example 
implementation.

Defined and deployed a new OSL interface, AcpiOsValidateInterface. This 
interface allows the host OS to match the various "optional" 
interface/behavior strings for the _OSI predefined control method as 
appropriate (with assistance from Bjorn Helgaas.) See oswinxf or osunixxf 
for an example implementation.

Restructured and corrected various problems in the exception handling code 
paths within DsCallControlMethod and DsTerminateControlMethod in dsmethod 
(with assistance from Takayoshi Kochi.)

Modified the Linux source converter to ignore quoted string literals while 
converting identifiers from mixed to lower case. This will correct problems 
with the disassembler and other areas where such strings must not be 
modified.

The ACPI_FUNCTION_* macros no longer require quotes around the function 
name. This allows the Linux source converter to convert the names, now that 
the converter ignores quoted strings.

Example Code and Data Size: These are the sizes for the OS-independent 
acpica.lib produced by the Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 32-bit compiler. The 
debug version of the code includes the debug output trace mechanism and has 
a much larger code and data size.

  Previous Release:

    Non-Debug Version:  81.1K Code, 17.7K Data,  98.8K Total
    Debug Version:     158.9K Code, 64.9K Data, 223.8K Total
  Current Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  79.7K Code, 17.7K Data,  97.4K Total
    Debug Version:     160.1K Code, 65.2K Data, 225.3K Total


2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

Implemented 3 new warnings for iASL, and implemented multiple warning levels 
(w2 flag).

1) Ignored timeouts: If the TimeoutValue parameter to Wait or Acquire is not 
WAIT_FOREVER (0xFFFF) and the code does not examine the return value to 
check for the possible timeout, a warning is issued.

2) Useless operators: If an ASL operator does not specify an optional target 
operand and it also does not use the function return value from the 
operator, a warning is issued since the operator effectively does nothing.

3) Unreferenced objects: If a namespace object is created, but never 
referenced, a warning is issued. This is a warning level 2 since there are 
cases where this is ok, such as when a secondary table is loaded that uses 
the unreferenced objects. Even so, care is taken to only flag objects that 
don't look like they will ever be used. For example, the reserved methods 
(starting with an underscore) are usually not referenced because it is 
expected that the OS will invoke them.

----------------------------------------
31 March 2006. Summary of changes for version 20060331:

1) ACPI CA Core Subsystem:

Implemented header file support for the following additional ACPI tables: 
ASF!, BOOT, CPEP, DBGP, MCFG, SPCR, SPMI, TCPA, and WDRT. With this support, 
all current and known ACPI tables are now defined in the ACPICA headers and 
are available for use by device drivers and other software.

Implemented support to allow tables that contain ACPI names with invalid 
characters to be loaded. Previously, this would cause the table load to 
fail, but since there are several known cases of such tables on existing 
machines, this change was made to enable ACPI support for them. Also, this 
matches the behavior of the Microsoft ACPI implementation.

Fixed a couple regressions introduced during the memory optimization in the 
20060317 release. The namespace node definition required additional 
reorganization and an internal datatype that had been changed to 8-bit was 
restored to 32-bit. (Valery Podrezov)

Fixed a problem where a null pointer passed to AcpiUtDeleteGenericState 
could be passed through to AcpiOsReleaseObject which is unexpected. Such 
null pointers are now trapped and ignored, matching the behavior of the 
previous implementation before the deployment of AcpiOsReleaseObject.
(Valery Podrezov, Fiodor Suietov)

Fixed a memory mapping leak during the deletion of a SystemMemory operation 
region where a cached memory mapping was not deleted. This became a 
noticeable problem for operation regions that are defined within frequently 
used control methods. (Dana Meyers)

Reorganized the ACPI table header files into two main files: one for the 
ACPI tables consumed by the ACPICA core, and another for the miscellaneous 
ACPI tables that are consumed by the drivers and other software. The various 
FADT definitions were merged into one common section and three different 
tables (ACPI 1.0, 1.0+, and 2.0)

Example Code and Data Size: These are the sizes for the OS-independent 
acpica.lib produced by the Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 32-bit compiler. The 
debug version of the code includes the debug output trace mechanism and has 
a much larger code and data size.

  Previous Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  80.9K Code, 17.7K Data,  98.6K Total
    Debug Version:     158.7K Code, 64.8K Data, 223.5K Total
  Current Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  81.1K Code, 17.7K Data,  98.8K Total
    Debug Version:     158.9K Code, 64.9K Data, 223.8K Total


2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

Disassembler: Implemented support to decode and format all non-AML ACPI 
tables (tables other than DSDTs and SSDTs.) This includes the new tables 
added to the ACPICA headers, therefore all current and known ACPI tables are 
supported.

Disassembler: The change to allow ACPI names with invalid characters also 
enables the disassembly of such tables. Invalid characters within names are 
changed to '*' to make the name printable; the iASL compiler will still 
generate an error for such names, however, since this is an invalid ACPI 
character.

Implemented an option for AcpiXtract (-a) to extract all tables found in the 
input file. The default invocation extracts only the DSDTs and SSDTs.

Fixed a couple of gcc generation issues for iASL and AcpiExec and added a 
makefile for the AcpiXtract utility.

----------------------------------------
17 March 2006. Summary of changes for version 20060317:

1) ACPI CA Core Subsystem:

Implemented the use of a cache object for all internal namespace nodes. 
Since there are about 1000 static nodes in a typical system, this will 
decrease memory use for cache implementations that minimize per-allocation 
overhead (such as a slab allocator.)

Removed the reference count mechanism for internal namespace nodes, since it 
was deemed unnecessary. This reduces the size of each namespace node by 
about 5%-10% on all platforms. Nodes are now 20 bytes for the 32-bit case, 
and 32 bytes for the 64-bit case.

Optimized several internal data structures to reduce object size on 64-bit 
platforms by packing data within the 64-bit alignment. This includes the 
frequently used ACPI_OPERAND_OBJECT, of which there can be ~1000 static 
instances corresponding to the namespace objects.

Added two new strings for the predefined _OSI method: "Windows 2001.1 SP1" 
and "Windows 2006".

Split the allocation tracking mechanism out to a separate file, from 
utalloc.c to uttrack.c. This mechanism appears to be only useful for 
application-level code. Kernels may wish to not include uttrack.c in 
distributions.

Removed all remnants of the obsolete ACPI_REPORT_* macros and the associated 
code. (These macros have been replaced by the ACPI_ERROR and ACPI_WARNING 
macros.)

Code and Data Size: These are the sizes for the acpica.lib produced by the 
Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 32-bit compiler. The values do not include any ACPI 
driver or OSPM code. The debug version of the code includes the debug output 
trace mechanism and has a much larger code and data size. Note that these 
values will vary depending on the efficiency of the compiler and the 
compiler options used during generation.

  Previous Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  81.1K Code, 17.8K Data,  98.9K Total
    Debug Version:     161.6K Code, 65.7K Data, 227.3K Total
  Current Release:
    Non-Debug Version:  80.9K Code, 17.7K Data,  98.6K Total
    Debug Version:     158.7K Code, 64.8K Data, 223.5K Total


2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

Implemented an ANSI C version of the acpixtract utility. This version will 
automatically extract the DSDT and all SSDTs from the input acpidump text 
file and dump the binary output to separate files. It can also display a 
summary of the input file including the headers for each table found and 
will extract any single ACPI table, with any sig