RELEASE NOTES FOR THE ESTEREL V5_21 SYSTEME CHANGES FROM V5_10

• Esterel installation.

The ESTEREL environment variable has changed and Tcl/Tk is used as shell script. See ESTEREL INSTALLATION below.
 

• Signal browsing using Xes.

The Interpreted Simulation Code allows the tracking of signal use:where a signal is emitted, tested, etc..., see XES IMPROVEMENTS below. As a consequence, the simulation C code generated with previous Esterel compiler is no more supported by the v5_21 simulators. Please, recompile your simulations. The standard embedded code is fully compatible.
 

• New Xes script.

See XES IMPROVEMENTS below.
 

• Bug fixes.

ESTEREL INSTALLATION

• ESTEREL VARIABLE (IMPORTANT)

The ESTEREL environment variable now defines the Esterel installation directory, instead of the directory where the binaries were in v5_10. For example, write:
    ESTEREL=/usr/local/esterelv5_21
instead of:
    ESTEREL=/usr/local/esterelv5_21/bin
 

• Esterel and Windows NT

The Esterel system was built using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0. The C compiler and the linker CL.EXE and LINK.EXE must be accessible throught the user's path. The LIB and INCLUDE environment variables must also be set for simulation to work properly. The definitions of these variables are in the file Vc\bin\Vcvars32.bat in the Visual C++ distribution.
 

• Tcl/Tk

We use Tcl/Tk as multi-platform shell for some scripts. Therefore, a binary distribution of Tcl/Tk is now provided in the $ESTEREL/tcltk directory. Please, read tcltk/copyright.txt. The distribution contains strlsh and tclsh. These are the basic wish and tclshapplications modified to take first into account the ESTEREL variable when looking for TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY. These executables are in $ESTEREL/bin. The tcltk directory also contains Tcl/Tk librairies.

Tcl/Tk is developed by Scriptics Corp. http://www.scriptics.com/.

XES IMPROVEMENTS

• Signal Browsing

The new Signal Browsing feature tracks a signal everywhere it appears, even if it is renamed.  When the feature is enabled ("Signal Browser" entry of "Command" menu), a click with button 3 on a signal declaration or use highlights the following items:

• the signal declaration
• the signal emissions
• the signal tests
• the uses of the signal value for valued signals.

Button 3 highlights all these items whenever one of them is clicked on. The module tree is also highlighted, so one can easily find all the places where a signal is used.

This feature is available only for Interpreted Simulation Code, ie C code obtained with the "-I" and "-simul" options.
 

• Xes Script

Xes is now a Tcl script. It can be used directly as in:
    $ xes foo.o
To save linking time if a simulator has to be executed several times one can prelink the simulator as follows :
    $ xes -o foo foo.o foo_data.o
This builds the file foo.exe that can be fast-loaded by xes as follows:
    $ xes foo.exe
An auxiliary file xes.def in lib/xes contains various data used by xes to find the libraries and linker it needs. Edit this file if it need changes for your site. Finally, xes can load a resource file using the -script option if you want to modify some colors, etc. Read the xes chapter in the manual for more information. An example resource file is lib/xes/xes_res.tcl.

VERIFICATION TOOLS

http://www.inria.fr/meije/verification

The main tool is the X-window based Esterel Verification Environment (xeve).
 

COPYRIGHT

NOTES

MAIL ADDRESSES