Release Notes for OCI's Distribution of TAO 1.3a_p15
Copyright 2000-2005 by Object Computing, Inc.


NOTE:   These release notes can be found in the distribution at ACE_wrappers/OCIReleaseNotes.html.

Table of Contents

  1. General Notes
  2. New Features Since TAO 1.2a
  3. Platforms that this release was tested on:
  4. OCI recommended build flags

General Notes

  1. Heritage -- Relationship to DOC Releases

    TAO 1.3a derives from the DOC TAO 1.3.1 beta kit with bugfix-related patches selectively applied to enhance stability. A record of applied patches can be found in OCIChangeLog files installed with the distribution.

  2. Make Project Creator

    All of ACE/TAO was built using MakeProjectCreator (MPC). This tool is included with this distribution and may be used for your own projects as well. MPC will generate GNU make files, Windows project files for both VC++ 6 and 7.1, Borland make files, and others. It can be extended to other make systems as well. MPC documentation is available in the distribution at ACE_wrappers/bin/MakeProjectCreator/README or in the OCI Developer's Guide for TAO 1.3a. This chapter can be viewed from https://downloads.opendds.org/MPC in html or downloaded in pdf.

    Thus, all of the previous make files and project files, except for Visual Age project files (which do not yet have a MPC generator), have been removed and only generated files are present in this distribution.

  3. GNU Make on Unix

    With the exception of Windows operating systems, ACE and TAO were built with GNU Make. While one can use other tools to build applications using ACE & TAO, using GNU Make permits the leveraging of the existing build system distributed with ACE & TAO.

  4. Compiler restrictions

    Version 1.3a of ACE/TAO, being based on DOC TAO 1.3.1, requires that the compiler be able to support namespaces, at least minimally. Any compiler that does not support namespaces cannot be used with this version, for example, Sun's 4.2 compiler and Tornado 2.0.

  5. Explict template instantiation

    It's possible, and maybe even desirable, to use explicit template instantiation for any platform. This can not only decrease compile times, but it helps prevent submitting errors in the explicit instantiation sections of source files. Just add "#define ACE_HAS_EXPLICIT_TEMPLATE_INSTANTIATION" to config.h to enable this feature. A related setting for gcc, suncc, and others can be enabled by adding "templates=explicit" to platform_macros.GNU. This has the same effect as above, but additionally *requires* explicit instantiation. Since all current compilers support implicit templates, there is less need for this setting. However, this setting is still the default for suncc compilers, therefore you should probably add "templates=automatic" to your platform_macros.GNU for suncc. Currently there is an additional side-effect to enabling explicit template instantiation, regardless of which method you use to do it. It changes the default setting for TAO_USE_SEQUENCE_TEMPLATES, so that a non-template base class is used for all corba sequences. This means that you'll typically want to also add a "#define TAO_USE_SEQUENCE_TEMPLATES" to your config.h, whenever you add the "#define ACE_HAS_EXPLICIT_TEMPLATE_INSTANTIATION".

[Top]

New Features

Many important new features and bug fixes have been introduced in TAO 1.3a. They are described briefly here. These and many other features of TAO 1.3a are detailed in OCI's TAO Developer's Guide, Version 1.3a, available separately.

  1. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p15

    • Improved support for HP aCC compiler versions 3.57 and 3.60.
    • Added emulated support for timed semaphore acquire() on HP-UX.
    • Added a new dispatching strategy--Thread Per Consumer--to TAO's RT Event Service. This strategy is similar to the MT dispatching strategy in that it separates the thread that receives the push() from a supplier from the thread that does the eventual push() to the consumer(s), but it differs from MT in that MT has a pool of threads pulling from a single queue and ultimately potentially servicing every consumer, whereas TPC has a queue for *each* consumer and, thus, a single thread is dedicated to pushing to that consumer. This insures that a badly-behaved consumer CANNOT have an adverse effect on the channel or supplier.
    • Added a means by which an application of the RT Event Service can specify what the RTEC should do if the TAO_EC_Queue fills up. This behavior is encapsulated in a derivation of an ACE_Service_Object, called TAO_EC_Queue_Full_Service_Object. The RTEC looks for a service object of a particular name (default in macro TAO_EC_DEFAULT_QUEUE_FULL_SERVICE_OBJECT_NAME).
  2. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p14

    • Fixed "zombie" thread problem in the Notification Service where, when using -AllocateTaskPerProxy and a consumer terminates without properly disconnecting, the thread (i.e., task) becomes a "zombie" because no other thread does a proper join. This results in the appearance of allocated-but-not-recovered resources until the thread ends.
  3. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p13

    • Fixed a static initialization order dependency problem in ACE's Thread Specific Storage support.
    • Added a -x option to catior that works like -f except that it reads the IOR from standard input rather than from a file. This makes catior much more like the unix "cat" command, and enables it to be used in a pipeline.
    • Changed the precedence rules for the -ORBListenEndpoints (aka -ORBEndpoint) so that the host identifier (either hostname or IP address) that appears in IIOP profiles is determined thus:
      1. value from hostname_in_ior (if specified);
      2. setting of -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses option;
      3. value for hostname in -ORBListenEndpoints specification;
      4. whatever TAO magically comes up with based on system configuration
      A new test (TAO/tests/IOR_Endpoint_Hostnames) verifies the operation of this feature.
    • Changed the way that Bidirectional endpoint processing happens when -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1 is in effect. The previous behavior always used the setting of the receiver, but that caused problems when the sender and receiver were not using the same dotted decimal addresses setting. Bidirectional endpoint processing now uses whatever the sender provides as the hostname since that's also what will be in that sender's IORs. See ChangeLog entry from
      Wed May 25 12:10:40 2005 Chris Cleeland <cleeland@objectcomputing.com>
      for more details.
    • Ported the -ORBPreferredInterfaces option from TAO 1.4 to allow specifying which local interface to use when connecting to a specified remote interface.
      -ORBPreferredInterfaces 192.168.*=127*,*.objectcomputing.com=132.*
      The above command causes TAO to use the first interface starting with 127 (e.g. 127.0.0.1) when connecting to any address starting with 192.168.*, and to use the first interface starting with "132." when connecting to any host that ends in objectcomputing.com. T
      The argument specified on the left side of the equals sign must match the target host, which usually comes from an IOR. For example, if an IOR contains test.theaceorb.com then this would not match either of the above directives, even if test.theaceorb.com happens to be at 192.168.1.10.
    • The ACE Service Configurator now supports UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encoding schemes when ACE_HAS_WCHAR is defined in config.h.
  4. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p12

    • The Service Configurator will now distinguish between the existence of and lack of file permissions for the default service configurator file.
    • The SO Reduce application was modified to generated MPC files instead of Makefiles.
    • The Visual Age 6 compiler configuration was changed to not use the #pragma implementation for templates. Instead, template header files just include the template cpp.
    • The IDL compiler now correctly handles UNC ("Universal Naming Convention") paths, when Windows-based projects used them in -I command line parameters or in #include statements.
    • Resolved and problem with tao_idl generated code for typedef-ed arrays, where some of the utility methods were not static as the CORBA spec requires.
    • Resolved a problem with generating the values for floating point constants in code generated by tao_idl
    • The gnuace MPC builds can now detect the presence of yacc(1) and/or lex(1) and regenerate all related parser code, based on the lexical analyzer and the grammar specifications ( idl.ll and idl.yy) On the platforms where these tools are not available, the pre-generated versions are used.
    • The SSLIOP transport protocol factory now correctly interprets Windows-style paths, which contain colon (':'), when pointing to the locations of keys and certificates.
    • Corrected a bug in the gnuace template that did not ensure that generated source files were created before attempting to generate the precompiled header binary.
    • The gnuace project type allows users to set the 'targetoutdir' template variable which determines where .obj, .shobj directories, binaries and libraries go.
    • The SO Reduce application now outputs MPC files instead of Makefiles.
    • The Service Configurator now distinguishes between the existence of a configurator file and the in-ability to open the configurator file.
    • Fixed a bug related to multicast federation of the RtEC. Removed the portion of code that attempts to subscribe to an existing multicast socket. This allows the ECG_MCast_EH to receive events on all supported platforms.
    • Improved interoperability with other ORBs with respect to use of Unicode based wide strings.
    • Fixed an SSLIOP bug related to sending large data sets.
    • Fixed several TSS bugs (mostly affect Windows builds):
      • Comply with POSIX standard for replacing a TSS object.
      • Comply with POSIX standard for deleting a key while it is in use.
      • Rework the ACE_TSS_Cleanup instance support to make it even safer.
      • Automatically cleanup TSS for non-ACE threads that call ACE functions.
    • Fixed a problem affecting the ability of SSL-based TAO servers, which require client authentication to work with JSSE-based Java clients (JacORB).
    • Added new service configuration options to the SSLIOP_Factory:
      • -SSLCAFile FMT:file - allows explicit specification of the the Trusted Certificates location. The FMT is either "PEM" or "DER". Similar to verify(1) -CAfile option.
      • -SSLCAPath directory - allows explicit specification of the directory, where the Trusted Certificates are located. The directory must be in a particular format - see openssl(1) fom more details on how to install additional CA certificates. Similar to verify(1) -CApath option.
      • -SSLRand file1:file2:.. - allows specification of additional sources of randomness (entropy). The option mimics the -rand option on genrsa(1), for example.
  5. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p11

    • Fixed a problem where an assertion would be thrown when a bi-directional POA policy has been used and then a different ORB instance is created. Note, however that the solution does not prevent some possible data race conditions for applications with multiple ORB instances, multiple threads that create them and using bi-directional POA policy.
    • Fixed a problem where, when using -ORBConcurrency thread-per-connection, connections to clients that have gone away result in sockets sitting in CLOSE_WAIT on the server side until the server exits.
    • A new ORB option was added, -ORBLingerTimeout, which only affects the IIOP transport. If a linger timeout is specified, it will be applied to each TCP socket prior to closing the connection.
    • Fixed a problem with premature connection closures on the server side, in cases where large replies were being subjected to the TCP flow control mechanism.
    • Modified the tao_idl code to correctly deal with typedef'ed arrays. When dealing with array's, detect if the array is typedef'ed. If it is typedef'ed and the primitive base type is a string, then it will generate code as if the array was typedef'ed to a string.
    • Added capability to use INS-style corbaloc references (e.g., orbaloc:ssliop:localhost:12345/NameService) to specify SSLIOP references. This was motivated by a desire to access a naming service exclusively using SSLIOP, but needing to specify its endpoint to clients via a corbaloc-style IOR. See the new ssliop-corbaloc test in $TAO_ROOT/orbsvcs/tests/Security, which shows a typical usage of the new feature.
    • Updated TAO core to support both legacy URL style generated corbaloc IOR's (with escape character '\\') and OMG specified style (with escape character '%'). This makes it backward compatible with pre 1.4 TAO as well as other ORB's like JacORB etc.
    • Removed a bug workaround in ACE for 64-bit HP-UX. When specifying a base address for ACE_MMAP_Memory_Pool_Options (which is used by the mmap Naming Service persistence), it was previously ignored and a default value was used. This is no longer necessary for aCC versions later than 3.10.
    • Added configurator options for the CosEvent Service to determine the relative roundtrip timeout for both suppliers and consumers when pushing or pulling an event. An additional option was added to determine the number of retries (when pushing or pulling to or from an unresponsive consumer or supplier) before removing it from the CosEvent Service.
    • When built using the MPC-generated make/project files, the following common TAO utilities are now installed in the $ACE_ROOT/bin directory instead of the directories in which they are built:
      • tao_imr
      • tao_ifr
      • nslist
      • nsadd
      • nsdel
      • NamingViewer
    • Fixed race conditions in calling destructors during Asynch Invocation by adding reference counting.

  6. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p10

    • Fixed a problem with codeset selection when the default wchar codeset is used and this is UTF-16. Now the UTF-16 BOM translator is selected even when the wchar codeset is defaulted.
    • Fixed memory leaks in the Notification Service that occurred when a Consumer disconnected.
    • There was a problem in the Notification Service's support for Event-style Admin and Proxy objects in addition to the one fixed in patch 9. This problem has been fixed, and the $TAO_ROOT/orbsvcs/tests/Notify/Basic test has been extended to further test support for Event-style objects.
    • The ORB distributed with the Java JDK 1.4.x has a defect in the code that marshals wide character strings in sequences of structures. As a work-around, TAO can now be forced to send all wide characters in big-endian order even on platforms like Intel x86 for which little-endian ordering is the default. The Byte Order Mark (BOM) is used as necessary to inform the peer ORB of the byte order being used. This work-around can be enabled either at compile time or at run time.
      To configure it at compile time, define the symbol: TAO_USES_FORCE_UTF16BE.
      To configure it at run time, use a new service configuration option:
      static UTF16_BOM_Factory "-forceBE [0|1]"
      Zero turns it off; one turns it on.  If neither zero nor one is specified, the state of the option is toggled.
      There is a minor performance penalty for using this option so it should only be used if interoperability with the JDK ORB is needed.

  7. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p9

    • Fixed resource leak in Notification Service Connection Reliability (Topology) persistence that occurred when the *.new file could not be opened.
    • The Notification Service is supposed to support Event Service-style channels, but there was an error in the code that provided this support. The error resulted in a failure (usually a SEGV) when the first event was pushed to the old style channel. This has been corrected, and a test has been added to orbsvcs/tests/Notify/Basic that would have detected the problem.
    • The Notification Service XML Topology saver and loader were using ostream to save a CORBA::Long. This caused failures on some platforms, so the code was changed to copy the CORBA::Long to a long before it is saved.
    • The test in orbsvcs/tests/Notify/XML_Persistence was not honoring -ORB command line arguments.
    • The timeouts for the Basic and Reconnecting tests of the Notification Service were increased to accommodate slow platforms.
    • Added a perl version of the shell script to run one of the Notification Service performance tests (the graph 3-4 test). Also a usage message was added for this test.
    • The file orbsvcs/PSS/Dump_Visitor.cpp has been changed from using std ostreams to using ace/streams.h. The change was made to improve portability (particularly on HP-UX). The change was originally made in the DOC group repository.
    • Corrected several memory and resource leaks in the Naming Service, both in the library and in the executable. The most significant leaks were encountered when using flat file persistence (-u or -r options).
    • Corrected a minor memory leak in the core that would leak connection-related resources on connection closure or on shutdown.
    • Corrected a problem in the Notification Service where, when a consumer disappeared from the face of the earth, or at least the machine on which it was running, the notification service queued up events to deliver at a future time rather than considering the delivery to be a failure.
    • Fixed a linking problem (unresolved symbols) that affected gperf and other ACE applications. The libadm system library was missing from the link command line.
    • Fixed a problem where shared libraries didn't have the correct internal versioned name on platforms that support that (e.g., most Unix-like platforms).
    • Integrated a patch suggested in DOC Bugzilla #1542 that correctly deallocated items dynamically allocated and held in Thread-Specific Storage (TSS). This eliminates some long-standing pseudo-leaks such as the output_cdr_buffer, etc.
    • Corrected a problem in the NonBlocking_Conn_Test so that it works.
    • Updated the platform_sunos5_sunc++.GNU file so that applications, when linked, will automatically look for libraries in $ACE_ROOT/lib.
    • Fixed a bug in the tao_idl compiler that caused link errors when array's were declared in the global scope. Particular helper functions were not exported and that doesn't work on Windows.
    • Added support for ACE_OS::fsync() under Windows, which calls FlushFileBuffers. Windows-specific code in the Notification Service that did this was therefore removed.
    • Added support for RedHat Advanced Server 3.0 running on the Opteron chip set.
    • Added support for an option in nsadd to add a new context, including the automatic addition of intermediate contexts for any addition.

      This added capability is working correctly. However, the new test added to verify it has exposed a problem that has been in the Naming Service for a long time. The problem occurs only on static builds and only on some platforms. It is that only the first client can add a context, subsequent clients quietly fail when trying to add contexts, but they can add objects to existing contexts.

    • Improved support for Winsock 2 on MS Pocket PC 2003 (WinCE 4.0). Automatic interface discovery now works correctly.
    • Added new test case for wide string interoperability, added procedure for building $TAO_ROOT/interop-tests/wchar for Sun's Java ORB as well as JacORB.

  8. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p8

    • A new wait strategy--Wait_On_LF_NoUpcalls, specified with "-ORBClientConnectionHandler mt_noupcall"--was added to allow a thread that's waiting for a reply on an invocation to participate in the Leader-Follower interaction, but not dispatch upcalls on that thread (other threads are permitted to dispatch upcalls). This could be considered to be something between the two extremes of Wait_On_Leader_Follower (the default) and Wait_On_Read (specified with "-ORBClientConnectionHandler rw"), and could be reasonable alternative in many cases to Wait_On_Read.
    • CODE CHANGES REQUIRED IN PLUGGABLE TRANSPORTS! The new Wait_On_LF_NoUpcalls wait strategy required minor changes to some of the base class code used in pluggable transports/pluggable protocols. The good news is that these changes are simple, actually reducing code in the pluggable transport.

      The changes are in TAO_Connection_Handler. Using TAO_IIOP_Connection_Handler as an example (it's a pluggable transport just like anything else), the following code:

      // OLD handle_input
      int
      TAO_IIOP_Connection_Handler::handle_input (ACE_HANDLE h)
      {
        int result =
          this->handle_input_eh (h, this);
      
        if (result == -1)
          {
            this->close_connection ();
            return 0;
          }
      
        return result;
      }
      
      turns into
      // New and improved handle_input
      int
      TAO_IIOP_Connection_Handler::handle_input (ACE_HANDLE h)
      {
        return this->handle_input_eh (h, this);
      }
      
      The pluggable transport's handle_input no longer needs to close the connection.

      However, if your pluggable transport's handle_input doesn't look like the old handle_input, you will need to look at TAO_Connection_Handler::handle_input_eh() and integrate the code that appears at the beginning of that method, i.e.,

      {
        if (this->transport ()->acts_as_server () &&
            this->orb_core_->get_tss_resources()->upcalls_temporarily_suspended_on_this_thread_)
          {
            if (TAO_debug_level > 6)
              ACE_DEBUG ((LM_DEBUG,
                          "(%P|%t) Connection_Handler[%d] - not going to handle_input "
                          "on Transport %d "
                          "because upcalls temporarily suspended on this thread\n",
                          this->transport()->id(),
                          this->transport()->id()));
            return 0;
          }
        ...continue with rest of the code...
      }
      
    • The Client_Strategy_Factory option -ORBClientConnectionHandler has been renamed to -ORBWaitStrategy to harmonize it more closely with the underlying components that implement it. The original name is still accepted for backwards compatibility, but -ORBWaitStrategy is suggested moving forward.
    • The Notification Service XML Topology Persistence object would stop prematurely on some 64 bit platforms. The resulting incomplete topology file would cause the notification service either to hang the next time it ran, or to restore only part of the topology. The topology file will now be written correctly.
    • Fixed a memory management issue in the IDL compiler that could cause it to crash with a segmentation violation on Tru64 4.0F with the Digital C++ v6.1-027 compiler.
    • Fixed a bug in the IDL compiler where *I.{h,cpp} would not be generated when the -GI option was used.
    • Added support for the native long long type on VxWorks 5.42 or higher.
    • Added support for the wchar_t type on VxWorks 5.5 or higher.
    • Added a feature to the Naming_Service executable whereby it properly shuts itself down on receipt of a signal on platforms which support signals. It responds to SIGINT and SIGTERM.
    • Added support for building on PocketPC 2003 using eVC++ 4.0. This includes many wide-string adaptations of error/debug messages. TAO-specific RTEC gained configurable pacing delay to allow federation via multicast to work on PocketPC 2003.
    • Added support for building on AMD 64-bit Athlon processors.

  9. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p7

    • Several Bugs with the ImR have been fixed, although there are still known problems with PER_CLIENT activation, apparent memory leaks, and performance. Several new tests have been added to help track down these problems, and they may be addressed in a future release.
    • MPC is now a logically separate project. Most generic MPC tools have been moved to ACE_wrappers/MPC, although some ACE/TAO-specific extensions are still in ACE_wrappers/bin/MakeProjectCreator. Several bug fixes have been made, as well as some pretty significant performance improvements. The latest version of MPC is currently kept in the doc group CVS repository, but will be copied into the ACE_wrappers directory for any OCI release.
    • There is also a new clone_build_tree.pl script that can be used in place of create_ace_build.pl. The new script is much faster, has more features, and can output the cloned tree to any location, although it still defaults to ACE_wrappers/build. This tool is now part of the MPC suite of tools found in the MPC directory.
    • The Notification Service has been extended to support the ConnectionReliability and EventReliability properties defined in the CORBA standard. If these properties are given the value "persistent" the Notification service will store information about connection to clients and undelivered events in persistent storage. This information will be used to recover after a failure.
      To take advantage of the reliable Notification Service the application developer must set the properties and cooperate during the reconnection process. Also he system administrator must configure the the notification service for persistent operation.
      For more information see the CORBA standard available from the OMG and the document Using the Reliable Notification Service.
    • In addition to the changes made directly to the Notification Service a number of test and example programs have been created for the reliable notification service. These programs may be found in subdirectories of $TAO_ROOT/orbsvcs/tests/Notify. A README file in each directory provides more detailed information, and a run_test.pl script is included to run the example or test.
    • A change has been made to the Notification Service IDL that significantly improved build times and reduced the Notification Service footprint. The change suppressed the generation proxy and stub code for the many interfaces that are specified by the OMG, but are not implemented in TAO.
    • Precompiled header support was added for the Tru64 compiler and the MIPSpro Compiler on IRIX.
    • Changed ACE to attempt to use gethostname() on Windows, if available, before falling back on GetComputerName() to implement ACE_OS::hostname. The GetComputerName() function returns the NetBios name, not the IP hostname. Often, they are identical, but this change should ensure that ACE/TAO will work even when the two names differ.

  10. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p6

    • Changes were made to the IDL compiler to correct a problem where include paths added with the -I option were not being properly handled. This work was adapted from the DOC group's current IDL compiler which does not exhibit this problem.
    • Updated the config files for vc6 and vc7 to reflect the actual state of the compiler features used in ACE and TAO.
    • An MPC bug was fixed where relative directory replacement wouldn't take place when the replacement variable contained subdirectories underneath the current working directory.
    • Added support for Portable Interceptors to work with collocated invocations as well as remote invocations.
    • Made changes to fix crashing with the IDL compiler after adding support for correct include paths.
    • Refactored the ImR to move most functionality from the activator into the locator.
    • Fixed a bug in the ORB where activating objects on multiple RT ORB's would cause a segmentation fault.

  11. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p5

    • Assignments within 'specific' sections of mpc files are now handled correctly. Previously they were always handled as string additions.
    • Limited Support of GCC 3.3 on AIX has been added. Support for automatic template instantiation (except for the ACE_Singleton and TAO_Singleton) has been added. Singleton templates require explicit instantiation. The singleton templates can have problems (Segmentation Violations) when compiled with the optimize flag (-O)
    • Corrected code in the Implementation Repository's Activator (ImR_Activator) that made incorrect assumptions about which conditions could cause a TRANSIENT to be raised. This resulted in an inability of the activator to detect death of a server, and restart it.
    • Refactored GNU Makefile templates to support library versioning via MPC. The ACE and TAO version numbers are now supplied through the MakeProjectCreator/config/aceversion.mpb and taoversion.mpb files. These version numbers may be overridden by supplying a new value for 'version' in your project. If your project depends on ace or tao, and you wish to have no version applied, use 'version=' with no value to override.
    • Improved thread safety in the parsing of corbaloc endpoints.

  12. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p4

    • Wide character support and interoperability has been improved. The UTF16 handling code has been fixed to handle the byte order marker.
    • A fix for two threads allowed to handle_input for same handle at the same time has been added.
    • Fixed bug in Notification Service's EventChannelFactory::get_all_channels() that always returned an empty sequence.
    • Updates have been added to wxNamingViewer.

  13. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p3

    • Tutorials: TAO/docs/tutorials has been updated and builds on multiple platforms. These tutorials may not execute on all systems and may have trouble building on static and exceptions=0 builds.
    • fixed bug 1614 - Possible crashes due to bad code in send_connection_closed_notifications_i().
    • corbaloc parser changes: The code responsible for parsing corbaloc style object references is refactored to enable the use of novel protocols in the address definition. This new feature enables protocols not shipped as part of TAO to be used with corbaloc or corbaname strings for resolving remote addresses.
      To support this feature, a new virtual method is added to the base class TAO_Connector, corbaloc_scan(). The signature of the method may be found in $TAO_ROOT/tao/Transport_Connector.h:
        virtual TAO_Profile * corbaloc_scan (const char *ior,
                                             size_t &len
                                             ACE_ENV_ARG_DECL);
      
      This method is responsible for locating the end of the protocol specific address, returning a partially completed profile (the object key will be filled in later) and returning the length of the scanned address as the out parameter "len." The default implementation assumes that comma (',') and slash ('/') will not appear in the address, and will use the contents of the ior string upto the next comma or slash to populate the profile. If commas or slashes are valid parts of your protocol's address, as they are with Unix domain sockets (see UIOP), then you must supply your own implementation of corbaloc_scan to find a protocol specific address terminator. In such a case, the protocol specific address terminator will still be followed by a comma or slash, as required by the CORBA spec.
      To maintain backwards compatibility with earlier TAO implementations, the UIOP implementation of corbaloc_scan will accept strings that end with a pipe ('|') that is not followed by a comma or slash. In this case, the remainder of the string is treated as the object key and a warning is generated.
    • A new header file $ACE_ROOT/ace/Codeset_Symbols.h defines symbolic names for all of the code sets defined in OpenGroup's code set registry database version 1.2g ( ftp://ftp.opengroup.org/pub/code_set_registry/ )
      Three new symbols are defined to allow compile-time configuration of native code sets.
      ACE_NATIVE_CHAR_CODESET_ID defines the native codeset used for 8 bit characters.
      ACE_NATIVE_WCHAR_CODESET_ID defines the native codeset used for wide characters.
      ACE_NATIVE_WCHAR_SIZE defines the width of a typical (not escaped or surrogated ) code point in the native wide character code set.
      The symbols can be defined in $ACE_ROOT/ace/config.h. If they are not defined there, the following default values are used:
          # define ACE_NATIVE_CHAR_CODESET_ID ACE_CODESET_ID_ISO_8859_1
          # define ACE_NATIVE_WCHAR_CODESET_ID ACE_CODESET_ID_ISO_UTF_16
          # define ACE_NATIVE_WCHAR_SIZE 2
      
      These default values are the ones that were previously hard coded into TAO.
      Note: ISO 8859_1 is also known as Latin-1 and ISO_UTF_16 is a version of Unicode.
      The UCS4 to UTF16 character translator in $TAO_ROOT/tests/CodeSets/libs/UCS4_UTF16 has been extended to honor the Byte Order Marks (BOM) allowed (but not required) in GIOP 1.2 and to use and honor UTF-16 surrogate characters. Note that UTF-16 surrogate characters are an escape mechanism that allow characters wider than 16 bits to be represented in UTF-16.

  14. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p2

    • Thread Specific Storage has been fixed for VxWorks 5.5 The VxWorks 5.5 loader has a strange quirk where complex static objects could be constructed multiple times during static construction and normal thread execution.
    • The ACE_Log_Msg has been fixed for using SYSLOG.
    • The ACE reactors have been changed to reference count the Event Handlers. This mechanism is particularly needed for multi-threaded applications that can have multiple threads executing upcalls on a handler that needs to be shutdown in a safe manner.
    • fixed bug 1237 - Race condition while handling location forwards
    • fixed bug 1572 - Deadlock in AMH calls if no response is sent
    • The IFR_Service's multicast discovery has been changed to default to off. The option -m enables multicast and -l (lowercase L) enables locking.
    • The Portable Interceptors have been changed to not try to marshal parameters during location forwards.
    • The transport has been changed to close a connection when it receives a partial GIOP header.
    • The file TAO/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/AV/md5c.c has been renamed to TAO/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/AV/md5c.cpp This was done because 64-bit compilers have trouble with the syntax as plain C.
    • NOTE: To build the TAO_AV library, DELETE the $TAO_ROOT/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/AV/md5c.c file.
    • There are warnings when building some of the ORB services on Macintosh and VxWorks operating systems. These are a result of unusual linking methods of templates on these systems.
    • Added new option, -ORBVerboseLogging, to turn on the VERBOSE or VERBOSE_LITE flag in ACE_Log_Msg. Range of values are 0, 1, or 2 for no verbose (the default), VERBOSE_LITE, and VERBOSE, respectively. The VERBOSE option prefixes all ORB debug messages with a time/date stamp, while VERBOSE_LITE adds even more information, e.g., the host on which the message originated.

  15. Features added and bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a_p1

    • The examples from the TAO Developer's Guide have been added to the distribution and are built and run on the supported platforms.
    • There have been extensive improvements made to the Make Project Creator and its use in ACE/TAO. It is now the default build mechanism. All parts of ACE/TAO have been converted to use MPC.
    • The support for wide character sets has been enhanced.
    • The multithreaded part of the Naming Service Test ($TAO_ROOT/orbsvcs/tests/Simple_Naming/) fails intermittently on several platforms. This failure is in the test client and does not appear to be a problem with the Naming Service itself. The problem appears to be with the default transport multiplexing strategy used by the ORB. The default strategy is to multiplex the use of the connection (-ORBTransportMuxStrategy muxed) and the problem only occurs when the connections are very heavily used. The problem does not occur if an exclusive strategy (-ORBTransportMuxStrategy exclusive) is used. It is unknown, but suspected that this problem may be related to Bug 1020 mentioned above.
    • The ImR is at least partially functional in 1.3a. Some known problems are:
      • Activator has no way to shutdown cleanly, and hence doesn't unregister from the locator.
      • Locator also has no way to shutdown cleanly.
      • Persistence does not appear to work, but that could just be a problem with the test.
      • Performance is poor.
      • The activator needs to notice when a server is down, and automatically remove it from the locator.
      • Servers should self-register without requiring "tao_imr add".
      • Activator does not shutdown its servers when closing.

    • Support for the Green Hills Integrity OS (ACE/TAO) and the Green Hills tool kit (ACE only) has been added.

  16. Pending bugs/fixes in TAO 1.3a

    • There is a bug in CDR operator generation for octet sequences. While this bug does not cause incorrect behavior it greatly affects the performance of octet sequences.
    • There is a pending change to the IDL compiler to fix a problem where the compiler gets confused due to multiple slashes in paths.
    • The various tutorials in the ACE_wrappers/TAO/docs/tutorials/ directory have not been tested and may not run correctly out-of-the-box.

  17. Features added to TAO 1.3a since TAO 1.3.1

    • MakeProjectCreator (MPC) -- MPC can be used to generate build tool specific project files (which is just a collection of source files that make up a single build target) from a generic mpc file. MPC takes platform specific input along with the build tool generic files and generates build tool specific files. Currently supported tools include GNU Make, NMake, Visual C++ 6, Visual C++ 7.0 and others.
    • Redundant Naming Service -- A new option for the Naming Service has been added to allow the Naming Service to use a shared flat file on two or more separate computers. Full capabilities are available only on Tru64 clusters, but limited capabilities are available on any platform that the flat-file persistent Naming Service will run.
    • Shared source on Windows -- It has been possible for users on UNIX and UNIX-like platforms to use create_ace_build to build on multiple platforms from the same source. The capability has been added to do this on the Windows platforms also.
    • Input stream processing -- Input stream processing has been overhauled to eliminate the so-called "parse_magic_bytes" bug. The particular problem was very difficult to cause, and symptoms could vary from occasional unexpected connection closure to full core dump. This change had negligible impact on performance.
    • MAC OS X -- TAO support for the Macintosh OS X operating system has been added to the existing ACE support in TAO 1.3.1.

  18. Features added since TAO 1.2a as part of TAO 1.3.1

    • Persistent State Service (PSS) describes a way of making a service persistent. The fact that PSS is being used by a service is known only to the service (server) and not to the client which makes use of the service. PSS presents persistent information as storage objects stored in storage homes, to quote the specification. The storage homes are the datastores where the persistent data is saved.
    • SSLIOP pluggable protocol ships with 1.3a. This allow users to use an SSL implementation (not shipped with ACE/TAO) as a communication conduit.
    • There is a new Load Balancing Service that implements the current joint load balancing submission revision of the OMG.
    • There is a new Logging Service, aka Telecom Log Service. It is a composite of four separate services, Basic_Logging Service (similar to the previous logging service), Event_Logging Service, Notify_Logging Service, and RTEvent_Logging Service.
    • The final MIOP specification has recently been adopted by the OMG. TAO's MIOP support (located in $TAO_ROOT/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/PortableGroup) enables servants to receive requests sent to multicast addresses. This is performed by creating a GroupId that identifies the multicast group and associating it with one or more servants. Additionally, the Unreliable IP Multicast (UIPMC) pluggable protocol is used to send and receive multicast requests. Multicast endpoints can be created dynamically at runtime.
    • There is a new XML Parser for the Service Configurator. The current syntax is still the default in version 1.3a with the new syntax available as an option. The next version will change the default, but still keep the old syntax available.
    • Many additional regression tests have been added.
    • ACE ported to Windows CE 3 with Pocket PC 2002 SDK, and Windows CE .NET with Standard SDK complete.
    • AIX and HP-UX can now use g++ 3.2 (previous versions of g++ were not reliable on these platforms).
    • The conversion of ACE/TAO documentation to Doxygen has been completed.
    • Support for the Itanium platform with Windows XP, HP-UX, and RedHat 2.1as has been added.

  19. Important bug fixes since TAO 1.2a

      Many bugs have been fixed or work-arounds provided since TAO 1.2a. Here we highlight a few of the more important bug fixes since TAO 1.2a, focusing especially on fixes for bugs that could cause crashes, deadlocks, resource leakage, or race conditions. Each bug is referenced by a number as assigned by the DOC group Bugzilla bug database found at http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/bugzilla/index.cgi.

    • 1003: Start up hang with new fixes to ACE_TP_Reactor
    • 1020*: (partial-solution) Client crash when TAO_Transport closes a connection, race condition
    • 1025: ORB loses memory
    • 1061: Server blocks indefinitely on shutdown when using shmiop
    • 1125: Stack grows out of bounds when large data is being flushed (also fixed in TAO 1.2a_p5)
    • 1129: Problem because of improper closure of connections
    • 1131: Add support for connection timeouts
    • 1175: Select_Reactor_Notify deadlocks when the notify queue is enabled (also fixed in TAO 1.2a_p2)
    • 1185: ORB blocks during connect() calls
    • 1202: ORB crashes if peer exits or dies while running nested event loops
    • 1222: ORB stack overflows with crashes during write()
    • 1230: Problems with usage of reactor->notify () calls within the ORB
    • 1235: SEGV in CORBA::ORB_init if non-existent file is specified with -ORBSvcConf option
    • 1247: TAO_Cache_Manager never purges cache entries for server-side connections
    • 1265: Potential ORB deadlocks during shutdown
    • 1269: ORB crashes if peer dies while ORB is blocked trying to send
    • 1270: ORB/Reactor segfaults if peer dies while trying to write
    • 1274: Crash-producing race conditions in Transport Cache management
    • 1305: TP_Reactor can reach inconsistent state and get into tight spin loop (also fixed in TAO 1.2a_p6)
    • 1344: Deadlock if POACurrent is resolved before RootPOA
    • 1361: TP_Reactor -- Closed handle resumed leading to crashes
    • 1382: Another race condition in TAO_Transport class
    • 1487: Exceptions returned from AMI invocations get leaked

    * Bug 1020 ( http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1020) deserves special explanation. The problem, as described in the bug report, could cause a multithreaded client with a connection to a server to crash if the server died. A client thread, trying to send a request to the server, may attempt to close the connection. Meanwhile, another thread might awaken in the reactor and also attempt to close the connection, resulting in a segmentation violation and crash. The partial solution, designed and implemented by Balachandran Natarajan, is similar in spirit to how the TCP state machine models connection teardown. Connection closure in the ORB is now modeled as an event that is handled through the ORB's leader-followers mechanism. In addition, event handling along the invocation path and along the connection handling path were separated for better separation of concerns. A regression test, $TAO_ROOT/tests/Bug_1020_Regression, was also added.

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Solaris

All of the Solaris builds used the recommended OCI build flags in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the SunOS platform and compiler.

Files Used for SunOS Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
SunOS 5.7 with g++ 2.95.3 platform_sunos5_g++.GNU config-sunos5.7.h
SunOS 5.8 with g++ 3.2.1 platform_sunos5_g++.GNU config-sunos5.8.h
SunOS 5.7 with Sun C++ 5.3 platform_sunos5_sunc++.GNU config-sunos5.7.h
SunOS 5.8 with Sun C++ 5.3 platform_sunos5_sunc++.GNU config-sunos5.8.h
SunOS 5.9 with Sun C++ 5.4 platform_sunos5_sunc++.GNU config-sunos5.9.h


Sun C++ Notes

Use the fast=1 instead of optimize=1 for optimizing with Sun compilers because it selects a combination of compilation options for optimum execution speed. Other optimization levels may reduce the footprint, but do not have a corresponding flag in ACE/TAO.


Tests

No ACE tests fail on any platform. A scattering of TAO tests fail, but no test/feature fails across platforms.

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Linux

All of the Red Hat builds used the recommended OCI build flags in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the Linux platform and compiler.

Files Used for Red Hat Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
RedHat 7.2 with g++ 2.95.3 platform_linux.GNU config-linux.h
RedHat 7.3 with g++ 2.96 platform_linux.GNU config-linux.h
RedHat 8.0 with g++ 3.2 platform_linux.GNU config-linux.h
RedHat 2.1AW on Itanium with g++ 2.96 platform_linux.GNU config-linux.h


Red Hat 7.x gcc 2.96 Notes

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Windows

All of the Windows builds used the recommended OCI build flags in a config.h file as shown below.

Files Used for Windows Builds
Buildconfig.h
Windows XP sp1 with Visual C++ 6 sp5 config-win32.h
Windows 2000 sp3 with Visual C++ 6 sp5 config-win32.h
Windows 2003 Enterprise VC++ 7.1 config-win32.h
Windows 2000 sp3 with Borland C++ 5.5 config-win32.h
Windows XP sp1 with Borland C++ 5.5 config-win32.h
Windows XP Itanium with Microsoft C++ cross-compiler for Itanium config-win32.h

We also test infrequently using a wider variety compilers. Various combinations of the following. We're reasonably sure that most sensible versions of the following will work correctly, but we can't guarantee a configuration unless we test it regularly.

Operating Systems

  • Windows XP sp1
  • Windows 2000 sp3
  • Windows 2003 Enterprise
  • Windows XP Itanium

Compilers

  • Visual C++ 6 sp5
  • Visual C++ 7.1
  • Borland C++ 5.5 using make
  • Microsoft C++ using nmake

Libraries

  • Original SDK
  • February 2003 Platform SDK
  • STLport 4.5.3

The following config.h file is used for all Windows nightly builds.

// contents of config.h
#define ACE_DISABLE_WIN32_ERROR_WINDOWS
#define ACE_HAS_STANDARD_CPP_LIBRARY 1
#include "config-win32.h"

The first line disables the popup of error windows when running the automated tests. It is not normally needed for ordinary user programs. It would only be used if an automated build was being done.

The platform_macros.GNU file is not used for Windows platforms.


Compile Notes
  • There are some warnings when compiling using Visual C++ 7.1
  • If using MPC to generate build files, then by default qos and ssl, and any projects that depend on these libraries will not be generated. To enable these features, simply create a text file called ACE_wrappers\bin\MakeProjectCreator\config\default.features with the following contents.
    ssl = 1
    qos = 1
    
  • When building static libraries you may have to build twice. The first time will generate the IDL, and compile everything that didn't rely on idl-generated files that don't exist. The second time will finish building files now that the idl-generated files exist.
  • To use Visual C++ 7.1, you must use MakeProjectCreator (MPC) to generate the project files. Assuming ACE_wrappers\bin is in your path, you can simply run the following command from the ACE_wrappers directory.
    mwc.pl -type vc71 -recurse
    
    This will generate all Solutions and Project files. (Some tests and examples are not finished yet, but will likely be included in a subsequent patch release.) You can generate project files for Visual C++ 6 and other platforms in exactly the same way except with a different -type.


Execution Notes
  • The Itanium release build may not run on some older platforms. The build was done with the Feburary 2003 SDK and it appears to be incompatible with our earlier versions of the DLLs delivered with Itanium Windows 2002. The Itanium debug build runs on the same platform.


create_ace_build.pl

You can now use this perl script to set up a build for ACE/TAO, so that multiple builds can share a single code base (this is a new feature with 1.3a). You must run this command from within the ACE_wrappers directory, and ACE_wrappers\bin should be in your path. Example:

create_ace_build.pl vc71
Running this command will create a directory called ACE_wrappers\builds\vc71. Most of the directory structure under ACE_wrappers will be duplicated under this directory, and hard links will be created back to the files under ACE_wrappers. For example, if you modify ACE_wrappers\ace\OS.h, then ACE_wrappers\builds\vc71\ace\OS.h will automatically be modified. Windows does not support symbolic links, so that if you delete a file, it will not automatically be deleted. If you then add a new file with the same name as the old one, it will not be linked. To refresh your links in this case, you can run create_ace_build.pl without any options, and it will update all links for every build. You can set up as many builds as you want by simply running the script again with a different argument.

By default, it's assumed that you will use MPC to generate any project files for the new build, so no project files or Makefiles are linked from ACE_wrappers.


Tests

A scattering of ACE and TAO tests fail, but no test/feature fails across platforms. In addition, the notify service will not load when building release mode Borland 5.5. (This will likely be fixed in a subsequent patch release.)

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Tru64

The Tru64 builds used the recommended OCI build flags in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the Tru64 platform and compiler.

Files Used for Tru64 Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
Tru64 5.1a with cxx V6.5-021 platform_tru64_cxx.GNU config-tru64.h

In addition

The default ulimits on these platform are not sufficient to build TAO. The problem is the virtual memory limits, vmemory and data must be increased to the maximum allowed. For us, this is vmemory=4194304 and data=1048576 .

In addition the operating system must be configured to have larger limits for semaphore operations.

ipc:
  sem_mni = 250
  sem_msl = 125
  sem_opm = 100
  sem_ume = 100


CXX Notes

There is a problem with the Naming Service when built with Compaq C++ compilers and optimization. The source in question is Bindings_Iterator_T.cpp and the modules that use this are Persistent_Naming_Context.o and Transient_Naming_Context.o in library libTAO_CosNaming.so. The problem exists on C++ V6.2 to V6.5 and on UNIX 5.1 and 4.0F. The problem occurs at all optimization levels from O1 through O4. It is unknown when a fix will be available


Tests

2 ACE tests fail

  • FIFO appears to be a problem in Tru64 itself. The feature itself is not used in TAO, so does not affect normal TAO operation.
  • On the surface, the Multicast_Test seems to indicate that Tru64 works differently than other systems (at least what Multicast_Test expects).
A scattering of TAO tests fail, but no test/feature fails across platforms.

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AIX

All of the AIX builds used the recommended OCI build flags OCI build flags in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the AIX platform and compiler.

When using GNU Make that is part of AIX toolbox for Linux applications, it may be necessary to modify the file access permissions of the make executable to ensure the LIBPATH environment variable is propagated to make system properly. This can be done as follows:

chmod 755 /opt/freeware/bin/make

See this message for further information.

Files Used for AIX Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
AIX 5.1 with VA C++ 5.0.2.6 platform_aix_ibm.GNU config-aix5.1.h

NOTE: The preprocessor for VA C++ 5 does not function correctly when used by tao_idl. Therefore, the GNU Preprocessor was used for tao_idl by setting TAO_IDL_PREPROCESSOR=g++ in platform_macros.GNU.


Tests

No ACE tests fail on this platform. The AVStreams tests are known not to work on this platform.

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HP-UX

All of the HPUX builds used the recommended OCI build flags OCI build flags in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the HPUX platform and compiler.

Files Used for HPUX Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
HPUX 11.00 on PA-RISC2 with HP ANSI C++ B3910B A.03.27 platform_hpux_aCC.GNU config-hpux-11.00.h
HPUX 11.20 on Itanium with HP ANSI C++ B3910B A.05.32 platform_hpux_aCC.GNU config-hpux-11.00.h

Tests

No ACE tests fail on HP-UX 11.00. The ACE Multicast_Test fails on HPUX 11.20 due to platform implementation differences. The TAO RTCORBA tests fail due to lack of support for the HP-UX thread priorities.

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Irix

The SGI IRIX build used the recommended OCI build flags in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the IRIX platform and compiler.

Files Used for IRIX Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
IRIX 6.5 with MIPSpro Compilers: Version 7.4 platform_irix6.x_sgic++.GNU config-irix6.5.x-sgic++.h

Tests

The ACE Multicast test fails due to platform implementation differences. A few TAO tests fail. In many cases this is due to a possible bug in the way the compiler deals with exceptions. For one test, TAO/tests/AMH_Exceptions/, the test server locks up and cannot be killed. This test will not be executed if ACE_wrappers/bin/auto_run_tests.pl is used the run the tests.

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Mac OS X

All of the Mac OS X builds used the recommended OCI build flags in addition to revised platform_macros.GNU and config.h files developed for the Mac OS X platform and compiler.

Files Used for Mac OS X Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
Mac OS X 10.2.6 with g++ 3.1 platform_macosx.GNU config-macosx.h

In addition

The Apple Developer Kit Dec 2002 is required and two additional packages will have to be loaded from open source available on the net.

  • dlcompat is required for implementing dynamic library loading. It can be obtained directly from http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/dlcompat/ and built. Or a pre-built version may be loaded with fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/). If the fink version is used, you will need to add:
          #define ACE_NEEDS_DL_UNDERSCORE
    
    to your config.h file.
  • Certain parts of the TAO will not build with the version of gmake in the versions of Mac OS X 10.2 available as of this writing. You will need to download gmake version 3.80 (or better) http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/make/.

Notes

The major problem with getting TAO to run on Mac OS X was lack of full initialization of static objects. About half of the tests were failing. Apple is aware of the problem, but a fix does not appear to be imminent. Seems to be somewhat difficult problem with some legacy implications. Thus, for ACE/TAO the Mac will not be supportable for any earlier versions than 1.3a of ACE/TAO and 10.2.x of Mac OS X.

There are three or four environment variables that are required to be defined in the user's environment.

  • DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH which operates as LD_LIBRARY_PATH on most other UNIX like systems.
  • DYLD_BIND_AT_LAUNCH=1 is required to make the dlcompat package work. This package is used to implement the dynamic loading used by the Service Configurator. When this is set, the dynamic linker binds all undefined symbols the program needs at launch time. This includes function symbols that can are normally lazily bound at the time of their first call. When Apple gets around to providing this capability natively, we may be able to eliminate this variable; that would be good since it adversely affects performance.
  • MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET="10.2" is requires to get rid of a lot of annoying warning. It might also fix a couple of things that we have worked around.

    And, if you are building ACE/TAO and wish to run the tests,

  • ACE_RUNTEST_DELAY provides a multiplier to the times specified in a test. ACE_RUNTEST_DELAY=2 is needed to make more than 20 tests run in that the DYLD_BIND_AT_LAUNCH=1 slows process startup beyond the 5 seconds allowed for startup.


Tests

2 ACE tests fail

  • The Process_Mutex is broken on Mac OS X and has been reported to Apple. It is needed in TAO for AV and some other places. The implementation uses a POSIX named semaphore, as the OS does not implement either system level mutex or SYSV style semaphores that are used in other implementations. Apple is looking at this problem.
  • The MEM_Stream_Test fails since it uses a Process_Mutex.
Several TAO tests fail.
  • The exception part of the two Param_Tests fails. The problem here is that the compiler interprets the exception spec literally. The test tries to trick the compiler into throwing an exception that is not defined. What happens is the unexpected exception is actually caught and, since it is not handled, the process aborts.
  • 10 orbsvcs tests fail in debug build but not in optimize build. This is likely a timing issue, but will need further work.
  • 4 AV tests fail and the tests that use SHMIIOP, probably because they require a Process_Mutex, which is known to be broken.
  • Several RTCORBA tests fail due to the lack of get_prio.
Conclusion: ACE/TAO and Mac OS X both need a bit more work, but 1.3a should be usable for most CORBA applications with the restrictions noted in the test section above.

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VxWorks

The VxWorks builds used the recommended OCI build flags with static libraries only and no exceptions in addition to the platform_macros.GNU and config.h files already set up for the VxWorks platform and compiler.

Files Used for VxWorks Builds
Buildplatform_macros.GNUconfig.h
Tornado 2.2 with g++ 2.96 platform_vxworks5.x_g++.GNU config-vxworks5.x.h

The build was cross-compiled on a Solaris platform for a PPC 604 target. A cross-compile using Windows for a PPC 604 target has also been done.


Build Notes

The VxWorks build was for static libraries only, since that is the most common use on this platform. Also, the build was without native exceptions again, since that is the most common.

This build also uses "#define ACE_HAS_EXPLICIT_TEMPLATE_INSTANTIATION" in its config.h since it was found that implicit template instantiation does not work in all cases.

Not all of the orbsvcs and orbsvcs tests will build on VxWorks.


Tests

Basic ACE and TAO tests work on VxWorks.

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Others

These are platforms for which some amount of work has been done. This does not mean that these platforms are fully supported, only that they may be usable in circumstances similar to those in which they were tested.

The 5.3a version of ACE has been built and tested with the Green Hills tool kits versions 3.5 and 4.0 on both Solaris for Solaris, Solaris for VxWorks, and Linux for Linux.

The 1.3a version of ACE/TAO has been built with the Green Hills Integrity toolkit 4.0 running on Windows for the Green Hills Integrity OS. Green Hills Integrity is a fairly new Real-Time OS for embedded systems. As such, systems on which it runs are generally limited in the resources which they can provide. For example, the system on which we tested was very limited in memory, so very little of the standard tests could be run.

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BuildFlags

If you're doing your own build, you can have the following flags set which OCI uses in its own builds. For UNIX and UNIX-like platforms that use GNU Make, use platform_macros.GNU. For Windows/Visual C++ builds, use config.h. If an option is not listed below, let it default.

Turned on:
platform_macros.GNUconfig.h
exceptions=1 #define ACE_HAS_EXCEPTIONS
inline=1 #define __ACE_INLINE__ (unless not supported by the compiler)
ami=1 #define TAO_HAS_AMI 1
rt_corba=1 #define TAO_HAS_RT_CORBA 1
smart_proxies=1 #define TAO_HAS_SMART_PROXIES 1
interceptors=1 #define TAO_HAS_INTERCEPTORS 1
interface_repo=1 #define TAO_HAS_INTERFACE_REPOSITORY 1
corba_messaging=1 #define TAO_HAS_CORBA_MESSAGING 1
shared_libs_only=1 no equivalent (If you plan on using static libraries, use static_libs_only=1)

Turned off:
platform_macros.GNUconfig.h
probe=0 no equivalent
profile=0 no equivalent
fakesvcconf=0 #undef TAO_PLATFORM_SVC_CONF_FILE_NOTSUP

Variable--dependent on platform and other settings:
debug=[1|0]
optimize=[0|1] (= !debug)
fast=1 ONLY FOR SUNOS C++, non-DEBUG builds instead of optimize=1

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