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Text File | 1992-11-03 | 58.1 KB | 1,006 lines

|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯| | PowerVisor History Tue Nov 3 15:34:45 1992 | |___________________________________________________________________________| For each released version there is a line with the following format : Vx.yy (<date>, V37.zzz) : Vx.yy is the version number (x = major version number and yy = minor version number). <date> is the last compilation date for that version. V37.zzz is the internal version. zzz is the number of compilations since I started using the internal version format (About August 1991 I think). After this line follow all the changes that distinguish this version from the previous. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- V1.00 (1 Sep 91, V37.276) : - first release (on tapserv and ab20.larc.nasa.gov) V1.01 (9 Sep 91, V37.324) : - Bug fix : when 'mode fancy', 'mode nofancy', 'mode lace' or 'mode nolace' failed (for example, because there is a visitor window open on the PowerVisor screen) we didn't restore the current mode. This means that when you tried again later (after closing the visitor window) PowerVisor would ignore the command - Bug fix : when the 'mode' command failes because there is not enough memory, we first try again with the old mode settings before quitting PowerVisor - New feature : new 'stack' command and 'getstack' function to monitor stack usage for a specific task. 'stack' uses the timer.device for very fast respons - We removed an obsolete feature from 'refresh'. The optional command argument is no longer optional - The standard logical window commands have an extra optional argument. With this you can specify the number of lines for a logical window - The previous new feature is also included in the 'openlw' command - Bug fix :Logical windows are much more stable with big fonts and small visible sizes. No more crashes when the logical window is too small - Bug fix : parsing of [<x>] operator in alias strings was not completely correct. Because we did not ignore the operator if <x> was no digit we could not quote the operator. This is solved - New PowerVisor debug mode accessible with 'pvcall 17'. This debug mode is useful if you want to debug aliases, scripts, key attachements or other special things in PowerVisor. Every command is printed on the screen before it is executed - Bug fix : 'if' function now always correctly parses the arguments. Because of some very obscure bug it could happen that the 'if' function parsed to much characters from the string - Added strong quote operator in strings because I needed it in the 'salias' alias - The '#' operator is removed because the same functionality is already present in the quote operator '\'. Just use \(<x>,%s) instead of #<x> - Behaviour of the 'eval' function has changed ! 'eval' now expects a string pointer (or normal pointer) instead of a string. This turned out to be more useful - Limitation removed in 'colrow' and 'fit' commands. It is now possible to size the 'debug' logical window - Bug fix : The 'colrow' and 'fit' commands are now very stable. When an out of memory error occurs, they simply try again for the old values. If this also fails PowerVisor will quit (in the previous version a command like 'colrow 30000 30000' would crash your amiga) - Behaviour changed for 'libfunc' command : the offset argument must be negative and only the 16 least significant bits are used. Thus something like $ff30 is a valid offset (this is also the format given by the disassembler) - Bug fix : The 'loadfd' command now handles multiple ##bias statements in fd-files correctly. In V1.00 all functions where correctly loaded but not correctly counted. The effect of this was that 'info <fd node>' did not show all functions in the fd-file - Removed a completely useles feature from 'loadfd' : it is no longer possible to specify the maximum number of functions to load. 'loadfd' always loads the complete fd-file - Added workbench startup - Startup is cleaner. We don't crash anymore if the wrong PowerVisor is used on the wrong operating system. We are also a lot more stable in low memory conditions and other wierd environments - We didn't close dos.library - New 'Aliases' reference file explaining all aliases defined in s/PowerVisor-startup and s/pv/ExtraAliases - New aliases in s/PowerVisor-startup (salias and fdebug) - The 'db' script is better. Opens a fixed size logical window so you don't need to size it everytime you use the fullscreen debugger. 'db' also redefines 'fdebug' to clean up the fullscreen debugger - New 'ExtraAliases' script to define some extra aliases - Created flexible install script V1.10 (30 Sep 91, V37.600) : - Bug fix : PowerVisor no longer crashes when a logical window is made too small - Removed incorrect statement in 'CommandReference' about 'fit' and 'colrow' not suitable for the 'debug' logical window - Incorrect statement in 'Screen' removed. The 'debug' logical window is 90 columns instead of 82 - New function 'lastbytes'. This function returns the last number of bytes used with the 'memory' or 'view' command - New function 'lastlines'. This function returns the last number of lines used with the 'unasm' command - 'memory', 'view' and 'unasm' remember the number of bytes or lines viewed (see the previous functions) and will continue with this number at a later time - New aliases 'cm', 'cv' and 'cu' to continue 'memory', 'view' and 'unasm' respectively without setting a new address. You can set the number of bytes or lines though - Bug fix : we don't allow illegal variable names any more - Finally all obsolete errors are removed - Bug fix : 'LoadTags' and 'SaveTags' correctly handle structures. When you try to load previously saved tags, PowerVisor will check if the structure exists and will use this pointer instead of the old one. If the structure does not exist, PowerVisor will change the type of the tag to Long/Ascii and give a warning at the end of the loading - Behaviour changed : 'LoadTags' no longer clears the current tag list but adds the tags from the file to the current tag list - Note that the PVSD file format has changed (used for 'LoadTags' and 'SaveTags'). PowerVisor does NOT understand the format used by PowerVisor V1.00 and V1.01 - Install script is better. We check if the files exist before we try to copy them. If a file doesn't exist we ask another pathname to the user. This means that you can distribute PowerVisor on different disks (in fact you will have to distribute PowerVisor on different disks if you don't compress the files). The installation script won't give errors because of non existant files. Simply put the other disk in the drive - We print more information in the cli structure (with the 'info' command) - New glossary file for explaining some specific PowerVisor terminology - 'Why' command is gone. It is more efficient to define an alias for 'why' in s/PowerVisor-startup - Some optimizations, PowerVisor is a bit shorter. This has some effect on some internal fields. See the 'TheWizardCorner' file for more info about the format of the commands in the routine table - Because of the previous optimization there are no more commands working in ARexx but not in PowerVisor and vice versa. You can now use the 'front', 'hide', 'sync', ... commands in PowerVisor too. And the 'clip' and 'remclip' commands work in ARexx - Some new 'pvcall' functions for logical windows - Bug solved in 'salias' alias. This alias loosed memory everytime we runned it - The 'co' function (or 'GetCode' ML-script) will not crash anymore if used in AmigaDOS 1.3 with a non special key. The function will return 0 instead - A complete new directory 'PVDevelop' for the PowerVisor Wizards. This subdirectory contains include files and libraries useful to make ML-scripts in C or machinelanguage - New assign : 'pv' to the root of the PowerVisor subdirectory. This assign is only used by the develop files - 'openlw', 'openpw', 'xwin', 'rwin', 'owin', 'awin' and 'dwin' give an error when there is not enough memory. In the previous version, the memory failure was simply ignored - No more ugly flickering of the BUSY prompt when executing ARexx scripts - Bug solved in 'unasm' with very long instructions. The hexadecimal words would overwrite the instruction - New 'bin' alias in s/PowerVisor-startup to show the binary representation of a number - New 'asm' alias and s:pv/assem.pv ARexx program for a simple assembler. See s:pv/assem.pv for more info about the assembler - Two new 'pvcall' functions to disassemble one line of memory in a string (s:pv/assem.pv uses this) - The PowerVisor expression evaluator is more strict. You MUST always close all brackets. I have done this because there were some problems (especially in 'alias') if badly formed expressions are used - The same is true for the group operator - New 'cmd' alias and ARexx script to execute Cli commands from within PowerVisor - Bug solved in strong quote parsing - PowerVisor commands called from ARexx are not interruptable anymore with <esc> - Important change in the logical window system. Input is now local to a logical window. This means that when a command waits for input (either a line of input or a key (-MORE- for example)) all other logical windows will be locked. This means that accidently hitting a key will not have undesirable results. All input is redirected to the active logical window (the one with the full (blue) titlebar) - <esc> and <ralt>-<help only work for the output appearing on the 'ACTIVE' logical window, so you have to use <tab> to interrupt a command running on another logical window (also see the previous item) - Note that the stringgadget still behaves weird in AmigaDOS 1.3 If anyone out there knows a legal way to UNSELECT (UnActivate) a stringgadget I would appreciate it very much. In AmigaDOS 2.0 simply removing the gadget and adding it again is enough to unselect the gadget, but this does not seem true in AmigaDOS 1.3. - New 'event' command to add an input event to the main handler. This is useful for macros (key attachements) - The AmigaDOS 1.2/1.3 version of PowerVisor doesn't need arp.library anymore (I needed it only for the 32 bit multiply and divide. I have now put these two routines in pv13) - Fixed yet another bug in the structure viewing and the 'info' command. If the list item in a structure was a string, there would be some strange characters after the string - Many bugs and errors are corrected in the online help and tutor files - AT LAST ! Mstruct is converted to AmigaDOS 1.2/1.3 ! Now you can make your own structures and use them in PowerVisor even if you don't use AmigaDOS 2.0 - Major change in the history buffer mechanics. The history buffer now works like in the AmigaDOS 2.0 shell. It is no longer a circular list (how coud I ever have such a bad idea :-) This means of course that s:pv/PrintHist.pv, s:pv/SearchHist and Source/SearchHist.asm have changed a bit. I hope you had not written anything using the internal structure of the history buffer, because you will have to change your programs if you did - At last ! The autorepeat bug in the AmigaDOS 1.2/1.3 version of PowerVisor is solved. You can now scroll in the history buffer and in the logical windows with autorepeat - Although it was already possible to set a font for a logical window, this could not be done automatically and the stringgadget and logical window size bars remained in topaz 8. Now it is possible to set the default font for PowerVisor (with 'prefs font'). This font is used for all new logical windows (you can of course still change this font when the logical window is already open), for the stringgadget, for the logical window size bars and for the screen. - WARNING !!! The File format of s:PowerVisor-config has changed ! Please delete this file first before you start the new version of PowerVisor !!! - Commandline options for PowerVisor are removed since they were not very useful - All the 'prefs' commands have a more readable output. I use decimal output when decimal is more appropriate than hexadecimal - Some pvcall functions are removed because they were obsolete (Signal command and IDCMP command) - MAJOR ! The AmigaDOS 2.0 version of PowerVisor finally supports menus. You can make your own menus with your favorite commands in it. I'm very sorry, but this is only for the AmigaDOS 2.0 version - When 'reqtools.library' (© Nico François) is available, PowerVisor will use this library for requesters with the new commands : 'reqload', 'reqsave', 'request' and 'getstring' Otherwise, simple PowerVisor constructions are automatically used : 'scan', 'key()' - There is a new predefined constant 'input'. This constant contains the pointer to the last input string (with 'scan', 'getstring', 'reqload' and 'reqsave'). You don't have to worry anymore about freeing all the strings allocated with 'scan' - Bug fix in 'debug l' and 'debug n'. We did loose some memory when the loading failed or when 'debug n' was interrupted by the user - More predefined pens (24 instead of 16), 19 of these pens are used - Four new pens for the colours of the stringgadget (only AmigaDOS 2.0) - Bug fixed in 'symbol' command. PowerVisor sometimes said there were no symbols even if it previously loaded them. This bug was harmless but I fixed it anyway :-) V1.11 (16 Oct 91, V37.672) : - We look at PROGDIR: in AmigaDOS 2.0 to see where our files are This means that the following path is used for the PowerVisor-startup, PowerVisor-menus, PowerVisor-help, PowerVisor-ctrl and PowerVisor-errors files : First check PROGDIR: (only AmigaDOS 2.0) Check S: Check current directory In practice this means that you can keep this files together with PowerVisor - PowerVisor1.0.task is renamed to PowerVisor.task - intuition.struct is expanded to handle almost all Intuition structures - Bug fix in 'trace c' (conditional trace) command. This command only occasionally worked. In most cases this command would return an error. This is fixed - 'break c' is also fixed (the same bug as in 'trace c') V1.12 (31 Oct 91, V37.717) : - Some errors fixed in the include files. dbn_LoadedSegment is a BPTR and not an APTR - Bug in 'tags' command solved. This command was broken in V1.11 (and maybe earlier) - Bug in include files solved. We don't use absolute pathname anymore in the .i include files for the PVMemory.i include file. If you have any problems with this you should include this file first in your source before you include any of the other include files. This should solve all possible problems - ScreenBase.i and ScreenBase.h contained a double declaration of 'LockPrompt'. The second 'LockPrompt' has been changed to 'PtrLockPrompt' - Floating point debugging is fixed for AmigaDOS 2.04 (V37.175) - Primitive support for floating point debugging with the 'fregs' command. This command displays the 8 floating point registers for a task (only if the task uses floating point) in the internal format (the format used on the Exec stackframe). Wait for future releases for more and better floating point support - New 'debug u' command. Use this command instead of 'debug r' when you have used 'debug l'. If you have used 'debug n' it is often better to use the old 'debug r' - Little change in assembler (assem.pv). Addressing mode (4) will default to (4).l (for example) - PowerVisor uses the Exec CacheClearU function to clear the cache (after setting breakpoints for example) instead of own routines if AmigaDOS 2.0 is used V1.13 (14 Feb 92, V37.873) : - Bug solved in 'GeneralBase.h' - Bug solved in 'debug', 'break' and 'symbol' if no arguments were given to the command - You can now use the '@sr' register in register assignment and you can also use the value of '@sr' - '@a7' is now equivalent to '@sp' - Bug solved in the changing of the stackpointer '@sp=xxx' - New 'scratch' option for the 'addfunc' command. This option makes the scratch registers ('d1', 'a0' and 'a1') illegal - The 'mmuregs' command should work with an 68020/68851 (I hope) - New option added to the 'debug' command ('c'). With this option you can catch the next task in the system (not the next process like 'debug n') - Powerful new command to track the usage of resources for a task or process ('track'). Note that this command is not completely ready. In future I plan more extensive checking. There should also be a easy way to let a program run and stop it before it quits. That way you can better examine what went wrong - Symbols are correctly loaded in all cases (I hope). Previously PowerVisor would load incorrect symbols if there were hunks without symbols in the file. This is solved - Bug in the window system solved. Autoscale (-1,-1) did not work as described in the manual - Bug solved in 'prefs pens' command. It was not possible to set a pen number greater than 32 - Two new pens defined for hilighting. There is also support for hilighted text - Source level debugging implemented for 'Macro68'. New 'source' command. This source level debugging is still rather primitive. In future more features and easier ways to scroll will be added - Source level debugging implemented for SAS/C. Compile C program with '-d1' option (must be 1 !) to use - The fullscreen debugger also uses hilighting instead of the '|' character to indicate the program counter - The 'refresh' command does not require the 'Refresh' logical window to be open. If this window is not open, the output will be send to the current logical window - New 'Source' logical window (with corresponding 'swin' command) for the source level debugger. Note that this means that you have to delete the old 'PowerVisor-config' file before you run the new PowerVisor - There are more menus in the PowerVisor-menus file - The 'icopy' script and the 'CopyLogWin' and 'GetLogWin' programs have been recompiled because the internal 'ScreenBase' structure has changed - New arguments for 'mode' command: 'intui' and 'nointui'. When 'intui' is set all standard window command ('xwin', 'awin', 'dwin', ...) will open a new physical window (Intuition window) that contains the standard logical window - When a physical window opens, PowerVisor no longer activates this window - 's:pv/PrintMode.pv' has been changed to incorporate the new 'mode' variables - Bug solved in the handling of requesters with ReqTools. When you changed the PowerVisor screen, PowerVisor would sometimes prevent requesters from appearing. This is now solved - 'prefs startup' and 'prefs window' have been removed. 'SaveConfig' will automatically look at the current window size and position and use the information from that. This approach is much more userfriendly - You can scroll in the source with the mouse (source level debugging) - Source level debugging seems to work for Devpac3 too - Bug solved in the scroll routine (bug was not visible) - The MMU commands should work on a 68020/68851. Previously this was not the case - The 'mmuregs' command shows a 68851 only register: 'DRP' if you have a 68851. I have not been able to test this feature (I have a 68030) - 'mmuregs' will print '(na)' (not available) for all registers not available on your Amiga - The 'debug' command is MUCH better if you have AmigaDOS 2.0 (I'm sorry for all the 1.3 users). 'debug' does not loose any memory (as far as I have been able to test) and you can use 'debug u' with a program loaded with 'debug n'. I used the new 'CreateNewProc' function in AmigaDOS 2.0 to achieve these results - If you have AmigaDOS 2.0, 'debug l' will create a CLI structure for the process. Previously this was not the case, making it almost impossible to use 'debug l' on programs supporting the Workbench (The startup code would assume the program was started from Workbench because there was no CLI, and would wait in vain for the Workbench message) V1.14 (25 Mar 92, V37.890) : - Bug solved in the standard logical window commands ('dwin', 'xwin', 'swin', 'rwin', ...) in combination with the 'mode intui' command. The following sequence would give a spectacular crash : mode nointui dwin (open window) mode intui dwin (close it) ---> FIREWORKS ALL OVER THE PLACE - Serious bug solved in the restoring of the correct task priority when PowerVisor quits. This not only resulted in the incorrect priority for the calling cli (priority 4) but could in some cases even lead to crashes when PowerVisor quits (or later) - Some people complained that they had problems running PowerVisor because they have an incorrect 68020/30 board. These boards do not have the correct behaviour when asked if there is a MMU on board. To help these people I have added a commandline option '-m'. With this commandline option you can force a certain MMU or no MMU. When you use this option PowerVisor will not use the internal MMU test routine. For example: use -m0 if you have a 68020 but NO MMU. use -m68851 if you have a 68020 WITH a MMU (68851) use -m68030 or -m68040 if you have these processors You should not use this commandline option unless you have a faulty board (like some CSA 68020 boards and maybe others) - New 'crash' command. This command patches the TrapCode in all tasks currently in the system (or only one task if required) to point to the trapcode for PowerVisor. This means that crashes are trapped better for those tasks. This command is useful in combination with 'mode patch'. 'mode patch' patches all new tasks (by patching AddTask) while 'crash' patches all existing tasks. You should use this command if you want to debug using resident breakpoints or if you want to be able to debug a task after it crashes - New '#' operator to get the address for a linenumber in the currently loaded source V1.15 (18 Jul 92, V37.939) : - When the 'to' command was used from within an ARexx script and the command after the 'to' (the argument to the 'to' command) caused an error, PowerVisor would crash after a while. This bug is solved - Little bug solved in the command parser. In version 1.14 all lines starting with a non digit or non letter would execute the 'active' logical window command (except for the prefix operators like '-', '~', ...). Now you get a 'Syntax Error' - It is now possible to issue ARexx commands to PowerVisor even when PowerVisor is in hold mode (however, there are still some problems when PowerVisor is on its own screen) so only use this feature when you previously opened PowerVisor on the Workbench screen - The speed of PowerVisor output has been greatly enhanced. I don't use RawDoFmt anymore for the conversion of an integer to a hexadecimal string. The speed difference is very large with the 'memory' command - Assigning a value to the 'mode' variable will not always cause the physical windows to close and reopen. This was not really a bug, but it nicer if you can simply change the 'mode' variable without the slowdown of all the reopening - Better error message when you try to load the source for a debug task (with 'source l') and you give the name of the source file instead of the executable file ('source l' needs the name of the executable file). This has caused some confusion - 'source l' will now refresh the source logical window (if there is any) so that after loading the source you will immediately see it (if the program counter is in the source of course) - 'fregs' shows the value of each floating point register in a primitive way (without exponent and only nine digits before the decimal point and nine after) - New 'float' command to change the value of a floating point register (also in a primitive way, without exponent. Future versions of PowerVisor will support full floating point format) - Bug solved in 'reqload' and 'reqsave'. These two commands no longer append a '/' to an empty pathname (this fix was needed because the behaviour of reqtools changed a little bit) - The complete documentation has been converted to AmigaGuide (© Commodore) format. There are four new standard alias commands provided for easy access to the documentation from within PowerVisor. With 'ahelp' you simply go to the main screen, with 'cmdhelp' you can ask help about any command, with 'funhelp' you can ask help about any function and with 'index' you can search any topic you want in the complete PowerVisor hypertext manual. Note that you need AmigaGuide to be able to use these four new aliases - As a consequence of the previous documentation enhancements, there are no longer '.idx' and '.contents' files since these are no longer needed. If you don't have AmigaGuide, you can adapt the 'SearchKeyWord.pv' ARexx script so that you can still use the 'index' alias - New install script for AmigaDOS 2.0 which makes use of the wonderful 'Installer' program (© Commodore). It is highly recommended that you install PowerVisor with this script (if you have AmigaDOS 2.0 of course) V1.20 (18 Jul 92, V37.940) : - Removed beta :-) V1.21 (22 Jul 92, V37.981) : - To my big surprise I discovered that I did no checking at all in the 'MStruct' program. This utility would simply crash if it could not open the input file. How could I ever write such evil code!!! - Added documentation for the 'MStruct' utility in 'LookingAtThings.guide' - 'PowerVisor.guide' is a bit better - Instead of \0a it is now possible to use \n. This is more intuitive - Enhanced 'SearchKeyWord.pv' script (and thus enhanced 'index' alias) - Updated some parts of the manual (CommandRef.guide) so that the references to the old use of the '#' operator are gone (in fact this operator was gone since V1.01) (Don't confuse this with the new '#' operator which is something completely different) - Solved pretty serious bug with parsing in ARexx. The 'clearstruct', 'cleartags', 'loadtags' and 'loadfd' commands simply were not accessible from within ARexx ('clearstruct' and 'cleartags' were replaced by 'clear'. 'loadfd' and 'loadtags' were replaced by 'load') - New 'DispMemList.pv' ARexx script. This ARexx script displays the free memory in a graphical way - New 'appendto' command to append the output of a command to a file. This new command is completely equivalent to the 'to' command except that the output is appended to a (possibly) existing file - Bug in 'Aliases.guide'. The 'cv' aliases was called 'vu' which is of course wrong - Four new aliases in 's:pv/ExtraAliases': 'm0', 'm1', 'v0' and 'v1'. With these aliases you can go back with 'memory' and 'view' - The restriction that there can only be one PowerVisor in memory at the same time is removed. You can now run as many instances of PowerVisor as you wish (and as memory permits). However, only the first (the master) PowerVisor traps crashes and allows debugging. The name of the ARexx port, the PowerVisor port, the input handler and the public screen are extended with a dot ('.') and the number of the slave (starting with 1). The master instance does not have this extension - New 'pv' constant to ask the number of the PowerVisor instance (0 = master, 1 = first slave, ...) - New 'pubscreen' function to get the name of the public screen for this instance. Very useful for ARexx scripts - New 'arexxport' function to get the name of the ARexx port for this instance. Very useful for ARexx scripts - 'account', 'addfunc', 'crash', 'debug' and 'track' are not allowed for slave instances - 'assem.pv' and 'cmd.pv' scripts are better and use ARexx arguments instead of the 'rc' variable to get the parameter 'cmd.pv' works better in most cases (less errors) and it is now possible to interrupt the output from within PowerVisor with <ctrl>+<c> - New '-c' commandline option to skip the reading of the PowerVisor-config file. PowerVisor uses all the default values - New '-s' commandline option to skip the reading of the PowerVisor-startup script - New 'a' option for 'attach' so that a command is always executed (invisible) even if PowerVisor is busy doing something else - The 'string' command has a new optional argument for the maximum length of the returned string - New 'getline' function to get the pointer to the line on the current position - Added new hilighting technique to the window system: inverse video - New 'ListEnv.pv' script for a specialized list environment (see the script for more information) - New \01, \02, \03 and \04 characters useful for hilighting text on the PowerVisor window - New optional argument for 'debug n' and 'debug c'. Normally those two commands waited for the next process or task. With this optional argument you can wait for the n'th process or task with n greater than 1. This is useful if you want to debug a task that is started immediately after a certain program runs (for example) - Added 'HowToInstall' file giving a detailed description of the installation process for PowerVisor V1.30 (30 Jul 92, V37.1116) : - The 'stru' list (the list containing all structure definitions) now always contains some structures that were already present in PowerVisor but not accessible until now. You can now use 'peek' and 'apeek' to read or write values in the standard structures (like 'task', 'proc', 'cli', 'wins', ...) - Solved bug in 'exec.struct' and 'exec.pvsd'. 'FPTR' type is not recognized by 'MStruct' - Little bug solved in 'debug c 2' (for example). The 'a2' register was not correctly restored to the original value - Very little bug solved in the displaying of the page size (with the 'mmuregs' command). If this size was equal to 08000 it was sign extended to 0ffff8000. This does not happen anymore - The output of 'mmuregs' and 'specregs' has changed a bit. I think it is more clear this way - New feature in powervisor.library: replyport may be null (only for some function calls) - MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT LAST! The MMU memory protection system is here and it even works! All you need is a 68020 with a 68851 or a 68030 (at this moment the 68040 is not supported) and you can use this extremely powerful feature. You can protect any region of memory for write access or for read access - The new MMU memory protection system uses the already existing tag system to describe the protected regions. The 'addtag' command has been extended to allow for extra protection flags for a region of memory. The 'tags' command has been extended to show these extra flags - New 'watch' command to enable the new memory protection system. This command also moves the VBR to another position so that writing in low memory is not as harmful anymore - New 'protect' command to protect memory according to the current tag list. Use this command in combination with 'watch' - New 'getmmuentry' function for some specialized control over the new MMU features - 'speek', 'spoke' and 'mmureset' will now work on a 68020 with a 68851 - It is now impossible to freeze PowerVisor with PowerVisor. Previously the 'freeze' command did not check for this - New PP_SignalPowerVisor function (internal) in the powervisor.library - Fixed two errors in the error-file :-) I used 'freezed' instead of 'frozen' (how could I!) - Three new scripts ('ProtectRCustom', 'ProtectWCustom' and 'StopCustom') to protect illegal custom chip access. These scripts make use of the new memory protection system - Internal tag structure has changed a bit. See the PVDevelop files for more info (and 'TheWizCorner.guide') - New 'tagtype' command. With this command you can assign a certain tag list for the protection of one task only. In this manner you can protect regions for one task but not for the others, or you can have other protection characteristics for each task. For example: task 1 may write on some region but can't read while another task can read but not write on the same region (or part of it) V1.31 (21 Aug 92, V37.1219) : - Bug solved in the memory protection system. I discovered that read protection did not work in FAST ram on my Amiga 3000. After some searching I found that the TTx registers were set to override the MMU protection for that region. The 'watch' command now clears these two registers (only if you have a 68030 since these two registers don't exist on a 68851) so that the MMU tree is always used - It is now possible to stop the task that caused the memory protection error (although not exactly at the place the error occured) with the 'f' option for 'addtag' - Memory protection did not work on a 68020 either because I optimized a routine that could not be optimized without modifying some other routine. This bug caused all MMU commands to fail on a 68020 with a 68851. Thanks to Adriaan vd Brand for finding and solving this bug - Disassembler is a bit faster (10000 instructions disassemble in 35 seconds instead of 46 (still no blazing speed however)) - Serious bug solved. If you used 'addtag' twice on the same memory range with type 'st' (structure) nasty things could happen - MAJOR: Disassembler understands tags and structures when you are debugging (in the debug display). An example: If a1 contains a pointer to a structure in memory and there is a tag for this memory that defines the structure, then the instruction: MOVE.L (<offset>,A1),D0 will automatically be disassembled as: MOVE.L (<name of offset>,A1),D0 The only thing you need to do to get this feature is to load all needed structures with 'addstruct' and define your memory regions with 'addtag' - There is also a new 'TypeMemory' script that defines tags for some standard structures - New 'struct' command. With this command you can make and change structures in an interactive way. This is VERY useful in combination with the tag system and the structure offset disassembly mentioned above. You can also save the newly made structures. So you don't have to use 'mstruct' (external utility) anymore to make a simple structure you were only going to use once anyway - The loading of symbols is a LOT faster. Loading 1850 symbols used to take about 34 seconds. Now it only takes 3 seconds! - Bug fixed in 'peek' function. If the type of the field you were peeking was a BCPL pointer or a BCPL string (BSTR), this function would always return 0 regardless of the real contents of the field in the structure V1.32 (2 Sep 92, V37.1325) : - All PowerVisor windows now share the same port. This means that you can open as many windows as memory permits. There is no longer a limit of five windows - Added '_node' standard structure to the 'stru' list - New 'fd6' alias in 's:pv/ExtraAliases' to load the fd-file corresponding to the library currently in @a6 (while debugging) - All include files in the 'Develop' subdirectory are updated - Bug solved in disassembler. FMOVE.X #imm,FPx is now correctly disassembled - Totally new internal memory mamagement system. advantages : o No more MungWall hits o Slightly faster o Compatible with all possible future operating systems (this was not completely the case for the previous memory management system) disadvantages o PowerVisor uses somewhat more memory - New 'pvmem' command to see how PowerVisor uses memory (only useful for PowerVisor debugging purposes) - PowerVisor detaches from the CLI (only if you have AmigaDOS 2.0 or higher) - New commandline option '-d' to disable detaching - Bug solved in name of PowerVisor.task for slave instances of PowerVisor - New 'a' option in 'source' command. With this option you can show the source starting with another label - New 'h' option in 'source' command. With this option you can lock the source logical window. When this is done, the source will no longer follow the program counter - Bug fixed in source display (source logical window). The last line of the source is now correctly displayed - Bug fixed in 'debug l' command for AmigaDOS 1.3 version of PowerVisor. This command simply didn't work (bug was introduced in 1.31 version and does not exist in versions earlier than that) V1.40 (27 Sep 92, V37.1751) : - Bug solved in 'screen' command (only AmigaDOS 2.0 version, bug is not relevant in AmigaDOS 1.3 or lower). The 'VisualInfo' and the layout of the menus were not correctly recalculated after a move to another screen - In order to make things easier (for me) I have removed the feature which disabled 'snapping' right after the PowerVisor window is first activated. Anyway, this is not so bad since there is a hotkey with which you can activate the PowerVisor window - 'refresh' (with the 'refresh' command) will from now on also work when you have activated another PowerVisor (or physical) window. You need not activate the 'Main' physical window anymore (Note! This is only true while another POWERVISOR window is active) - Bug solved in the PowerVisor window system. When you opened a physical window with no logical windows (with 'openpw' for example), you could crash your Amiga by clicking on that window some times - New support for scrollbars (with GadTools, so this feature only works for the AmigaDOS 2.0 version) in logical windows so that you can scroll in the window with the mouse. This feature is disabled by default. Use 'mode sbar' to enable it (and 'mode nosbar' to disable it again) - New flags in logical window for scrollbars - The 'Source' logical window has seperate scrollbar handling routines. Instead of scrolling the logical window, the scrollbar in the 'Source' logical window scrolls in the loaded file - The 'Source' logical window always has a scrollbar (note that you can change this with the 'prefs' command). NOTE! This feature is NOT true if you still work with an old 'PowerVisor-config' file. Delete this file (or use 'prefs logwin ...' and 'saveconfig' manually if you have an old (pre-V1.40) configuration file - The 'Debug' and 'Source' logical windows now refresh correctly in all circumstances - 'pvcall 65' is obsolete and is replaced by an equivalent, but less powerful, routine (so scripts using 'pvcall 65' will not crash) - New powerful 'prof' command for profiling. With this command you can monitor a task you are debugging. Using this feature you can choose which routines are candidates for optimization - New 'debug q' option to prevent a debug task from quiting. This is useful in combination with the profiler. Normally when a debug tasks quits, all symbols are removed. All information in the profiler table would loose its meaning. To prevent this you can use 'debug q' - New 'AllocSignal', 'CreateMsgPort', 'CreateIORequest', 'Lock', 'UnLock', 'Open', 'Close', 'OpenFromLock', 'DupLock', 'DupLockFromFH', 'AllocRaster' and 'FreeRaster' patches in 'track' command (resource tracker) - Bug fix: it was not possible any more to run more than two instances of PowerVisor at the same time - Bug solved in the AmigaDOS 1.3 version of PowerVisor: the 'stack' and 'prof' commands probably never worked at all! I never tested these two commands in AmigaDOS 1.3. The bug is now fixed - Menu file has been enhanced a little bit - New 'mode dirty' and 'mode nodirty' options to allow debugging programs that use 'trap' instructions. When 'mode dirty' is on PowerVisor will correctly execute the trap handler the program installed, but this option is not on by default because it is not very system friendly (it patches some exception vectors which are considered private) and it makes debugging a little bit slower (especially conditional tracing and such). When 'mode nodirty' is on your Amiga will crash when you try to debug programs that use 'trap' instructions. You are warned! - The 'quit' command did not work on 68000 Amiga's (Why does one need this command anyway :-) - 'trace c' (conditional tracing) is a little bit faster - 'trace r' (register tracing) is a little bit faster - New 'trace q' (quick conditional tracing) for faster conditional tracing. The advantage of this new command is that it is a lot faster (compared with 'trace c'). The disadvantage is that it only works with very primitive expressions (it uses a simple expression compiler) - 'mmurtest' and 'mmuwtest' are removed since they didn't seem to give any useful information and I was hunting for routines to optimize (removing a complete routine is one of the best possible optimization methods :-) - Solved little bug in floatingpoint debugging in combination with AmigaDOS 3.0 - PowerVisor uses NewLook menus if you have AmigaDOS 3.0 - New 'trace gf', 'trace qf', 'trace cf' and 'trace rf' commands. These commands are equivalent to 'trace g', 'trace q', 'trace c' and 'trace r' respectivelly. The difference is that the conditional test to stop tracing is only done when a change of programflow occurs. This is a lot faster but somewhat less accurate. These four new commands only work if you have a 68020 or higher in your Amiga - I finally located and solved the bug that haunted the AmigaDOS 1.3 version of PowerVisor. I THINK that debugging works perfectly now in AmigaDOS 1.3 with a 68000 (or any other) processor - Stacksize for programs to debug is set to 20000 instead of 10000 (in future it will be possible to change this number without having to reassemble PowerVisor :-) - From now on it is also allowed to type 'a = 3' instead of 'a=3'. In other words, you may put spaces round the '=' in an assignment. Note that it is still not possible to use spaces in expressions. Thus 'a=a + 1' is still not valid - PowerVisor no longer crashes when it can't find a source file for the sourcelevel debugger - s:pv/PrintMode.pv is updated for the new 'mode' arguments - Little bug fixed in 'info', 'list exec', 'interprete', ... when the PowerVisor window only has 80 columns. In that case, each output line would not fit on one line. This is now fixed - 'duse' correctly refreshes the source logical window - Refreshing of the 'debug' and 'source' logical windows is better. The windows are correctly refreshed in combination with the 'duse', 'dwin' and 'swin' commands. This was not the case in earlier versions of PowerVisor - The 'with', 'tg', 'on', 'appendto' and 'to' commands remember the result from the command that is executed. Using this feature you can, for example, transfer register values from one debug task to another - 'with' works better in combination with the fullscreen debugger. The fullscreen debug display is not refreshed with the 'with' command - New floating point routines (Adriaan vd Brand). The 'fregs' and 'float' commands are now fully functional - Bug solved in 'mode' command. Some arguments prevented the proper execution of the other arguments. This could even cause crashes in some weird cases (this probably solved the bug that caused some strange crashes about once in a month) - 'mode' command is a lot better. Less flashing, less buggy and the 'mode' settings are restored when there is an error. It is also possible to type 'mode no lace' instead of 'mode nolace' (the old format is still supported). In other words, the 'no' keyword is considered seperate. This keyword also works for flags which are not toggles, but the meaning of this is not always very useful (for example, you can do 'mode no pal'. The result will be that PowerVisor switches to the default monitor) - 'mode patch' now works from the beginning. This should solve some debugging problems on some Amiga's - 'mode viking' is renamed to 'mode a2024' - New 'default', 'euro36', 'euro72', 'sup72' and 'super' arguments for 'mode' command (support for extra ECS screen modes) - All signals are freed on exit - New 'dprevi' and 'dnexti' commands to scroll in the fullscreen debugger instruction by instruction. The 'dnexti' command works perfectly in all cases but the 'dprevi' command can fail and go back to the wrong instruction. If that is the case, simply run 'dprevi' again, and chances are that everything will be ok again - The new 'dprevi' and 'dnexti' commands are attached to the <ctrl>-<up> and <ctrl>-<down> keys. You can still use <ctrl>-<left> and <ctrl>-<right> to scroll in multiples of 2 bytes - 'StackPtr' is replaced by 'StackU' in task listing (stack usage is more useful than the stackpointer which you can see with the 'info' command anyway) - The 'getstack' function will compute the REAL maximum used stack size instead of an estimate - The output for commands like 'list', 'vars', 'alias', ... is a LOT faster. This is significant if you want to use the 'refresh' command - 'info' did not seem to work for function monitor nodes (made with 'addfunc') with type 'fullled'. The display for the first task was correct, but not for all following tasks - 'pathname' and 'unlock' were to critical in their test to see if the argument is really a lock - Interrupting the 'lock' listing will (at last!) give a 'Break...' message. This bug was harmless but I fixed it anyway :-) - Bug solved in 'to' command. If the 'to' command failed because you didn't specify the second argument (the 'command' to execute) the file would not be closed - Similar bug fixed in 'tg' command. If you didn't specify the 'command' argument, the current tag list would not be restored to the original value. This is of course less harmful than the previous bug - New fields in task structure ('_task' in 'stru' list and 'info' command) : 'TC_FLAGS', 'TC_LAUNCH' and 'TC_SWITCH' - Some fields have changed their name (because they wouldn't fit in the available space). Especially in the ExecBase and GraphicsBase structures ('exec' and 'graf' lists) - Bug fixed in the execution of macros (with 'attach' command) and the output for ARexx macros (with 'rx'), Refresh (with 'refresh') and PortPrint (with an external program using the 'PowerVisor' library). Sometimes the output of the macro would not appear on the current logical window, but on the special current logical window for the previously mentioned type of output ('Rexx', 'Refresh' or 'PPrint' logical windows) - New 'p' and 'pf' options for the 'trace' command ('pf' is only for 68020 or higher) for 'profile tracing'. With this feature you can get the exact amount of times each symbol in your program is called (with the 'pf' option) or simply passed (with the 'p' option). This command makes use of the profiler system that was already present with the 'prof' command. It may seem unbelievable, but this new command is implemented with only 12 extra machinelanguage instructions (no macros!), one extra byte in a string and one extra longword in a table! - New 'getsymstr' function to get the name of the symbol on an address (not for general use) - 'quit' will ask for confirmation if the user wants to quit while there are still some debug nodes in memory - New 'symbol t' command to remove all temporary symbols from the symbol table. Temporary symbols are symbols that start with a dot '.' or end with a '$' and only contain digits - The 'refresh command' (the command that is executed once in a while by the refresh handler (see 'refresh')) starts a new page at each tick (a new logical page). This means that there will be no more wrong -MORE- messages when the 'refresh' logical window is not open - Bug fixed in 'colrow' and 'setfont'. These two commands would ignore the settings set with 'colrow' (yes, 'colrow' ignored the settings set by 'colrow' :-) for standard logical windows. For all other logical windows (opened with 'openlw') the 'colrow' command worked fine - Most commands which have a logical window as an argument check if the argument is really a logical window (a simple consistency check) - When you used 'screen 0' or 'screen <other screen>' (so that the PowerVisor 'main' window is no backdrop window) PowerVisor would not activate this window automatically - Bug solved in 'rblock' command. When this command failed (because there was no disk in the drive for example), the allocated memory would not be freed correctly. This could cause crashes - Bug solved in 'loadtags' and 'savetags'. 'loadtags' would not work if there was a tag definition for address 0 in the file. The disadvantage of the fix is that tag files are NOT compatible anymore!!! If you have important tag files you can fix them by changing the last four bytes of the file (this should be 00000000) to FFFFFFFF (-1) - I FINALLY solved the bug that's been haunting me for years (literally)! This bug involved the 'front', 'hold', 'screen' and 'mode' commands. Whenever PowerVisor temporarily closes its screen there was a potential problem. This problem was almost always noticable when you issued a 'front' command from within ARexx when PowerVisor was in hold mode. This would cause an almost certain crash. If you had unexpected crashes using 'mode', 'screen' or 'hold', these would probably be caused by this bug. But don't despair! The bug has been fixed!!! I checked my private history file and I think that this bug must have been made on 5 January 1991 (the introduction of the current window system for PowerVisor) - It is now possible to execute ARexx commands with output while PowerVisor is in hold mode without crashing the system (for one thing because of the bug fix mentioned above and also because of yet another bug fix) - Commands like 'scan' and functions like 'key' are now safe to use when PowerVisor is in hold mode (This means that '-MORE-' also works). These commands and functions are simply ignored while in hold mode. Also commands like all the logical window commands, the physical window commands, 'mode' for screen arguments (like 'fancy', 'lace', ...) and 'screen' are also safe to use from within hold mode. 'screen' is ignored but all other commands are performed invisible. When the screen is open again everything will have happened as if the screen was never closed - New flags for 'gadgets' command: 'TABCYCLE' and 'STRINGEXT' - In spite of all the previous improvements the new PowerVisor is still smaller than version 1.31! V1.41 (30 Sep 92, V37.1765) : - I REALLY solved the bug in 'quit' and 'debug' for 68000 processors. From now on, debugging should work on the 'little' Amiga's :-) This is the main reason that I release this new version so soon without waiting for more new features to emerge (I still have a lot of new features to implement) - Bug solved in CLI commandline parsing. Using the '-d' option at the end of all other options would discard the previous options. This is solved - The PowerVisor parser is a little bit extended to allow calling library functions with conflicting names (with variables). You can now use quotes for library functions (and you can't use quotes for variables) so if you want to call the Input dos.library function (for example), you can use 'input'() - Bug solved for dummy debug nodes (created with 'debug d') and the source level debugging. This bug was also visible with the 'duse' command even if you didn't use the source level debugger - Little bug solved in 'assem.pv' (see 'asm' alias for assembler) - Bug solved in 'fit' command (bug was introduced in the previous version 1.40). This command simply didn't work - 'cmdline.pv' ARexx script (a primitive way to support debugging on a normal shell (maybe even remote debugging)) is a little better V1.42 (3 Nov 92, V37.1770) : - Fixed bug for 68040 processors (Amiga 4000). You needed the '-m0' option for PowerVisor to run on an 68040 processor. This is not needed anymore - Address errors are fully recoverable on the 68000 processor. Thanks to John Harper for making the necessary adjustments to my source - PowerVisor uses 'MultiView' (AmigaDOS 3.0) instead of 'AmigaGuide' for the hypertext documentation. You have to change the alias defined in the PowerVisor-startup file to use 'AmigaGuide' again - New 'mhelp' alias to use 'MultiView' instead of 'AmigaGuide' ('MultiView' is new in AmigaDOS 3.0) - You can also use the 'f' (flow) option after the 'n' trace option (instead of tracing multiple instructions, this traces multiple branches) - You can also use the 'f' (flow) option after the 'j' trace option. This option is recommended for 'trace j' if you have an 68020 or higher - New 'r' option after 'trace n', 'trace g', 'trace p', 'trace r', 'trace q', 'trace c' and 'trace j'. With this option PowerVisor will singlestep the current routine and will execute all subroutines called from within this routine at full speed. Using this feature you can limit your singlestep condition to the current routine - The documentation for 'trace' is better (in 'CommandRef.guide') - New 'while' command to repeat actions - New 'checksum' function to compute the checksum for a region of memory - New 'trace z' (with optional 'f' and 'r') to trace until the checksum for a given memory range changes