We're proud to announce our second release, GCC4TI 0.96 Beta 10.
This is the first *nix release, and the second Windows release. Since the previous release (January 2009), we (six persons) have performed and tested a number of user-visible improvements, especially during the last two weeks:
[ul][li]toolchain: bugfixes in the IDE, gcc, tprbuilder, tigcc; migration of most "pctools" of the TIGCC Tools Suite into the development environment, where they belong, which means that e.g. ttbin2oth can be used out of the box;[/li]
[li]examples: creation of a script that builds the examples, slight improvement of the TIGCCLIB test coverage by the examples. Building and running the examples caught three tool bugs, a compilation failure present since 2005, two warnings, and a couple dozen name clashes between examples.[/li]
[li]TIGCCLIB: seven optimizations. The two standouts are:
o SAVE_SCREEN (one of the most widely used sections of the startup code): -16 bytes. This optimization was contributed to TIGCC at least two years ago, but it didn't get in TIGCC, though the SAVE_SCREEN code is tested by many examples;
o Sprite8/16/32. Even though the new routines support one more drawing mode (RePLaCe) than the old ones, they're smaller and faster. An older version of those routines was contributed to TIGCC in October 2005, along with a test program, but it didn't get in TIGCC either;[/li]
[li]documentation: checking and integration of a fraction of the documentation updates that were contributed to TIGCC in 2002-2003. The integration was eased by the previous release of GCC4TI implementing a trivial workaround for a limitation of the TIGCC/GCC4TI-specific documentation tools;[/li]
[li]*nix install scripts: support for cross-compilation, so as to ease the making of future releases; test on many more *nix flavors, yielding many portability fixes; other improvements, such as better packaging and auto-extraction + auto-patching of the binutils and gcc sources.[/li][/ul]
Upgrade note: the IDE in the previous versions doesn't have a version number for the syntax coloring definitions, which makes it hard to create a way to automatically update those definitions. We have added a version number, but you need to reset your syntax coloring definitions (this is the procedure used by the previous IDEs to update the definitions) so that the version number is created in your definitions:
In File -> Preferences -> Syntax Highlighting:
[ul][li]select "Settings for:" -> C Files, click Reset[/li]
[li]select "Settings for:" -> GNU ASM Files, click Reset[/li]
[li]select "Settings for:" -> A68k ASM Files, click Reset[/li][/ul]
When you click OK, all the modifications that you have previously manually done (before resetting) are erased, but your definitions will be updated.
Head to http://trac.godzil.net/gcc4ti/ for downloads, and community-oriented infrastructure (mailing list, IRC channel, bug + feature request + patch tracker), so that you can comment on the community's ideas and add new ones.
