SDCC 3.7.0 RC1

Demnächst wird SDCC 3.7.0 erscheinen. Es gibt nun eine Release Candidate 
1, am üblichen Ort unter https://sourceforge.net/projects/sdcc/files/. 
Dies ist die letzte
Gelegenheit, noch Bugs in der aktuellen Version zu finden, bevor 3.7.0
erscheint. Besonders schwerwiegende oder einfach zu behebende Bugs
könnten dann noch rechtzeitig vor 3.7.0 behoben werden.

Aufgrund von Problemem in der Compile Farm besteht dieses Release nur 
aus Tarballs für Quellcode und Documentation. Maarten Brock, der die 
letzetn Jahre Release Manager war, hat dazu dieses Mal leider keine 
Zeit.

Wir hoffen, das beim Release 3.8.0, das ebenfalls dieses Jahr erfolgen 
soll, wieder alles normal läuft.

In SDCC 3.7.0 wurden gegenüber 3.6.0 viele Bugs behoben und neue 
Features implementiert. Das ChangeLog findet sich unter 
https://sourceforge.net/p/sdcc/code/HEAD/tree/tags/sdcc-3.7.0-pre1/sdcc/ChangeLog.

Die bedeutendsten neuen Features sind:

* Changed putchar() prototype from void putchar(char) to int 
putchar(int) to improve standard-compliance and allow error reporting.
* Various speed improvements in stm8 backend - Dhrystone score more than 
doubled, resulting in SDCC achieving the highest Dhrystone and Coremark 
scores among STM8 C implementations.
* Various speed improvements for multiplications resulting in SDCC 
achieving the highest Coremark scores among STM8 C implementations.
* Declarations in for loops (ISO C99).
* 64-bit integers (long long) for the mcs51 and ds390 backends (now long
long is fully supported in SDCC except for the pic14 and pic16 
backends).
* Full _Bool support for mcs51 and ds390 backend (now _Bool is fully 
supported in SDCC regardless of backend).
* Additional wide character library functions: mbstowcs() and 
wcstombs(), btowc() and wctob(), wcscmp(), wcslen().
* Changed PRNG for rand() from LCG to xorshift to improve speed and 
quality.
* Support for Small-C calling convention on the callee side (i.e.
function definitions with Small-C calling convention).
* The obsolete macro SDCC (which used to contain the version number 
encoded as an integer) has finally been removed (except for mcs51, where 
it will survive a little bit longer for SiLabs IDE compability).
* New devices supported by simulator (TLCS-90, and the 517, F380, XC88X, 
DS320 mcs51-variants along with dual-dptr and MDU support).
* Timer, UART (incl. interrupt) and I/O support in STM8 simulator.
* Simulator support for banked memory and bit banding.
* Various simulator improvements: Conditional breakpoints, breakpoints 
by function name from SDCC debug output, OMF input, VCD output, 
simulator interface for simulated program and new operators in 
expressions.
* Deprecated --nojtbound and the corresponding pragma.
* Faster register allocator reduces compilation time by about 25% (does
not apply to mcs51, ds390 which use a different register allocator).
* Execution count guessing and use of execution count guesses in stm8 
register allocation improve optimization for code speed.
* Changed getchar() prototype from char getchar(void) to int
getchar(void) to improve standard-compliance and allow error reporting.
* Type qualifiers in array parameters (ISO C99).
* static in array parameters (ISO C99).
* Improved support for DWARFv2 debug info in ELF output (stm8, hc08, 
s08).
* Various improvements in z80/z180/gbz80/tlcs90/r2k/r3ka code
generation, in particular for mixed 16-/32-bit code.
* __z88dk_fastcall function pointer support for --reserve-regs-iy.
* tlcs90 is now a fully supported backend, no longer work in progress.
* --data-seg to specify the segment for non-initialized data in the z80,
z180, gbz80, tlcs90, r2k and r3ka backends.
* New methods to obtain tree-decompositions of control-flow graphs 
improve compilation time / code-quality trade-off (when SDCC is built 
with support for the treedec library).
* Additional general utility functions: qsort(), strtol(), strtoul().

Philipp Klaus Krause
SDCC 3.7.0 Release Manager

P.S.: Auf der FOSDEM 2018 gab es vor einer Woche Vorträge zu den 
Toolchains für STM8 und Z80-basierten Videospielkonsolen; Bei beiden 
Toolchains dürfte SDCC der wichtigste Teil sein:

https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/the_free_toolchain_for_the_stm8/
https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/fame_development_colecovision_sega_8bit_systems/