Developer Forum

Hi all,

Thanks to the substantial efforts by many developers, testers, and
users, we are pleased to announce the latest ACE+TAO+CIAO beta. This
beta has been tagged ACE+TAO+CIAO-5_5_4. It is available from the
same download location as per the previous release.

http://download.dre.vanderbilt.edu/Download.html

The doxygen documentation for the beta is also available. Included with this
beta, besides the packages combined of sources and generate makefiles,
we also
provide source only packages for the group of users which use MPC to
generate
their own makefiles.

We encourage you to download the new beta, use it with your applications,
and let us know if you encounter any problems. Please use the:

$ACE_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM
$TAO_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM
$CIAO_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM

so that we have the proper version/platform/compiler /options you're
using to report problems. We also request that you take a look at

$TAO_ROOT/docs/releasenotes

for the status of various ongoing projects at the DOC groups of WashU,
UCI, and Vanderbilt to move ACE+TAO+CIAO forward. Overviews of our
recent progress and upcoming plans are available at

$ACE_ROOT/NEWS
$TAO_ROOT/NEWS
$CIAO_ROOT/NEWS

The overall success rates for the test results gathered from all our
daily builds is 96% for the ACE tests and 92% for the TAO tests.
Please see:

http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/scoreboard/

for a summary of these tests. As always, we appreciate your help in
resolving the remaining problems. Please see

ACE_ROOT/docs/ACE-bug-process.html

for an overview of our bug fixing policies.

The following is a list of key changes since the last release. Please
refer to the corresponding ChangeLog files or Bugzilla entries for more
details on the problem and the nature of fixes applied.

==============
Changes to ACE
==============

. Added appropriate intptr_t and uintptr_t typedefs on platforms that
don't provide them (i.e. when ACE_LACKS_INTPTR_T is defined).

. Added ability to explicitly choose support for 32 bit or 64 bit file
offsets on all platforms. Define the _FILE_OFFSET_BITS preprocessor
symbol to either 32 or 64 to choose the desired number of file
offset bits. This preprocessor symbol is supported natively by most
UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, and supported by ACE on
Windows. Use the new ACE_OFF_T typedef to refer to file offsets
across UNIX and Windows portably.

. 64-bit file offsets are now enabled by default in Win64
configurations.

. Improved support for 64 bit platforms (64 bit addresses, etc).

. Added STL-style traits, iterators and a swap() method to the
ACE_Array_Base<> class template.

. Added STL-style traits and iterator accessors to the
ACE_Hash_Map_Manager_Ex<> class template, as well as new find() and
unbind() methods that return (as an "out" parameter) and accept
iterators, respectively.

. Greatly improved event handler dispatch performance in
select()-based reactors (e.g. ACE_Select_Reactor and ACE_TP_Reactor)
for large handle sets on Windows. Previous event handler search
were linear, and are now constant on average.

. Addressed a number of Coverity errors (CHECKED_RETURN, DEADCODE,
LOCK, USE_AFTER_FREE, RESOURCE_LEAK, FORWARD_NULL).

. Added STL-style "element_type" trait to all ACE auto_ptr class
templates.

. Removed support for LynxOS 3.x.

. Resolved