THUD 0.24 available

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

release notes:

  it's been a few years, so this release is of "re-awakening" quality.
  in other words, it will be comfortable to the aventurous (or those too
  sleepy to care), but perhaps not to anyone else.  the development and
  testing platform has changed from 166MHz to 300MHz, and there are
  wetware upgrades discernable by a careful reader (w/ long memory :-).

  no anoncvs access yet -- this stuff is still being munged under RCS!

  thi

README excerpt:

  THUD is a register transfer level (RTL) simulation environment optimized
  for cycle-based designs.  The design is expressed in TH, a Scheme-based
  hardware description language (HDL) that supports basic 1/0/x operators
  and hierarchical instantiation.  THUD can be used in batch mode or through
  one of its interactive faces.

  Primitives are provided for session management; file format translation;
  scheduling; data structure examination; compilation; HDL generation; and
  of course, simulation.  Additionally, the entire Scheme development
  environment afforded by Guile is present.  The distribution also includes
  a QA environment; documentation in Info and HTML formats: a user's manual
  and a semi-"literate" internals doc; and some examples.

NEWS excerpt:

  - 0.24 | 2005-08-08
  
    - Installation changes
  
      - Configuration no longer checks Guile version
  
        Instead, it checks for features directly (for example,
        availability of the procedure `make-hash-table').
  
        Additionally, the configure script errors out if required
        modules (listed in modules.af.m4) are not found to be installed.
  
      - Compiled modules support removed
  
        The `--enable-compiled-modules' will probably return later,
        after THUD's design (in the absence of compilation) stabilizes
        somewhat.
  
      - HTML documentation not installed
  
        The distribution includes HTML documentation but does not
        install it anywhere.
  
    - Linking performance more scalable
  
        One part of the linking process is the static scheduling of
        evaluation nodes, which used to be done w/ a (hacky home-grown)
        insertion sort.  Now we use a topological sort.  (No worries,
        most of the rest of THUD is still as hacky and home-grown as
        it ever was.)
  
    - THUD HDL changes
  
      - Replacement: `say' dropped, `fln' introduced
  
    - Face (user interface) changes
  
      - Improvements to `deposit' command
  
        This command now handles invalid signal or missing arg (syntax)
        errors by displaying an error message.  For other errors, if the
        signal to be changed is valid, but the expression is not, THUD
        displays a warning, deposits `x' and displays the old value
        (before the deposit).  To purposefully deposit `x', use #f.
  
        Additionally, if the expression's value is wider (has bit-width
        greater) than the signal to be changed, THUD displays a warning
        and truncates the value to fit.
  
        This command now respects the `scope' user variable for the
        signal to be deposited (but not for the expression).
  
    - Changes to installed program `thgen' and module (thud impl thgen)
  
        A "device generator" is now composed of three pieces of
        information: the list of configuration variables specific to the
        device (if any); the template of THUD HDL forms with specially
        indicated subtitution locations; and the var-alist callback
        procedure that computes what values to substitute, taking an
        lookup procedure `get' and returning the settings as a list of
        variable/value pairs (an alist).
  
        Generators can now inherit templates.  For an example, see
        generators `mox' and `mix' in src/thud/qa/parts/thgen.scm.

tarball, online docs and other files in dir:

  http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/thud/