Release Notes

v1.4 - August 2020

Features

  • Support for cloning function return values

  • New unit tests

  • Better copying of debug info

  • Experimental stack protection

  • 7 new command line arguments
    See Command Line Parameters for more information.

Directives

7 new directives

  • __ISR_FUNC
  • __xMR_RET_VAL
  • __xMR_PROT_LIB
  • __xMR_ALL_AFTER_CALL
  • __xMR_AFTER_CALL
  • __NO_xMR_ARG
  • __COAST_NO_INLINE

See In-code Directives for more information.

Bug Fixes

  • Correct support for variadic functions
  • Fix up debug info for global variables so it works better with GDB
  • Better removal of unused functions
  • Official way of marking ISR functions instead of function name text matching

v1.3 - November 2019

Changed the source of the LLVM project files from SVN (deprecated) to the Git mono-repo, version 7.1.0.

v1.2 - October 2019

Features

  • Support for invoke instructions.
  • Replication rules, does NOT sync on stores by default, added flag to enable turning that on (-storeDataSync).
  • Support for compiling multiple files in the same project at different times (using the -noMain flag).
  • Before running the pass, validates that the replication rules given to COAST are consistent with themselves.
  • Can sync on vector types.
  • Added more unit tests, along with a test driver.

Directives

  • Added directive __SKIP_FN_CALL that has the same behavior as -skipFnCalls= command line parameter.
  • Can add option to not check globals crossing Sphere of Replication (__COAST_IGNORE_GLOBAL(name)).
  • Added directive macro for marking variables as volatile.
  • Treats any globals or functions marked with __attribute__((used)) as volatile and will not remove them. Also true for globals used in functions marked as “used”.
  • Added wrapper macros for calling a function with the clones of the arguments. Useful for printf() and malloc(), etc, when you only want specific calls to be replicated.

Bug Fixes

Thanks to Christos Gentsos for pointing out some errors in the code base.

  • Allow more usage of function pointers by printing warning message instead of crashing.
  • Added various missing nullptr checks.
  • Fixed crashing on some void return type functions.
  • Better cleanup of stale pointers.

Debugging Tools

  • Added an option to the DebugStatements pass that only adds print statements to specified functions.
  • Created a simplistic profiling pass called SmallProfile that can collect function call counts.
  • Support for preserving debug info when source is compiled with debug flags.