Catalina 4.3 is now available

RossH

Update: Catalina 4.3 is now available - see later post.

Catalina 4.2 is now available on SourceForge - see https://sourceforge.net/projects/catalina-c/files/releases/4.2/

Here is the README.TXT file:

Catalina release 4.2 is a full release. You can install this over an existing
version of Catalina, but it is recommended that you instead uninstall any
previous Catalina release before installing, or install this release to a 
different location. 

If you are installing under Linux, you should execute the following command 
to set your permissions correctly after installing (this command is a script 
in the Catalina bin directory, and may itself need to have its permissions 
manually set to allow execution):

   Set_Linux_Permissions

The following changes have been made since the previous release of Catalina. 
If you have not used a previous release of Catalina, you can ignore the
following list:

RELEASE 4.2

1. Added the Catalina Geany IDE. For details see the document "Getting Started
   with the Catalina Geany IDE". This new IDE was released as an addition to 
   the Catalina 4.1 relase, but will now remain part of all future releases.

2. Added a new HMI plugin for the P2, which supports a VGA monitor with 
   configurable resolution and colour depths, and also a USB keyboard and 
   mouse. It expects to use the P2-ES A/V and Host Serial accessory boards.

   The VGA driver supports 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 resolution, and
   1 bit (i.e. monochrome), 4 bit, 8 bit or 24 bit colour.

   Updated test programs for the new HMI plugin (test_terminal.c, test_vga.c)
   are included in the demo folder, and a precompiled version of Catalyst
   that uses the new HMI plugin is included in the file P2_EVAL_VGA.ZIP
   in the main catalina folder. Unzip these files to an SD card and insert
   it into the P2_EVAL board with the A/V (VGA) accessory board on the header
   with base pin 32, and the Host Serial (USB) accessory board on the header
   with base pin 40. A keyboard should be plugged into USB port A (i.e. the
   lower USB port, nearest the circuit board - none of the Catalyst programs
   use a mouse, so it is not compiled with a USB driver for port B ). Note that
   the only program that makes use of color is the vi text editor.

3. Increased the size of the P2ASM symbol table to 10000 symbols - otherwise
   compiling Lua with the new VGA plugin could run out of symbol space.

4. Fixed an error in the Catalina Geany IDE shortcut, which assumed Catalina
   was installed in the default location. The shortcut and menu item would 
   fail to work if it was not.

5. The build_all.bat script for building Catalyst under Windows was defining 
   the symbol VT100, which would have made some programs - such as vi - not 
   work correctly with the VGA or TV HMI options (it worked correctly with
   serial HMI options, and now should be manually specified if the PC or TTY 
   HMI options are used).

6. The Catalyst version of vi (xvi) now uses colours (if compiled with a HMI
   option that supports it).

RossH

It seems Catalina 4.2 has an issue using the new VGA HMI plugin with the Catalina Optimizer. I have attached a minor errata file with a fix. This only affects the Propeller 2, not the Propeller 1.

Here are the details:

Catalina 4.2 for has an issue when using the Catalina Optimizer with the new
VGA HMI plugin for the Propeller 2 - the optimizer will report undefined
symbols.

The solution is to replace the following files with the versions in this zip
file:

   cmm_progend.s
   lmm_progend.s
   nmm_progend.s

These files should replace the versions in the "target_p2" subdirectory. The default locations for this directory are:

   "C:\Program Files (x86)\Catalina_4.2\target_p2" (Windows), or
   "/opt/catalina/target_p2" (Linux).

Christof Eb.

Hi Ross,
somewhat hidden in your zip there are some very good pdf documentation files. Don't you want to put some of them more visible here and/or on your sourceforge?
Great work!
Regards Christof

RossH

Christof Eb. wrote: »

Hi Ross,
somewhat hidden in your zip there are some very good pdf documentation files. Don't you want to put some of them more visible here and/or on your sourceforge?
Great work!
Regards Christof

I used to have a separate folder with all the documentation on SourceForge so that you didn't need to install it just to see what was available. Perhaps I should go back to doing that.

Ross.

RossH

Catalina 4.3 is now available on SourceForge - https://sourceforge.net/projects/catalina-c/files/releases/4.3/

It is a very minor update to 4.2, but since all the compact libraries had to be recompiled, and I had already issued one errata to 4.2, I decided to issue a new release.

Here is an extract from the README.TXT

RELEASE 4.3

1. Implemented the _thread_ticks() function for Native mode on the P2. The
   version in previous P2 releases was not fully implemented, which meant 
   all multi-threaded programs on the P2 used the default tick count for 
   determining when to context switch. Affected the P2 only.

2. Fixed a bug in the compact version of _sbrk(), which meant that 
   attempting to allocate very large blocks of memory (using malloc) might 
   cause the program to crash. Affected both the P1 and the P2.

3. Fixed a bug which meant that the optimizer could not be used with the VGA
   HMI option included in Catalina release 4.2. Affected the P2 only.

4. Added the demo\sieve directory, with various versions of the Sieve of 
   Eratosthenes, to demonstrate converting a sequential algorithm to a
   parallel algorithm.

Ross.

RossH

Apparently the Windows version of Catalina 4.2 and Catalina 4.3 don't include the Code::Blocks demo workspaces (they do include Code:Blocks itself, and the demo programs, but not the workspace or project files). It seems I accidentally omitted these when I added the new Geany IDE to the installer.

If you installed these versions over a previous version of Catalina you wouldn't have noticed, because the files hadn't changed.

I will re-include them in the next release. If anyone need them now, just unzip the attached file into your Catalina installation (note: this zip file contains just the workspace and project files, not the whole of Code::Blocks).

I've also just noticed that on Windows 10, when you open a Code::Blocks workspace for the first time, you have to manually tell Windows where to find the Code::Blocks application (which is in the bin/codeblocks subdirectory of your Catalina installation). This seems to be a Windows 10 quirk.