NEWS

This file lists major changes to Lintel.  The full reverse-chronological change
log (without the merge revisions) can be found in the Changelog.mtn file in the
tar releases, or by using mtn log if you got the sources via version control.

2012-05-11:
   * Release.  Repositories with packages seem to be functional for all OSs we build packages for.
     Version control has been moved to git and stored on github: https://github.com/dataseries
     Source builds now tested on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and MacOS.  Packaging now handled using
     project-builder.

2012-04-12:
   * Add scripts for preparing freebsd/openbsd virtual machines.

2011-12-11: 
   * Deptool working with git for the version control.

2011-09-29:
   * Add in the shared dotfiles used by our group.

2011-06-29:
   * Add in support for a Deque iterator.

2011-06-13:
   * Release.  Repositories with packages seem to be functional for the few OSs I can easily test.

2011-05-19:
   * Package building on scilinux and opensuse working.

2011-05-12:
   * Package building on centos and fedora working.

2011-05-03:
   * Package building on all currently supported debian versions and most
     ubuntu ones working.

2011-03-20:
   * Add manpages to everything to meet packaging guidelines.

2011-03-14:
   * Add support to lintel-disktool to be able to "fail" drives by scribbling
     over their contents.

2011-03-04:
   * Add new class for getting process statistics.  Currently under unstable
     because we are unclear if it is the right interface.

2011-03-03:
   * Add support to automatically work out width of terminal for program
     options (to the extent allowed by boost), and to use that width when
     generating the help output.

2010-11-12:
   * Add support for untested repositories to deptool.  The untested repo 
     will automatically build, run tests and push the result if it passes
     tests to a new server.

2010-08-26:
   * openSuSE os detection added to deptool.

2010-08-02:
   * CentOS os detection added to deptool.

2010-07-23:
   * Switch deptool OS variable to be BUILD_OS to avoid conflicts in existing
     env vars.

2010-07-14:
   * Add support for erase(iterator) on a HashMap/HashTable.

2010-07-01:
   * Add an option to the make batch-parallel module that does not expand
     out listed directories, e.g. for running parallel tars.

2010-06-27:
   * Support batch mode for mercury-plot, also add cleaner support for
     running select to a file and html.

2010-06-19:
   * Add support for deptool to track which revisions have been reviewed.

2010-04-27:
   * Add support for LintelLog to use * in categories to select a prefix of
     categories.

2010-03-30:
   * Add a Base64 encoder class.  Key feature is a different ordering for the
     characters that preserves alphabetical ordering.
   * HashTable will now auto-generate a hash function for pairs if both types
     in the pair are hashable.

2010-03-13:
   * Add --unclean option to deppull so that people can run pulls even if
     everything isn't committed.  Also add code to support multiple sequential
     tests and recording of the time that tests take.

2010-02-15:
   * Release

2010-02-08:
   * Program options can now read options from a file

2010-02-03:
   * lintel-disktool configuration can now specify that some drives are reserved.

2010-01-28:
   * deptool will now print out dependency information if the initial cmake fails.

2010-01-15:
   * Fedora Core 12 is probably now working as a build target; tested using a chroot.

2009-12-13: 
   * Resurrect code that has the perl interface to lintel.

2009-12-04: 
   * Extend mercury-plot to allow color control in stacked bar charts,
     and to support y2 + yerr | y2 + ylo/yhi

2009-12-02:
   * Add support for Ubunti 9.10 (Karmic Koala) -- boost libraries have been
     renamed.

2009-12-01: 
   * Release

2009-11-27:
   * Finish support for deptool to operate off of tar releases rather than just
     version control

2009-11-25:
   * Add support to mercury-plot for stacked bar charts.

2009-10-22:
   * Add in STLUtility header file, currently with a single function for safely
     comparing to iterator ranges for equality.

2009-10-15:
   * Remove support for having functions associated with program options
     It turned out to be a bad idea because there is no control over execution order.

2009-08-22:
   * Add support for hidden options to ProgramOptions class.

2009-08-08:
   * Add support for failing drives to lintel-disktool.

2009-08-02:
   * Add support for parallel building and testing in deptool.  As part of this
     change, we switched over to using deptool.config for a configuration file
     rather than .version_control_deps.  The former is much more general and
     supports adding additional features in easily.
   
2009-07-20:
   * Add in lintel-disktool, a program for managing a large collection of disks
     to be mounted in related directories.  We use it primarily during trace
     collection.  It uses a configuration file /etc/lintel-disktool.config to
     determine how to operate.

2009-07-13:
   * Add in deptool-bootstrap for bootstrapping with deptool before the various
     needed modules are installed.

2009-07-06:
   * Add in Lintel::ProcessManager module, a perl module for managing children
     and executing functions when they finish.

2009-06-26:
   * Add AtomicCounter class for handling a multi-threaded atomic counter without
     locking.

2009-06-25:
   * Add in support for shared references using lintel-latex-rebuild

2009-06-05:
   * Rewrite handling of interaction with gnuplot -- we now talk
     bi-directionally in order to identify when gnuplot has finished its
     operations.  Unfortunately this adds a dependency on IO::Pty

2009-05-28:
   * Add ByteBuffer class that allows for efficient initialization of a
     collection of bytes from a network or from a file.  Also handles consuming
     data from the front and pushing more onto the back efficiently.

2009-05-11:
   * Substantial rewrite of the cycle-counter <-> clock calibration code.
     New version is more robust to outliers caused, for example, by descheduling.

2009-05-06:
   * Add BoyerMoorHorspool string matching class for use in extremely fast
     pattern matching.  Currently used for parallel grep in a dataseries branch.

2009-04-29:
   * Add support for schema migration to Lintel::DBI

2009-04-26: 
   * Use binary search for picking out quantiles in StatsQuantile.  Results in
     a 5-10x speedup.

2009-04-08:
   * Add support for time logging to deptool, off by default.

2009-03-11:
   * Add support for printing out default values in program options.

2009-01-02:
   * Cache calculation of parameters for StatsQuantile.

2008-12-07:
   * Add replaceTop operation to priority queue that is roughly 2x as efficient
     as a pop followed by a push.  Use it to optimize StatsQuantile to be ~1.5x
     faster.

2008-11-30:
   * Add support for generic program options to Lintel as
     ProgramOptions.hpp, allows you to just specify the options in
     .cpp files and have them handled by each sub-part of a program as
     appropriate.

2008-11-27:
   * Add a generic, templated cube operation as StatsCube.hpp,
     currently used in DataSeries for one of the analysis.

2008-11-21:
   * Add import-data command to mercury to import space separated data into SQL.

2008-10-27: 
   * Add in HashTupleStats.hpp, a hash table over a tuple that
     supports a number of different methods for walking the values.
   * Add in extensions to the boost tuple support as Tuples.hpp;
     adds hash functions, partial tuples.

2008-09-25:
   * Rewrite our hash function support to be more general; it now 
     allows you to either define a uint32_t hash() function on the 
     class, or define a hashType(T) function.

2008-09-07:
   * Add support for #define in batch-parallel jobsfile to simplify
     listing of mostly similar commands.

2008-08-19:
   * Apply the great const virus.  If you get compile errors after this
     version on hashmaps, go an look for your operator() in the HashMap_hash
     type structures and make the function const, i.e. put const after the
     trailing ')' in the function definition.

2008-08-05:
   * Add support for scoped-only mutexes, i.e ones that have the
     lock() and unlock() methods private.

2008-08-03:
   * Add support for LockOrderingGroup that lets us guarantee that all
     locks are acquired in the appropriate order.

2008-07-24:
   * Add templated stringToInteger<type> functions.

2008-07-17:
   * Add in deptool, a tool for building a related set of programs,
     including checking them out of version control, building and
     installing the source packages, checking changes in, publishing
     those changes, and reviewing checkins.

2008-07-15:
   * Add in lintel-latex-rebuild, a tool for rebuilding latex files
     from source.  It has all the magic options to generate pdf
     properly, and supports builds in a build directory in addition
     to the source directory.  It subsets the output to make errors
     more clear.

2008-07-07:
   * Add in flock, a tool for taking out file locks and releasing
     them when a process exits.  flock can automatically run a 
     subprocess.  Useful for making sure only a single copy of
     something is running at a time.

2008-06-23:
  * Lintel should work on Cygwin.  The environment variable to
    control the number of processors in PThread was changed to
    NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS from LINTEL_NCPUS to match with what windows sets.
     
2008-06-12: 
  * New make batch-parallel module that is a little easier to use
    for doing simple transforms than writing a new module.

2008-06-11: 
  * LintelFind cmake module that has support for searching for
    includes, libraries and programs in a standard way that either requires
    a dependency or gives the user a WITH_... variable to control if
    it should be used.

2008-06-05: 
  * Added LintelDocs cmake module for building documentation in the
    same way in all packages.

2008-05-26: 
  * Added PointerUtil.hpp header file that performs safe casting of
    bother pointers and boost::shared_ptr's.

2008-05-25: 
  * Added LintelLog tools for performing very low overhead logging
    w/o requiring any additional code beyond just writing the debugging 
    statements.

2008-05-23: 
  * Added SimpleMutex class that can be used without linking with -lpthread.

2008-05-19: 
  * Removed all uses of LintelAssert from the source code.

2008-05-09: 
  * Switched over to using cmake for building instead of autoconf.  
    This change is intended to move us toward being able to build on Windows.
    As part of this change, we discovered that boost support is pretty 
    much required, so explicitly made it so. Also, dropped support for 
    gc and makebits; those are both old and unused.  

2008-04-02: 
  * PThreadAutoLocker class renamed to PThreadScopedLock to follow
    the boost naming convention

2008-03-23: 
  * Clock routines now check for frequency scaling and will not 
    continue if frequency scaling is enabled and the user has not
    accepted potentially incorrect results.

2008-03-21: 
  * Transitioned to includes as .hpp rather than .H; old .H files 
    still exist for transition.  A warning will be put in for one
    release, and then they will be removed.

2008-03-04: 
  * Add segment plotting to mercury-plot

2008-02-14: 
  * Added tar batch-parallel module for taking a group of files in
    directories and creating tar files out of them of a specified size.

2008-02-08: 
  * Added documentation generation/installation; depends on
    cmake to work since eventually we will transition entirely to cmake.

2008-02-05: 
  * Add a RotatingHashMap class that is useful for aging out
    old values from a cache with low overhead.

---- Updates before here not yet put into NEWS ----