$Id: NEWS,v 1.47 2004/01/14 19:03:25 type2 Exp $

Prospect 0.9.8b         (040114)
===============
 - Updated included oprofile distibution to 0.7.1 and updated associated
   documentation and supplied patches.
 - Modified prospect for the 0.7.1 interface.  This has the unfortunate
   side effect that prospect will not work with the earlier 0.6.1 ABI.
   Please use the included 0.7.1 (and possibly later) version of
   oprofile.


Prospect 0.9.8a         (031203)
===============
 - Added ASCII trace output capability.  With the commandline option
   --ascii-trace=file, you can output a text trace of all events in the
   run, both samples taken and notifications.  This may be useful for
   tracking purposes for example, if you're hanging at a particular
   time, then running a trace up to that time will show the sampled path
   the kernel took to get there.
 - Close 846118: First process of bfile with threads misses proc names;
   now saves process name found in /proc after fork event.
 - Close 579372: enh: newline after non-disas functions.


Prospect 0.9.8          (031119)
==============
 - Removed '-I' command line option, just use the long one if needed.
 - Set default priority to timeshare from real time 50.
 - Added '-M' alias for --min-time commandline option.
 - Close 800464: Add date/time to output, enhancement request.
 - Added binary file writing and reading capability.  With this
   functionality, you can save a run with the -B option to a file
   (generally called a 'bfile').  Then, you can play the run back with
   the -b option and get the exact same results as the original run, but
   without actually exec'ing anything nor sampling anything.  This is
   usually convenient for wanting to change commandline options for
   analysis and not wanting to execute the benchmark again and again.
 - Updated included oprofile distribution to 0.6.1.


Prospect 0.9.7b         (030725)
===============
 - Reworked command line options.  These options have changed for the
   better and long options are accepted too.  However, as a result of
   this change, the old options you may be used to will not function.
   Please read the man page and/or issue the command 'prospect --help'
   to get full information on the new options.


Prospect 0.9.7a         (030702)
===============
 - Changed report output format to "condensed output".  This makes
   for a much more readable and user-friendly output style.  Line
   length is at 72 which makes for easier cut-paste of profiles and
   other information into emails, reports, whatnot.  This is the only
   output style currently supported.
 - Verified function with oprofile versions 0.5.3 and 0.5.4, official
   supported version now becomes 0.5.4.
 - Changed to shared build for all builds.


Prospect 0.9.7		(030505)
==============
 - Implement support for oprofile 0.5.2 version module.  This version of
   oprofile natively supports ia64 (as well as several other
   architectures).  If you are running a distro that uses a kernel
   which exports sys_call_table (Debian and SuSE do this), then the
   module and prospect will work "out of the box" once oprofile is
   built and installed.  If your kernel does not export sys_call_table
   (Red Hat), then you must apply a patch (included with this prospect
   distribution) to oprofile that counteracts this.  Please read the
   README.ia64 file for more details.  
 - Implement output of SMP CPU usage for all processes (and thus
   threads) in output.  Under the process summary section, you'll find
   a list of tuples as many as there are CPUS for both user and system
   time of the process.  For kernel profiles, only system cpu time is
   reported.  Each CPU will have a percentage number associated with it.
   This is the sampled time the process spent on that CPU during the
   measurement interstice.
 - Close 617237: prospect does not catch Ctrl-C.  One Ctrl-C kills the
   child, a report is produced on data gathered so far.  A second Ctrl-C
   will kill prospect itself and so a report will not be produced.
 - Close 721176: need for issue group disassembly.  When there's a gap
   in the disassembly that forces output of '...', two bundles are
   disassembled, not one.
 - Close 718688: Process list and name show shlib not binary on ia64.
   On ia64 the text is mapped into 0x4000.... quadrant.  Earlier addresses
   are shlibs and can be numerous.
 - Close 617281: ia64 gate page not accounted for.  Hits to the signal 
   gate section are now remapped to the kernel gate section.
 - Close 644330: Does not use dynamic _text for kernel.  We now search
   for the _text symbol on i386 and set the kernel vm offset to that, on
   ia64, we still use a hardcoded 0xa00... since that comes before text
   for module mapping.
 - If the immediate child is either killed or stopped by a signal, then
   that fact is noted in the output report file.
 - Added user/kernel percentage split to output for each process.
 - Removed unnecessary libc dependency in Debian installer.
 - Updated documentation files for installation procedures.


Prospect 0.9.6a		(11/11/2002)
===============
 - Closed 635762: prospect cores when no modules loaded.  Check for
   non-existence of modules, and initialize kernel vas appropriately.


Prospect 0.9.6		(11/07/2002)
==============
 -  Changed to new release of oprofile 0.4 as the courtesy included and
    currently supported oprofile version.  Upgrades are strongly
    recommended.
 -  Added capability to automatically load non-export-of-sys_call_table
    counteracting module.  This module is used for the interim period
    of sys_call_table removal and oprofile incorporation into 2.5/2.6.
    This situation is currently Red Hat on IA64 specific.
 -  Closed 579364: modules loaded by initrd have bad path.  Since the
    initrd image uses the same module files as found in the `uname -r`
    kernel, then we use that modules.dep file to find the module on
    disk.
 -  Closed 619811: prospect does not recognize RH 8.0 oprof.  RH 8.0 now
    works "out of the box" for PPro-PIII (P6) systems at least.
 -  Updated included oprofile distribution to 0.3.
 -  Closed 615252: prospect leaks file descriptors.  Quick fix applied,
    revisit later for performance.
 -  Closed 614047: -M 0 different than help message.  The autoflush
    option is now -A <100ths of a second>.  I.e. -A 100 will flush every
    second.  A -A 0 (that's zero there) will not flush ever.  The -M
    flag is reserved for the future feature of Merged Profiles.
 -  Closed 615248: mINFORM in seconds but msec prints.
 -  Closed 617129: doesn't work (with oprofile 0.3?).  Prospect now
    transparently supports oprofile versions 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4cvs+.
 -  Closed 608990: adjust rfor counter value in hit count.
 -  Closed 579823: Created oprofile devices in old place.
 -  Increased number of bundles printed out consecutively when no hits
    on ia64 to 4 for disassembled profile output and up to 8 when two
    -e's are present on command line.
 -  Closed 579366: default kernel name isn't informative.  System.map
    file name is used now.
 -  Check /boot/System.map-`uname -r` first, then the
    /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/System.map file for kernel profiles.
 -  Moved crosscheck variable of System.map and /proc/ksyms to an item
    that exists in the newer kernels.  Closes 605280: sys_call_table
    is missing from new RH.
 -  Renamed some files to conform to GNUisms.
 -  Removed old oprofile-0.0.9 patch from dist.

Prospect 0.9.5		(6/17/2002)
==============
 -  First release under GPL.   
 -  Support of oprofile 0.0.9.  Apply the patch-0.0.9-rtcfix to write
    back the actual sampling speed to Prospect gets the times right.
 -  Support for oprofile 0.1.  Apply the patch-use_rtc.gz to force using
    the RTC even if a functional APIC is detected with the module load
    parameter "use_rtc=1" to insmod.  If desired: this patch is not
    necessary for normal operations.
 -  Added oprofile 0.2 support.
 -  Added profiling of kernel modules.


