CHANGES.md

Unreleased

Note that these changes are infrequently maintained and may not tell the whole story.

2021-Jan-04

• Removed the examples directory and c11_lahav.cat; use the c4-corpora repository instead.
• act-fuzz is now c4f; act-c is now c4f-c.

2021-Jan-02

• Delitmus aux output function maps no longer carry a is_thread_body key; instead, they carry an optional tid key (containing an integer thread ID) which is defined if and only if the thread is a thread body. Use this instead of parsing the thread ID from the function name.

2020-Dec-16

• Delitmus aux output now carries an extra, optional initial_value key for every variable in the var_map. This follows the existing init in the litmus header, but also includes any initialised value for local variables. (Local variable initialisers are still not yet translated by the delitmusifier into assignments, but this may be added as an option later.)

2020-Dec-02

• Renamed the OPAM package from act to c4f, also renaming any public libraries from act.X to c4f.X. (This does not change the name of the binaries yet; they are still act_X.)

2020-Nov-27

• Added new -state-output flag to fuzz run and replay subcommands; this dumps a human-readable representation of the final fuzzer state to the named file.
• Made the Litmus test parser/abstractor handle threads with zero parameters correctly.

2020-Nov-12

• Removed backend support, because it is or will be subsumed by the tester project.
• Many more changes since Feb that I forgot to keep a changelog for.

2020-Feb-17

• New command act-c dump-stats, which dumps some integer statistics about a Litmus test.

2020-Feb-05

• New actions program.label (tentative title), which adds random labels, and flow.dead.goto, which adds deadcode GOTOs to them.
• act-fuzz list-actions now prints only the names and weights by default; pass -v to get the original behaviour.
• Added an example set of Memalloy outputs, mainly for use on systems (cough cough Raspberry Pi) where Memalloy can't run.

2020-Jan-21

• New action mem.fence, which adds random memory fences.

2020-Jan-20

• get_a_backend has been removed; use act-backend find instead.

2020-Jan-17

• New command act-backend find, which takes a style ID and zero or more machines, and returns the first viable backend with that style in the combination of given and default machines (in order of specification). This will eventually replace the get_a_backend script.

2020-Jan-16

• New experimental command act-config probe, which probes a machine (local or SSH) for compilers and backends, and emits an act.conf fragment. (Note that this is not yet used by make_test; it needs a bit more work first.)
• New ppc (PowerPC) architecture identifier.
• Architecture identifiers have changed: x64 is now x86.64, and the .att prefix to x86 no longer has any meaning. You may need to update your act.conf.

2020-Jan-14

• Fuzzer action store.make.int.single is now store.make.int.normal.
• New fuzzer action store.make.int.dead, which behaves as store.make.int.normal, but only fires inside dead code blocks and does not respect dependency/known-value information.

2020-Jan-13

• obj_splitmus has been removed: use c_litmus_indirect instead.
• act-asm and all of its traces in the other ACT subsystems and scripts have been removed per #171. If anyone requires these, please discuss a plan going forward with the ACT maintainers.

2020-Jan-07

• New command act-config dump, which emits the current configuration in pretty printed form to stdout.
• New fuzzer config stanzas: set param ID to INT for setting integer fuzzer parameters; set flag ID to BOOL for setting Boolean fuzzer flags, and set flag ID to ratio WINS:LOSSES for stochastically setting fuzzer flags.
• New fuzzer parameters: cap.threads for capping the number of threads the fuzzer is allowed to generate towards, and cap.actions for capping the number of actions the fuzzer performs.

2019-Dec-06

• New tool act-compile, which inherits the compiler interface from act-c.
• act-c compile is now act-compiler run.
• act-c list-compilers is now act-compiler list.
• New command act-compiler info, for machine-readably querying ACT about properties of a single compiler.

2019-Dec-05

• Any command that previously took -simulator as an argument now takes -backend.
• Backend commands that take -c and -args now take -carch, which behaves as -c but supplies a hint as to the underlying architecture. This makes it possible to run Litmus7 in C mode.

2019-Dec-03

• New command, act-machine xrun, whose sole purpose is to copy a binary to a remote machine and run it.

2019-Nov-05

• act-config list-compilers is now act-c list-compilers.
• (And many other changes; I haven't been diligent in maintaining the changelog!)

2019-Aug-28

• act configure is now act-config.
• Compiler testing now only happens if one passes -test-compilers to act-config list-compilers.

2019-Aug-08

• State observation comparing is now available at act-state compare. It does NOT perform normalisation of the two state sets --- this must be done externally (a tool for doing this using delitmus will appear eventually).
• State observation comparison results come as JSON by default; pass -human-readable for pretty-printed equivalent.

2019-Jul-29

• Amongst other things, act c fuzz is now act-fuzz run (ie a new program).
• Action weight listing is now act-fuzz list-actions.

2019-Jun-24

• act tool sim is now act backend run, in anticipation of a cross-board rename.
• New command act backend parse, which parses the output of a configured simulator and outputs an observation record as a JSON file.

2019-Jun-11

• New command act c compile, for compiling single files without testing or litmusifying them.

2019-Jun-06

• The structure of act.confs has changed drastically. The key points are:
  • Compilers, simulators, and other such potentially-remote tools are now nested inside machines, and referred to by the concatenation of the machine ID and element ID.
  • Simulator configuration no longer takes a herd or litmus stanza, but instead a sim ID stanza. A style ID (where ID is herd or litmus inside the stanza tells ACT how to invoke and interpret the simulator.
  • emits is now arch.
  • There is a default stanza (for specifying which architecture, compiler, machine, etc. to try by default), but it isn't yet usable. Hooking this up to the resolution systems is future work.
• Bugs and oddities caused by the above changes are currently being ironed out.

2019-May-27

• act asm litmusify no longer supports piping through a simulator. Running a simulator on a single litmus test using its simulator ID will become a separate feature later on.
• File type overrides are now of the form -file-type X, where X is asm, asm-litmus, c, or c-litmus. (Part of this change predates this change report.)

2019-May-15

• Almost all act modules are now publicly exposed as act.foo (with name changed from Foo to Act_foo.)

2019-Apr-24

• New standard flag: colour, which takes always, never, or auto (the default), and colourises output accordingly. Currently, not a lot of act supports colourisation, but expect this to change.
• New(ish) command: act configure list-fuzzer-actions, which describes the fuzzer actions act understands; for each, it outputs a readme and the current configured weight. This should make it easier to configure fuzzer weights.

2019-Apr-03

• The fuzz_many script in scripts/ now takes arguments in the order fuzz_many COUNT FILE*, with multiple FILEs supported. When given multiple files, it mutates each COUNT times, giving each a distinct filename. It now also symbolically links _fuzz_latest to the latest fuzzer directory, in a similar manner to Memalloy.

2019-Mar-12

• Split -cvars option into two new options: -c-globals and -c-locals. The difference is that -c-globals are used to build locations stanzas in any emitted Litmus tests, whereas -c-locals are only used to inform the sanitiser which symbols are variables.

2019-Feb-27 (and previous)

• Feature: Ongoing work on building a C11 litmus test mutator (or 'fuzzer'). See act c fuzz. Currently in a heavily experimental state.
• Change: unix_test_scripts is now scripts, and is starting to contain things that aren't test scripts per se.

2019-Jan-30

• Bugfix: act c delitmus now properly handles removing dereferences from global variables (or, at least, does so more properly than before). (#64)

2019-Jan-29

• Feature: started bundling a series of shell scripts for semi-automated testing of act. These complement the automated tests, and are intended for checking how act interacts with a full Unix environment (including working C compilers and act.confs). Currently there is only one script, which is a work-in-progress, but this will likely change.
• Feature: act c explain now takes an optional flag -dump-cvars, which causes it to emit the list of C variables that it found in the input. This is useful for passing to -cvars later on.
• Bugfix: act c delitmus now correctly infers global variable types from the thread functions' parameter lists. This means that global variables with non-atomic ints now get the right type in the delitmusification. (#63)

2019-Jan-28

• Change: in many locations where act expects a C-style identifier, such as Litmus identifiers and test names, act now automatically does validation to make sure that the identifier is indeed a proper C identifier string. This may cause intermittent breakages.

2019-Jan-22

• Feature: litmusify now automatically finds the set of C variables when run on a C/litmus file (not plain C) and -cvars isn't provided. This will expand to other act subcommands in due course.
• Note: to see the cvars set chosen, pass -verbose to litmusify.

2019-Jan-21

• Bugfix: delitmusifier no longer erroneously reverses its arguments.

Undated (2018-Dec to 2019-Jan)

• Litmusify: -litmus now executes litmus on the remote machine.
• Added new act tool command, which will eventually allow free-form running of the various tools act wraps. Currently it supports herd (act tool herd), but doesn't do anything special.
• Litmusify: added -exists flag to feed in a Litmus postcondition. (This currently has to target the sanitised Litmus variables directly; no redirection following is done yet.)
• Split act regress into several subcommands, and include a delitmus regression test set.
• New act c delitmus, which tries to convert a C/Litmus test into compileable C11. There is also an act c explain, but at this stage it's fairly pointless.
• New act configure list-predicates, which describes the languages accepted by the filtering predicate commands.
• Moved act specs to act configure list-compilers.
• Added initial support for the litmus7 tool. This currently only stretches as far as configuration stanzas and piping through the litmusify tool.
• Added experimental C language support. For now, use explain-c to test.
• Replaced the S-expression compiler.spec format with a more human-friendly, act-specific one. See bin/act.conf for an example of the syntax, which is similar to OpenBSD's utility config format.
• Renamed compiler.spec to act.conf -- this should help users spot the change in format, as well as being more indicative of what the file is.
• Changelog starts here.

This changelog started on 2018-12-19, and doesn't contain any changes made prior to that date.