Version 20160422

22 April 2016. Summary of changes for version 20160422:

This release is available at https://acpica.org/downloads

1) ACPICA kernel-resident subsystem:

Fixed a regression in the GAS (generic address structure) arbitrary bit support in AcpiHwRead/AcpiHwWrite. Problem could cause incorrect behavior and incorrect return values. Lv Zheng. ACPICA BZ 1270.

ACPI 6.0: Added support for new/renamed resource macros. One new argument was added to each of these macros, and the original name has been deprecated. The AML disassembler will always disassemble to the new names. Support for the new macros was added to iASL, disassembler, resource manager, and the acpihelp utility. ACPICA BZ 1274.

I2cSerialBus -> I2cSerialBusV2
SpiSerialBus -> SpiSerialBusV2
UartSerialBus -> UartSerialBusV2

ACPI 6.0: Added support for a new integer field that was appended to the package object returned by the _BIX method. This adds iASL compile-time and AML runtime error checking. ACPICA BZ 1273.

ACPI 6.1: Added support for a new PCCT subtable, "HW-Reduced Comm Subspace Type2" (Headers, Disassembler, and data table compiler).

Example Code and Data Size: These are the sizes for the OS-independent acpica.lib produced by the Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 32-bit compiler. The debug version of the code includes the debug output trace mechanism and has a much larger code and data size.

Current Release:
Non-Debug Version: 137.4K Code, 52.6K Data, 190.0K Total
Debug Version: 201.5K Code, 82.2K Data, 283.7K Total
Previous Release:
Non-Debug Version: 137.1K Code, 51.5K Data, 188.6K Total
Debug Version: 201.0K Code, 82.0K Data, 283.0K Total

2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

iASL: Implemented an ASL grammar extension to allow/enable executable "module-level code" to be created and executed under the various operators that create new scopes. This type of AML code is already supported in all known AML interpreters, and the grammar change will appear in the next version of the ACPI specification. Simplifies the conditional runtime creation of named objects under these object types:

Device
PowerResource
Processor
Scope
ThermalZone

iASL: Implemented a new ASL extension, a "For" loop macro to add greater ease-of-use to the ASL language. The syntax is similar to the corresponding C operator, and is implemented with the existing AML While opcode -- thus requiring no changes to existing AML interpreters.

For (Initialize, Predicate, Update) {TermList}

Grammar:
ForTerm :=
For (
Initializer // Nothing | TermArg => ComputationalData
Predicate // Nothing | TermArg => ComputationalData
Update // Nothing | TermArg => ComputationalData
) {TermList}

iASL: The _HID/_ADR detection and validation has been enhanced to search under conditionals in order to allow these objects to be conditionally created at runtime.

iASL: Fixed several issues with the constant folding feature. The improvement allows better detection and resolution of statements that can be folded at compile time. ACPICA BZ 1266.

iASL/Disassembler: Fixed a couple issues with the Else{If{}...} conversion to the ASL ElseIf operator where incorrect ASL code could be generated.

iASL/Disassembler: Fixed a problem with the ASL+ code disassembly where sometimes an extra (and extraneous) set of parentheses were emitted for some combinations of operators. Although this did not cause any problems with recompilation of the disassembled code, it made the code more difficult to read. David Box. ACPICA BZ 1231.

iASL: Changed to ignore the unreferenced detection for predefined names of resource descriptor elements, when the resource descriptor is created/defined within a control method.

iASL: Disassembler: Fix a possible fault with externally declared Buffer objects.