Version 20120816

1) ACPICA Kernel-resident Subsystem:

Removed all use of the deprecated _GTS and _BFS predefined methods. The _GTS (Going To Sleep) and _BFS (Back From Sleep) methods are essentially deprecated and will probably be removed from the ACPI specification. Windows does not invoke them, and reportedly never will. The final nail in the coffin is that the ACPI specification states that these methods must be run with interrupts off, which is not going to happen in a kernel interpreter.
Note:
Linux has removed all use of the methods also. It was discovered that invoking these functions caused failures on some machines, probably because they were never tested since Windows does not call them. Affects two external interfaces, AcpiEnterSleepState and AcpiLeaveSleepStatePrep. Tang Feng. ACPICA BZ 969.

Implemented support for complex bit-packed buffers returned from the _PLD (Physical Location of Device) predefined method. Adds a new external interface, AcpiDecodePldBuffer that parses the buffer into a more usable C structure. Note: C Bitfields cannot be used for this type of predefined structure since the memory layout of individual bitfields is not defined by the C language. In addition, there are endian concerns where a compiler will change the bitfield ordering based on the machine type. The new ACPICA interface eliminates these issues, and should be called after _PLD is executed. ACPICA BZ 954.

Implemented a change to allow a scope change to root (via "Scope (\)") during execution of module-level ASL code (code that is executed at table load time.) Lin Ming.

Added the Windows8/Server2012 string for the _OSI method. This change adds a new _OSI string, "Windows 2012" for both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

Added header support for the new ACPI tables DBG2 (Debug Port Table Type 2) and CSRT (Core System Resource Table).

Added struct header support for the _FDE, _GRT, _GTM, and _SRT predefined names. This simplifies access to the buffers returned by these predefined names. Adds a new file, include/acbuffer.h. ACPICA BZ 956.

GPE support: Removed an extraneous parameter from the various low-level internal GPE functions. Tang Feng.

Removed the linux makefiles from the unix packages. The generate/linux makefiles are obsolete and have been removed from the unix tarball release packages. The replacement makefiles are under generate/unix, and there is a top-level makefile under the main acpica directory. ACPICA BZ 967, 912.

Updates for Unix makefiles:

1. Add -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 for gcc generation. Arjan van de Ven.
2. Update linker flags (move to end of command line) for AcpiExec utility.

Guan Chao.

Split ACPICA initialization functions to new file, utxfinit.c. Split from utxface.c to improve modularity and reduce file size.

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.

Previous Release:
Non-Debug Version: 93.5K Code, 25.3K Data, 118.8K Total
Debug Version: 173.7K Code, 74.0K Data, 247.7K Total
Current Release:
Non-Debug Version: 93.8K Code, 25.3K Data, 119.1K Total
Debug Version: 175.7K Code, 74.8K Data, 250.5K Total

2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

iASL: Fixed a problem with constant folding for fixed-length constant expressions. The constant-folding code was not being invoked for constant expressions that allow the use of type 3/4/5 opcodes to generate constants for expressions such as ByteConstExpr, WordConstExpr, etc. This could result in the generation of invalid AML bytecode. ACPICA BZ 970.

iASL: Fixed a generation issue on newer versions of Bison. Newer versions apparently automatically emit some of the necessary externals. This change handles these versions in order to eliminate generation warnings.

Disassembler: Added support to decode the DBG2 and CSRT ACPI tables.

Disassembler: Add support to decode _PLD buffers. The decoded buffer appears within comments in the output file.

Debugger: Fixed a regression with the "Threads" command where AE_BAD_PARAMETER was always returned.