Version 20151124

24 November 2015. Summary of changes for version 20151124:

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

1) ACPICA kernel-resident subsystem:

Fixed a possible regression for a previous update to FADT handling. The FADT no longer has a fixed table ID, causing some issues with code that was hardwired to a specific ID. Lv Zheng.

Fixed a problem where the method auto-serialization could interfere with the current SyncLevel. This change makes the auto-serialization support transparent to the SyncLevel support and management.

Removed support for the _SUB predefined name in AcpiGetObjectInfo. This interface is intended for early access to the namespace during the initial namespace device discovery walk. The _SUB method has been seen to access operation regions in some cases, causing errors because the operation regions are not fully initialized.

AML Debugger: Fixed some issues with the terminate/quit/exit commands that can cause faults. Lv Zheng.

AML Debugger: Add thread ID support so that single-step mode only applies to the AML Debugger thread. This prevents runtime errors within some kernels. Lv Zheng.

Eliminated extraneous warnings from AcpiGetSleepTypeData. Since the _Sx methods that are invoked by this interface are optional, removed warnings emitted for the case where one or more of these methods do not exist. ACPICA BZ 1208, original change by Prarit Bhargava.

Made a major pass through the entire ACPICA source code base to standardize formatting that has diverged a bit over time. There are no functional changes, but this will of course cause quite a few code differences from the previous ACPICA release.

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: 102.0K Code, 28.3K Data, 130.3K Total
Debug Version: 199.6K Code, 81.8K Data, 281.4K Total
Previous Release:
Non-Debug Version: 101.7K Code, 27.9K Data, 129.6K Total
Debug Version: 199.3K Code, 81.4K Data, 280.7K Total

2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

iASL/acpiexec/acpixtract/disassembler: Added support to allow multiple definition blocks within a single ASL file and the resulting AML file. Support for this type of file was also added to the various tools that use binary AML files: acpiexec, acpixtract, and the AML disassembler. The example code below shows two definition blocks within the same file:

DefinitionBlock ("dsdt.aml", "DSDT", 2, "Intel", "Template", 0x12345678)
{
}
DefinitionBlock ("", "SSDT", 2, "Intel", "Template", 0xABCDEF01)
{
}

iASL: Enhanced typechecking for the Name() operator. All expressions for the value of the named object must be reduced/folded to a single constant at compile time, as per the ACPI specification (the AML definition of Name()).

iASL: Fixed some code indentation issues for the -ic and -ia options (C and assembly headers). Now all emitted code correctly begins in column 1.

iASL: Added an error message for an attempt to open a Scope() on an object defined in an SSDT. The DSDT is always loaded into the namespace first, so any attempt to open a Scope on an SSDT object will fail at runtime.