Version 20160318

18 March 2016. Summary of changes for version 20160318:

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

1) ACPICA kernel-resident subsystem:

Added support for arbitrary bit lengths and bit offsets for registers defined by the Generic Address Structure. Previously, only aligned bit lengths of 8/16/32/64 were supported. This was sufficient for many years, but recently some machines have been seen that require arbitrary bit-level support. ACPICA BZ 1240. Lv Zheng.

Fixed an issue where the \_SB._INI method sometimes must be evaluated before any _REG methods are evaluated. Lv Zheng.

Implemented several changes related to ACPI table support (Headers/Disassembler/TableCompiler):
NFIT: For ACPI 6.1, updated to add some additional new fields and constants.
FADT: Updated a warning message and set compliance to ACPI 6.1 (Version 6).
DMAR: Added new constants per the 10/2014 DMAR spec.
IORT: Added new subtable per the 10/2015 IORT spec.
HEST: For ACPI 6.1, added new constants and new subtable.
DBG2: Added new constants per the 12/2015 DBG2 spec.
FPDT: Fixed several incorrect fields, add the FPDT boot record structure. ACPICA BZ 1249.
ERST/EINJ: Updated disassembler with new "Execute Timings" actions.

Updated header support for the DMAR table to match the current version of the related spec.

Added extensions to the ASL Concatenate operator to allow any ACPI object to be passed as an operand. Any object other than Integer/String/Buffer simply returns a string containing the object type. This extends the usefulness of the Printf macros. Previously, Concatenate would abort the control method if a non-data object was encountered.

ACPICA source code: Deployed the C "const" keyword across the source code where appropriate. ACPICA BZ 732. Joerg Sonnenberger (NetBSD).

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: 137.1K Code, 51.5K Data, 188.6K Total
Debug Version: 201.0K Code, 82.0K Data, 283.0K Total
Previous Release:
Non-Debug Version: 136.2K Code, 51.5K Data, 187.7K Total
Debug Version: 200.4K Code, 82.0K Data, 282.4K Total

2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

iASL/Disassembler: Improved the heuristic used to determine the number of arguments for an externally defined control method (a method in another table). Although this is an improvement, there is no deterministic way to "guess" the number of method arguments. Only the ACPI 6.0 External opcode will completely solve this problem as it is deployed (automatically) in newer BIOS code.

iASL/Disassembler: Fixed an ordering issue for emitted External() ASL statements that could cause errors when the disassembled file is compiled. ACPICA BZ 1243. David Box.

iASL: Fixed a regression caused by the merger of the two versions of the local strtoul64. Because of a dependency on a global variable, strtoul64 could return an error for integers greater than a 32-bit value. ACPICA BZ 1260.

iASL: Fixed a regression where a fault could occur for an ASL Return statement if it invokes a control method that is not resolved. ACPICA BZ 1264.

AcpiXtract: Improved input file validation: detection of binary files and non-acpidump text files.