Version 20170929

29 September 2017. Summary of changes for version 20170929:

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

1) ACPICA kernel-resident subsystem:

Redesigned and implemented an improved ASL While() loop timeout mechanism. This mechanism is used to prevent infinite loops in the kernel AML interpreter caused by either non-responsive hardware or incorrect AML code. The new implementation uses AcpiOsGetTimer instead of a simple maximum loop count, and is thus more accurate and constant across different machines. The default timeout is currently 30 seconds, but this may be adjusted later.

Renamed the ACPI_AML_INFINITE_LOOP exception to AE_AML_LOOP_TIMEOUT to better reflect the new implementation of the loop timeout mechanism.

Updated the AcpiGetTimerDuration interface to cleanup the 64-bit support and to fix an off-by-one error. Jung-uk Kim.

Fixed an EFI build problem by updating the makefiles to for a new file that was added, utstrsuppt.c

2) iASL Compiler/Disassembler and Tools:

Implemented full support for the PDTT, SDEV, and TPM2 ACPI tables. This includes support in the table disassembler, compiler, and template generator.

iASL: Added an exception for an illegal type of recursive method invocation. If a method creates named objects, the first recursive call will fail at runtime. This change adds an error detection at compile time to catch the problem up front. Note: Marking such a method as "serialized" will not help with this problem, because the same thread can acquire the method mutex more than once. Example compiler and runtime output:

Method (MTH1)
{
Name (INT1, 1)
MTH1 ()
}

dsdt.asl 22: MTH1 ()
Error 6152 - ^ Illegal recursive call to method
that creates named objects (MTH1)

Previous runtime exception:
ACPI Error: [INT1] Namespace lookup failure,
AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20170831/dswload2-465)

iASL: Updated support for External() opcodes to improve namespace management and error detection. These changes are related to issues seen with multiple-segment namespace pathnames within External declarations, such as below:

External(\_SB.PCI0.GFX0, DeviceObj)
External(\_SB.PCI0.GFX0.ALSI)

iASL: Implemented support for multi-line error/warning messages. This enables more detailed and helpful error messages as below, from the initial deployment for the duplicate names error:

DSDT.iiii 1692: Device(PEG2) {
Error 6074 - ^ Name already exists in scope (PEG2)

Original name creation/declaration below:
DSDT.iiii 93: External(\_SB.PCI0.PEG2, DeviceObj)

AcpiXtract: Added additional flexibility to support differing input hex dump formats. Specifically, hex dumps that contain partial disassembly and/or comments within the ACPI table data definition. There exist some dump utilities seen in the field that create this type of hex dump (such as Simics). For example:

DSDT @ 0xdfffd0c0 (10999 bytes)
Signature DSDT
Length 10999
Revision 1
Checksum 0xf3 (Ok)
OEM_ID BXPC
OEM_table_id BXDSDT
OEM_revision 1
Creator_id 1280593481
Creator_revision 537399345
0000: 44 53 44 54 f7 2a 00 00 01 f3 42 58 50 43 00 00
...
2af0: 5f 4c 30 46 00 a4 01

Test suite: Miscellaneous changes/fixes:
More cleanup and simplification of makefiles
Continue compilation of test cases after a compile failure
Do not perform binary compare unless both files actually exist

iASL: Performed some code/module restructuring. Moved all memory allocation functions to new modules. Two new files, aslallocate.c and aslcache.c