1.6.0

This is a major new release containing a large number of new features and improvements.

• Name resolution and overload resolution has been completely rewritten which should fix a number of long-standing issues.
• The elaboration phase was largely written which fixes a number of long-standing issues and significantly improves elaboration speed.
• VHDL-2008 IEEE standard libraries are now built and installed in addition to the VHDL-1993 libraries.
• The VHDL-1993 standard libraries are now derived from the Apache 2.0 licensed sources from VHDL-2019.
• There is now a project website at https://www.nickg.me.uk/nvc/. Please link to this in preference to the GitHub project page.
• Compiled VHDL code now includes DWARF debug information which is used for runtime stack trace if libdw or libdwarf is installed.
• Added support for VHDL-2008 reduction operators, match operators, and condition conversion.
• Added support for VHDL-2008 element resolution.
• Variable assignment now supports aggregate targets.
• The --relax=impure option allows pure functions to call impure functions.
• Added support for VHDL-2008 "all" sensitised processes.
• Added support for ports and generics in block statements.
• Added support for the 'BASE attribute.
• Type name now allowed in element association choice (#407).
• Implement textio READ procedure for REAL.
• LLVM 6.0 or later is now required to build.
• Added support for MINIMUM, MAXIMUM, and TO_STRING predefined operators in VHDL-2008.
• VCD files are now generated from FST data in a similar manner to fst2vcd(1). This should improve compatibility with other tools.
• Added support for 'LAST_ACTIVE attribute (#423).
• Added support for 'DRIVING and 'DRIVING_VALUE attributes.
• Added a new option --ieee-warnings=off to disable warning messages from the standard IEEE packages.
• Support for configurations has been significantly improved (#372).
• Added support for VHDL-2008 delimited comments.
• Added support for guard expressions on blocks.
• Added support for guarded signals.
• Added support for HREAD, HWRITE, and other TEXTIO additions in VHDL-2008.
• Code generation now happens in parallel when LLVM is built with multi-threading enabled.
• Link time optimisation (LTO) is now enabled for release builds where supported.
• The default assertion failure message for certain simple scalar comparisons now shows the values of the left and right hand sides.
• Added support for VHDL-2008 conditional variable assignment statements.
• Added support for VHDL-2008 extended bit string literals.
• Non-globally-static actuals allowed in port maps in VHDL-2008 mode.
• Added support for VHDL-2008 sequential conditional signal assignment statements.
• Added basic support for package generics and package instantiation.
• Nested arrays can now be included in the waveform dump but only if the --dump-arrays option is passed. This is disabled my default due the significant performance and memory overhead.
• Added support for record types in waveform dump (#216).
• Added support for foreign subprograms using the VHPIDIRECT protocol.
• Library build is now reproducible when running make -j.
• Fix a constant folding crash with nested records.
• Fixed a crash when a record aggregate contains an "others" association and the fields have array types with different lengths.
• Fixed a stack overflow when a subprogram with unconstrained array arguments is called repeatedly in a loop (#414).
• Fixed intermittent crash when evaluating nested constant records (#425).
• Fixed missing import libraries on Windows (#424).
• Standard libraries are now installed under $prefix/lib/nvc/ instead of $prefix/share/nvc.
• New configure option --disable-vital disables building the VITAL packages whose license status is unclear.
• Support for the LXT wave output format, which was deprecated in version 1.5, has been removed. Use the default FST format instead.
• The fetch-ieee.sh script which did nothing since the last release has been removed.
• The --codegen command, which has been deprecated since 1.3, was removed.
• The --profile option now prints internal simulation statistics instead of the top processes by CPU time.

1.5.3

This is the final bug fix release on the 1.5 branch containing the following changes back-ported from the development branch:

• Handle access(2) returning EPERM in macOS sandbox (#421).
• Fix race when multiple processes concurrently update a library.
• Fix --syntax command when file contains multiple design units.
• Allow constant folding of nand/nor/xor/xnor.
• Fix potential out of memory condition when evaluating complex assert expressions.
• Fix incorrect result of mod operator with negative operands.
• Fixed intermittent crash when evaluating nested constant records (#425).
• Buffer too small for printing TIME'HIGH (#98).

This release is signed with GPG key fingerprint 0784 505A DB5D 7D86 D2BD E6DA BCDB 295F 7431 9F1A. Download both the .sig and .tar.gz files and verify with:

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys BCDB295F74319F1A
gpg --verify nvc-1.5.3.tar.gz

1.5.2

This is the second bug fix release on the 1.5 branch containing the following changes back-ported from the development branch:

• Link libexecinfo on FreeBSD.
• Implement textio READ procedure for BIT and TIME (#408).
• Fixed a crash when a long running procedure suspends in a loop (#412).
• Fix static linking with LLVM 12.0.
• Fix crash when assigning to a signal declared in a package.
• Fix incorrect recording of dependencies which caused a failure to load
  generated DLLs on Windows.
• Fix file locking error when a library is located on NFS (#417).
• Optimise loading large library index from disk.
• Fix a crash when using 'VALUE with enumeration subtypes (#419).
• Fix a crash when a signal with more than 256 elements is declared in a
  package (#420).

This release is signed with GPG key fingerprint 0784 505A DB5D 7D86 D2BD E6DA BCDB 295F 7431 9F1A. Download both the .sig and .tar.gz files and verify with:

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys BCDB295F74319F1A
gpg --verify nvc-1.5.2.tar.gz

1.5.1

This is a bug-fix release with the following changes cherry-picked from the development branch:

• Fix a compiler warning in vcode.c.
• Disable VHDL backtrace on non-Linux systems as the symbol names cannot
  be parsed reliably (#385).
• Update to latest pc_from_uncontext.m4 for Apple M1 support.
• Fix incorrect application of LRM rules for building an equivalent wait
  statement for concurrent statements.
• Library build is now reproducible when running make -j (#409).
• Fix assertion failure with nested record type (#404).
• Use Pandoc to generate the manual page.

This release is GPG signed with key fingerprint 74319F1A. Verify the signature with:

$ gpg --recv-keys 74319F1A
$ gpg --verify nvc-1.5.1.tar.gz.sig nvc-1.5.1.tar.gz

1.5.0

• IEEE library sources are now distributed
• Updated FST library to match GtkWave 3.3.79
• The LXT wave output format is deprecated, use FST instead
• Fix incorrect file name in assertion message
• Fix crash while recovering from parse error
• Add --dump-json command to print AST as JSON (from Sebastien Van
  Cauwenberghe)
• Fix crash when using LLVM 7 and later
• Fix spurious assertion failure in std.textio.readline
• Reals are now rounded to the nearest integer as specified by the LRM
• Fix crash when constant folding uses too much memory
• Improved memory management in evaluator (thanks to Frank Mori Hess)
• Various other minor fixes and improvements

1.4.0

• Windows with MSYS2 is now fully supported
• Continuous integration for OS X and Windows using Travis and AppVeyor
• Record resolution functions are now supported
• The --relax=prefer-explicit option now works correctly

1.3.1

• Build fixes for OS X

1.3.0

• Native code is always generated on platforms that support it
• Initial support for VHDL-2017 conditional compilation blocks
• The TCL shell has been removed
• Various code generation and constant folding fixes
• Fix crash when build IEEE library from non-clean tree
• ORC is used for JIT if LLVM version is 3.9 or later
• LLVM 3.8 or later is now required
• Added -O0 to -O3 options to control LLVM optimisation level
• The --disable-opt option is deprecated, use -O0 instead
• The elaborate --native option is now a global option and should
  be placed before the -e command
• The --codegen command is deprecated, use --native when analysing
  to generate native shared libraries for packages

1.2.0

• Compile time evaluation now uses vcode
• Record aggregates can now be constant folded (#305)
• The TCL shell is deprecated and will be removed in the next release
• Compatible with LLVM 4.0
• Functions returning records can now be constant folded (#315)
• LLVM 3.4 or later is now required

1.1.0

• Improvements to based literal parsing
• Improved stack traces on Linux when libdw-dev installed
• Fixed elaboration of subprograms in entity declarations
• Improved elaboration performance when design contains many signals
• Fixed various bugs involving record signals
• Fixed sensitivity list generation for concurrent procedure calls
• Improvements to simulation performance
• Implemented vhpi_get_phys
• Added command --list to print all units in a library
• Rewrote the run_regr program in C so make check no longer requires Ruby
• The --relax=generic-static option is now renamed to --relax=locally-static and
  applies in wider range of contexts