                 RELEASE NOTES FOR THE ESTEREL V5_21 SYSTEM
                 ==========================================


CHANGES FROM V5_10

The changes between the previous v5_10 release and the new v5_21 release
are:

   * Esterel installation.

     The ESTEREL environment variable has changed and Tcl/Tk is used as
     shell script. See ESTEREL INSTALLATION below.

   * Signal browsing using Xes.

     The Interpreted Simulation Code allows the tracking of signal use:where
     a signal is emitted, tested, etc..., see XES IMPROVEMENTS below. As a
     consequence, the simulation C code generated with previous Esterel
     compiler is no more supported by the v5_21 simulators. Please,
     recompile your simulations. The standard embedded code is fully
     compatible.

   * New Xes script.

     See XES IMPROVEMENTS below.

   * Bug fixes.


ESTEREL INSTALLATION

   * ESTEREL VARIABLE (IMPORTANT)

     The ESTEREL environment variable now defines the Esterel installation
     directory, instead of the directory where the binaries were in v5_10.
     For example, write:
         ESTEREL=/usr/local/esterelv5_21
     instead of:
         ESTEREL=/usr/local/esterelv5_21/bin

   * Esterel and Windows NT

     The Esterel system was built using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0. The C
     compiler and the linker CL.EXE and LINK.EXE must be accessible throught
     the user's path. The LIB and INCLUDE environment variables must also be
     set for simulation to work properly. The definitions of these variables
     are in the file Vc\bin\Vcvars32.bat in the Visual C++ distribution.

   * Tcl/Tk

     We use Tcl/Tk as multi-platform shell for some scripts. Therefore, a
     binary distribution of Tcl/Tk is now provided in the $ESTEREL/tcltk
     directory. Please, read tcltk/copyright.txt. The distribution contains
     strlsh and tclsh. These are the basic wish and tclshapplications
     modified to take first into account the ESTEREL variable when looking
     for TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY. These executables are in $ESTEREL/bin.
     The tcltk directory also contains Tcl/Tk librairies.

     Tcl/Tk is developed by Scriptics Corp. http://www.scriptics.com/.

XES IMPROVEMENTS

   * Signal Browsing

     The new Signal Browsing feature tracks a signal everywhere it appears,
     even if it is renamed.  When the feature is enabled ("Signal Browser"
     entry of "Command" menu), a click with button 3 on a signal declaration
     or use highlights the following items:

        o the signal declaration
        o the signal emissions
        o the signal tests
        o the uses of the signal value for valued signals.

    Button 3 highlights all these items whenever one of them is
    clicked on. The module tree is also highlighted, so one can easily 
    find all the places where a signal is used. 

    This feature is available only for Interpreted Simulation Code, ie
    C code obtained with the "-I" and "-simul" options.

   * Xes Script

     Xes is now a Tcl script. It can be used directly as in:
         $ xes foo.o
     To save linking time if a simulator has to be executed several times
     one can prelink the simulator as follows :
         $ xes -o foo foo.o foo_data.o
     This builds the file foo.exe that can be fast-loaded by xes as follows:

         $ xes foo.exe
     An auxiliary file xes.def in lib/xes contains various data used by xes
     to find the libraries and linker it needs. Edit this file if it need
     changes for your site. Finally, xes can load a resource file using the
     -script option if you want to modify some colors, etc. Read the xes
     chapter in the manual for more information. An example resource file is
     lib/xes/xes_res.tcl.


VERIFICATION TOOLS

The verification tools are distributed by the Verification group of
the Meije project:

http://www.inria.fr/meije/verification

The main tool is the X-window based Esterel Verification Environment (xeve).


COPYRIGHT

You must read the COPYRIGHT file before using Esterel v5. Please make
sure that you understand the copyright and license information before
using this release.


NOTES

On Solaris architecture, do not compile a tty-simulation program
(libcsimul.a) with /usr/ucb/cc. Use instead SparcWorks cc, or gcc.The reason
is that csimul uses setjmp, and the headers of
/usr/ucb/cc are incompatible with those of the other compilers.


MAIL ADDRESSES

Remember our mail addresses:
 esterel-request@sophia.inria.fr : direct Esterel team access.

 esterel-users@sophia.inria.fr   : users forum.

 esterel-bugs@sophia.inria.fr    : as it says.
