MEMORY POOL SYSTEM KIT README Richard Brooksby, Ravenbrook Limited, 2002-05-20 CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Getting started 3. The structure of the kit 4. Developing using the kit 5. Testing 6. Building and testing a release 7. Contributing your work 8. Getting help 9. Licensing A. References B. Document history C. Copyright and license 1. INTRODUCTION This is the Memory Pool System Kit -- a compelete set of sources for using, modifying, and adapting the MPS. The Memory Pool System (MPS) is a very general, adaptable, flexible, reliable, and efficient memory management system. It permits the flexible combination of memory management techniques, supporting manual and automatic memory management, in-line allocation, finalization, weakness, and multiple concurrent co-operating incremental generational garbage collections. It also includes a library of memory pool classes implementing specialized memory management policies. For a more detailed overview of the MPS, see "The Memory Pool System: Thirty person-years of memory management development goes Open Source" [RB 2002-01-30]. This kit is distributed under an open source license. See under "Licensing", below. This document is a brief introduction to the kit. The readership of this document is anyone who wants to modify, adapt, or extend the MPS. This document is not confidential. 2. GETTING STARTED The MPS Kit is a complete set of sources and documentation to enable third parties to use, modify, and adapt the MPS. For Windows, the kit is distributed as the self-extracting archive "mps-kit-1.100.1.exe", and also as the ZIP archive "mps-kit-1.100.1.zip", which may be unpacked using WinZip. For Unix and Mac OS X, the integration kit is distributed as the tarball "mps-kit-1.100.1.tar.gz". Unpack it using the command "gunzip -c mps-kit-1.100.1.tar.gz | tar xvf -", or by dropping the file onto StuffIt Expander under Mac OS X. The top-level file "index.html" in the sources indexes many other files, and is a good place to start. You should read the user manuals and the high level design documents. 3. THE STRUCTURE OF THE KIT The Integration Kit is a copy of the sources used to develop and maintain the MPS at Ravenbrook Limited . The "sources" are all the things that go to make up the product, not just source code files. For example, the sources for the manuals are here too, because we maintain them in parallel with the code. The sources at Ravenbrook are mirrored from our Perforce configuration management server onto our internal web server at info.ravenbrook.com, and are designed to be browsed on that server. You will find HTML documents which index many of the directories. Read these, starting with the top level "index.html". You might find some links to "info.ravenbrook.com" or "/project/mps/...". Sorry about that -- it's partly due to the nature of HTML links. You will find most project documents from the MPS Project page , including many documents which aren't "sources" but may still be useful to understand the history of the project. Some project documents are client confidential. The MPS project has a long history, and it will take some time to sort through the documents to see which can be published. If there's a particular document you want to see, please write to us and we'll see what we can do. Many documents are referenced by tags, which look like "design.mps.buffer" or "req.dylan". These are references to the obsolete Memory Management Information System [RB 2002-06-18]. We are working on translating these documents to HTML. There are a vast number. We've only been able to include a few key documents in the open source release so far. 4. DEVELOPING USING THE KIT The MPS can be built on a wide variety of platforms. For Unix-like platforms you will need the GNU Make tool. Some platforms (such as Linux and Mac OS X) have GNU Make as their default make tool. For others you will need to get and install it. (It's available free from .) On Windows platforms the NMAKE tool is used. This comes with Microsoft Visual C++. The MPS can also be built on Mac OS 7 through Mac OS 9 using MPW or Metrowerks Codewarrior, but neither of these builds have been maintained for some time, and probably no longer work. We've included the makefiles/project files as a starting point. Table 1. MPS makefiles and platforms Makefile OS Architecture Compiler fri4gc.gmk FreeBSD Intel IA32 GCC iam4cc.gmk Irix 6 N32 MIPS IV CC lii3eg.gmk Linux Intel IA32 EGCS lii4gc.gmk Linux Intel IA32 GCC lippgc.gmk Linux POWER(32) GCC o1alcc.gmk OSF/1 Alpha Digital C o1algc.gmk OSF/1 Alpha GCC sos8cx.gmk Solaris SPARC V8 CXREF sos8gc.gmk Solaris SPARC V8 GCC sos8gp.gmk Solaris SPARC V8 GCC with profiling sos9sc.gmk Solaris SPARC V9 SunPro C sus8gc.gmk SunOS SPARC V8 GCC xcppgc.gmk Mac OS X PowerPC GCC w3almv.nmk Windows Alpha Microsoft C w3i3mv.nmk Windows Intel IA32 Microsoft C w3ppmv.nmk Windows PowerPC Microsoft C s7ppac/Makefile Mac OS 7-9 PowerPC Apple Mr C s7ppmw.sit Mac OS 7-9 PowerPC Metrowerks Codewarrior To build all MPS targets on Unix-like platforms, change to the "code" directory and type: make -f where "make" is the command for GNU Make. (Sometimes this will be "gmake" or "gnumake".) To build just one target, type: make -f To build a restricted set of targets for just one variety, type: make -f 'VARIETY=' For example, to build just the "cool internal" variety of the "amcss" test on FreeBSD: gmake -f fri4gc.gmk 'VARIETY=ci' amcss On Windows platforms you need to run "VCVARS32.BAT" to initialize your environment variables. Then type: nmake /f w3i3mv.nmk To build just one target, type: nmake /f w3i3mv.nmk And so on. The output of the build goes to a directory named after the platform (e.g. "fri4gc") so that you can share the source tree across platforms using NFS, for example. Building generates "mps.a" or "mps.lib" or equivalent, a library of object code which you can link with your application, subject to the MPS licensing conditions (see under "Licensing", below). It also generates a number of test programs, such as "amcss" (a stress test for the Automatic Mostly-Copying pool class). 5. TESTING There is an extensive regression test suite in the "test" directory, but we have not yet had time to make it easy to run. 6. BUILDING A RELEASE The procedure for building a release of the MPS is in "procedure/release-build". This will only be of interest if you are intending to maintain and publish a variant of the MPS. If you do want to do this, please get in touch with us to discuss it. 7. CONTRIBUTING YOUR WORK We'd like to include improvements to the MPS in the distributions from Ravenbrook Limited. Please consider putting your work under a compatible open source license and sending it to us. It will help a great deal if your work is self-consistent. This means that the documentation is up to date (even if only with sketchy but accurate notes) and the procedures have been maintained. 8. GETTING HELP You can obtain expert professional support for the MPS from Ravenbrook Limited , the developers of the MPS, who have many years of experience in commercial memory management systems. Write to us for more information. You might also want to join the MPS discussion mailing list. To join, send a message with the word "subscribe" in the body to mps-discussion-request@ravenbrook.com or send the word "help" for general information. 9. LICENSING The MPS is distributed under an open source license (see the file "license.txt"). The license is designed to make it possible for you to use the MPS in your own projects, provided that you either don't distribute your product, or your product is open source too. If you are developing a closed source product and want to use the MPS you must license under commercial terms from Ravenbrook Limited . Please write to us for more information. A. REFERENCES [RB 2002-01-30] "The Memory Pool System: Thirty person-years of memory management development goes Open Source"; Richard Brooksby; Ravenbrook Limited; 2002-01-30; . [RB 2002-06-18] "The Obsolete Memory Management Information System"; Richard Brooksby; Ravenbrook Limited; 2002-06-18; . B. DOCUMENT HISTORY 2002-05-20 RB Created based on template from P4DTI project. 2002-06-18 NB Minor updates and corrections. 2002-06-18 RB Removed obsolete requirement for MASM. 2002-06-19 NB Added note on self-extracting archive C. COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Ravenbrook Limited . All rights reserved. This is an open source license. Contact Ravenbrook for commercial licensing options. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for this software and any accompanying software that uses this software. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. For an executable file, complete source code means the source code for all modules it contains. It does not include source code for modules or files that typically accompany the major components of the operating system on which the executable file runs. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. $Id: //info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/version/1.103/readme.txt#1 $