The Unicon Architecture Description Language Toolset Distribution

Obtaining the UniCon Toolset

The following are the instructions for obtaining the UniCon toolset. If you have any questions or experience any difficulties, please send e-mail to UniCon-Distribution@cs.cmu.edu and we will try to help you as best we can. You must obtain and install Odin along with the UniCon Toolset.

Obtain the Odin System Construction Utility (odin.tar.Z)

FTP Odin from the University of Colorado. Odin is a utility similar to make, in that it is used to construct executable images from various types of sources. Odin is used by the UniCon tools to construct working systems from architectural descriptions, and it is also used to build the UniCon toolset itself. The Odin construction scripts are shorter and simpler than make's because odin computes complete dependency information automatically. Odin gains efficiency by eliminating most of the filesystem status queries required by make, by parallel builds on remote machines, and by sharing from a cache of previously computed derived files.

Build Odin on the machine on which you plan to install the UniCon toolset. Complete installation instructions and an INSTALL script are provided in the installation package.

Please send all Odin installation questions and Odin usage questions to UniCon-Distribution@cs.cmu.edu rather than to Geoff Clemm (the Odin developer) at the University of Colorado. Due to the volume of Odin installations that the UniCon distribution will create, the UniCon development team has agreed to answer as many Odin questions as possible, thereby reducing the traffic to the Odin development team.

Obtain the UniCon Toolset

FTP the UniCon toolset. Again, complete installation instructions and an INSTALL script are provided in the installation package. Information about how to fill out the UniCon License Agreement is contained in the distribution as well.

NEW RELEASE:Version 5.0 (July 1998)

UniConDistribution.zip (Windows)

OLD RELEASE: Version 4.1 (May 5, 1997)

UniCon.tar.gz (SunOS, Solaris, and Ultrix platforms)
UniCon-linux.tar.gz(Linux platforms)

OLD RELEASE: Version 4.0 (January 20, 1997)

UniCon.4.0.tar.gz (SunOS, Solaris, and Ultrix platforms)
UniCon-linux.4.0.tar.gz(Linux platforms)

OLD RELEASE: Version 3.4 (October 30, 1996)

UniCon.tar.3.4.Z (SunOS, Solaris, and Ultrix platforms)
UniCon-linux.3.4.tar.Z(Linux platforms - GUI not yet ported to ELF installations)

Release Notes (Version 4.1)

The graphical editor has been tested extensively. It is as stable as the textual compiler. It is now safe to build a system of executable programs from a UniCon architectural description within the graphical editor at any arbitrary step in the specification process. Builds can be attempted on partial and incomplete specifications. The editor provides both graphical and textual feedback (the textual feedback appears in the STk interpreter window) regarding compilation and building errors.

Included in this distribution is a Rate Monotonic Analysis tool, written in C. It is invoked by the graphical editor during the build function and the textual compiler during the semantic analysis phase. It is invoked automatically to perform a rate monotonic analysis (RMA) on a UniCon architectural description involving RTScheduler connectors that have the Algorithm property set to "rate_monotonic". The output of this tool indicates whether or not the system of schedulable processes (i.e., the components of type SchedProcess) connected to a given processor resource in the real-time system is schedulable. The tool identifies the events that are found in the system, and then reports the period information and the calculated worst-case response time for each event.

Also included in this distribution is the UniCon-to-ACME translator. The translator is part of the UniCon textual compiler, uparse, which is included in each distribution. In this distribution a new option has been added to this compiler (i.e., the "-a" option) that, when selected, analyzes the input as if the user had selected the "-b" option (i.e., a build), but rather than proceeding with a build, the compiler generates an ACME description and outputs it to a file with a .acme extension.

Release Notes (Version 4.0)

The problems with building and running the Graphical Editor on linux systems have been ironed out. The editor is now as robust in the linux environment as it is on Solaris and SunOS platforms. A new connector has been added to the Compiler and the Graphical Editor. It is the SharedMemory connector. This connector allows the sharing of global data between processes on the same unix platform. The glue code in the connector consists of calls to the unix shared memory API, namely the shmget, shmat, shmdt routines.

Release Notes (Version 3.4)

The Graphical Editor has now been completely integrated with the Compiler of the textual language. All editing and building operations in the Editor use the Compiler's programming interface to manipulate internal data structures representing the graphical description. The Editor no longer analyzes an architectural description by invoking the Compiler in the background on equivalent textual versions of the graphical architectural description. The analysis and building is performed from the internal representation. This has significantly increased the speed of the building and analysis operations in the Graphical Editor.

All memory leaks have been removed from the textual Compiler and the Compiler's programming interface with the Purify utility from Pure Software, Inc. This means that the Graphical Editor can be active indefinitely without it running out of memory.

The look and feel of the Graphical Editor has been updated, and errors encountered in a build or analysis operation are now reflected graphically in an architectural description. There is a new connector in the UniCon language: the DML connector. It connects database components with applications written in C that access them. Distributed RPC connections among platforms in a heterogenous environment involving linux, solaris, and sunos systems has been made robust.

Documentation

You can obtain a postscript version of the UniCon Language Reference Manual and the first draft of the UniCon User Manual by clicking below:

Reference_Manual.ps (860K)
User_Manual.ps (185K)

You can also access The UniCon Language Reference Manual on-line.

Known Bugs

The Graphical Editor for the graphical version of UniCon does not currently work properly under Ultrix - we are currently debugging the problems. It works on all other platforms mentioned above.

There are currently no known bugs in the textual compiler (uparse), the C-to-UniCon translator (c2uni), and the graphical editor.

If you experience any bugs, core dumps, or usage scenario anomalies in any of the tools in the UniCon Architectural Description Language Toolset, please record as much information as you can about what you were doing that caused the error, and e-mail this information to UniCon-Distribution@cs.cmu.edu. We will attempt to fix every reported bug in a subsequent release.

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Date modified: 5 May 1997