[omniORB] omniORB 2.8.0 pre-release 2

[Sai-Lai Lo]

(Sorry for the long posting. This message contains important information.
 Please read carefully.)

I've put the 2nd pre-release of omniORB 2.8.0 on our ftp server. The URLs
are listed below.

This will be the final pre-release before we declare 2.8.0 officially
released. The current plan is to release 2.8.0 in 2 weeks time unless a
show-stopper bug is discovered. Please help to eliminate silly mistakes
such as build problems by giving this pre-release a test drive.

Major changes since  pre-release 1 are:

1. Changes to compile on HPUX, AIX, IRIX, OpenVMS.

** 2. Connection management has been enhanced to limit the maximum time a
      remote call is allowed to take. If this time limit is exceeded, the ORB
      shutdown the connection and causes a COMM_FAILURE to report to the
      application. This time limit can be applied to both the client and the
      server side. The omniORB APIs have been extended and new command line
      options are provided to fine tune the time limit parameters.

** 3. New member function CORBA::ORB::NP_destroy() is provided. This member
      should be called by the application to cleanup the ORB before exit.
      In particular, applications written for Windows 95/98 or using the ORB
      runtime DLL with Visual Basic should call this function (as well as
      CORBA::BOA::destory()) to ensure all internal threads are cleaned up
      before the runtime DLL is unloaded. 

4. By default, the stub header for the IR is not included from CORBA.h
   Application code must define the macro ENABLE_CLIENT_IR_SUPPORT if
   it wants to act as a client to an interface Repository.

5. New command line option -ORBhelp and -BOAhelp causes the ORB to print
   out all the -ORB and -BOA options available.

6. Any reference to syslog in the gatekeeper using tcpwrapper has been
   removed.

7. All the bugs reported since pre-release 1 has been fixed.

8. The debug version of the runtime DLL for Windows NT/95 must be built with
   VC++ 5 service pack 1 or later. Otherwise, cvpack.exe would exit with
   an internal error.

The pre-release is available at:

Source only:
-----------
ftp://ftp.uk.research.att.com/pub/omniORB/omniORB_280pre2.tar.gz (1.7M)

Patch file to update pre-release1 to pre-release2
--------------------------------------------------
ftp://ftp.uk.research.att.com/pub/omniORB/omniORB_280_pre1_to_pre2.patch.gz (71K)

(OpenVMS user should download the full source as the openvms zip file is
 not included in this patch.)

Win32 binaries:
-------------
ftp://ftp.uk.research.att.com/pub/omniORB/omniORB_280pre2_x86_win32.zip (15M)

We have tested the release on Solaris 2.x, Linux (Redhat 5.2/gcc-2.95)
and Windows NT 4.0 (VC++ 5 service pack 3). 

Please read the release note from here:

ftp://ftp.uk.research.att.com/pub/omniORB/ReleaseNote_omniORB_280.txt

The main improvement from the last release is the update of the C++ mapping
to CORBA 2.3.

!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

In order to comply with the 2.3 specification, it is necessary to change
the semantics of the extraction of string, object reference and typecode
from an Any. It is not possible to detect the old usage at compile time.
Unmodified code that uses the affected Any extraction operators would very
likely cause runtime errors to occur. There is however a runtime
configuration option to revert to the old semantics in order to smooth the
transition. Please read the release note and the user guide for details.

Please report any problem to omniorb@uk.research.att.com.

Enjoy.

Sai-Lai

-- 
Sai-Lai Lo                                   S.Lo@uk.research.att.com
AT&T Laboratories Cambridge           WWW:   http://www.uk.research.att.com 
24a Trumpington Street                Tel:   +44 1223 343000
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