[ANN] TAO 2.0.6 available

[Johnny Willemsen]

Hi all,

Once again, thanks to the efforts of many developers, testers, and
users, we are pleased to announce the micro release of ACE 6.0.6, TAO
2.0.6, CIAO 1.0.6, and DAnCE 1.0.6, which is available from the usual
download location at:

http://download.dre.vanderbilt.edu/

under the heading "Latest Micro Release Kit."

The doxygen documentation for this release is also available. In
addition to the packages combined of sources and generate makefiles,
this release provides source-only packages for developers who use MPC to
generate their own makefiles.

We encourage you to download the new release, use it with your
applications, and let us know if you encounter any problems. Please use the:

$ACE_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM
$MPC_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM
$TAO_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM
$CIAO_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM
$DANCE_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM

so that we have the proper version/platform/compiler/options you're
using to report problems. We also request that you take a look at:

$TAO_ROOT/docs/releasenotes/

for the status of various ongoing projects at the DOC group of
Vanderbilt to move ACE+TAO+CIAO+DAnCE forward. Overviews of our recent
progress and upcoming plans are available at:

$ACE_ROOT/NEWS
$TAO_ROOT/NEWS
$CIAO_ROOT/NEWS
$DANCE_ROOT/NEWS

The overall success rates for the test results gathered from all our
daily builds is 96% for the ACE tests and 96% for the TAO, CIAO, and
DAnCE tests.

Please see:

http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/scoreboard/

for a summary of these tests. As always, we appreciate your help in
resolving any remaining problems. Please see:

ACE_ROOT/docs/ACE-bug-process.html

for an overview of our bug fixing policies. Moreover, please see:

http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/support.html

for information commercial support services available from various
companies.

The following is a list of key changes since the last major release.
Please refer to the corresponding ChangeLog files, NEWS files, or
Bugzilla entries for more details on the problem and the nature of fixes
applied.

==============
Changes to ACE
==============

. Removed autoconf support, only traditional way of compilation is
shipped from now

. Add support for RHEL 6.1 64bit

==============
Changes to TAO
==============

. Added new define TAO_DEFAULT_COLLOCATION_STRATEGY (default = thru_poa)
which is used as -ORBCollocationStrategy isn't specified.

. Added new -ORBCollocationStrategy best. TAO tries to perform the best
possible collocation, first direct if possible, then through_poa if
possible else no collocation.

. Enhanced the RW -ORBWaitStrategy and the EXCLUSIVE
-ORBTransportMuxStrategy to also work with AMI requests.

. mt_noupcall has been improved and generically speaking the handling
of client leader threads in LF has been improved and fixed of
potential deadlock situations

. The TAO skeletons got refactored to reduced footprint, a footprint
saving for the skeletons between 10 and 60% has been achieved. For
the full distribution including CIAO, DAnCE, OpenDDS, and DDS4CCM
using RTI DDS this resulted in a reduction of 650,000 lines of code.
Also the S.inl files are not generated anymore

===============
Changes to CIAO
===============

. It is now possible to connect connections in a deployment plan
at deployment time instead of connecting them on first use.
This can be established by setting the CIAO_PRE_ESTABLISH_CONNECTIONS
define in your config.h.

. The DDS4CCM connector now only creates a DDS subscriber or
DDS publisher when they are needed. Previously, the DDS4CCM
always created a DDS publisher and DDS subscriber, regardless
of need.

. Besides late binding, it is now possible to reset the topic
name in the DDS4CCM connector. This means that the DDS4CCM
connector is able to switch between topics of the same data
type at runtime. Resetting a topic name means that DDS will
be closed down and started again, using the new topic name.
On the outside, all connections to and from the connector
stay intact; therefor the user doesn't need to re-establish
the connections again. Please see
$CIAO_ROOT/connectors/dds4ccm/tests/ResetTopic/README for
more info. This directory also contains some examples on how
to reset a topic name.
Since this is not spec-compliant behavior, an issue has been be
raised on the DDS4CCM specification.

. Improved thread safety in the CIAO core.

. Direct collocation between components is now supported. In order to
enable this add ccm_direct_collocation=1 to your default.features. We
do recommend to use the new -ORBCollocationStrategy best which does
not require all user components to be compiled with direct
collocation enabled. Enabling direct collocation does increase the
size of the generated code

. All facet servants are now generated in the new _svnt_T.{h,cpp}
files. This is a first step in more refactoring in the CIAO servants.
Together with the TAO skeleton refactoring the skeleton for the
Null_Component example decreased from 40206 bytes to 24971 bytes, the
generated servant from 56959 bytes to 54933 bytes. The skeleton for
the related Null_Interface reduced from 9559 bytes to 4526 bytes.

. Added support for DDS4CCM using RTI DDS 4.5e on RHEL 6.1

================
Changes to DAnCE
================

. None

=====================
Bugzilla Issues Fixed
=====================

0 MPC bugzilla issue fixed:

2 ACE bugzilla issues fixed:
1405 Race condition in ACE_Connector
3051 High_Res_Timer_Test fails within virtual machine

10 TAO bugzilla issues fixed:
2241 Crash when specifiying direct collocation with no direct
collocation
2460 Eliminate hand-crafting of code generated from .pidl files
2667 TAO/tests/Nested_Upcall_Crash failing for a long time now
(Windows, mainly)
3000 Handle leak upon oneway invocation with RW wait startegy
3019 Make methods in TAO_ServantBase optional
3531 client leader threads can't give up leadership via
set_upcall_thread
3698 Valgrind reports use of uninitialized value
3768 Multi-threaded CORBA application can be deadlocked inside TAO
3774 Disable upcalls on a per-thread basis
3991 major footprint reduction possible in generate skeletons

3 CIAO bugzilla issues fixed:
1716 Direct collocation and components do not mix
2530 Doubt about the need for dynamic servant activation
3987 cif common leaks exeption

0 DAnCE bugzilla issues fixed: