Changelog for SPARK Distribution

New Features:

Support for 'break' and 'continue'.
Limited support for 'struct'
Windows version has a easy to use GUI (that generates the files required by spark automatically)
Added few small examples for learning purpose.

Better support for simulation using the generated output VHDL. For example, added signal initialization

Fixed bug related to variable to register binding that appeared when using loops
Fixed bug in bit-width of conv_std_logic_vector type functions
Fixed bug related to casting from one type to another.

First release of Windows version of SPARK. This has been compiled using MINGW + MSYS distribution (these are similar to CYGWIN, but offer native Windows support). The SPARK binary is a native Windows application.
Changed the VHDL generation for non-Synopsys VHDL to make it synthesizable by Xilinx XST. Also, the extension of the output VHDL has changed from .vhdl to .vhd to make it compatible with Windows based tools.
Small change: Return variables in statements like "return (a+b)" are named returnVar_fcnName, where fcnName is the name of the function.

Fixed small bug that was introduced in last release related to array type of resources.

This is the first stable release of SPARK.

Enhanced error messages when "C" input code contains constructs that are not synthesizable by SPARK.

We verified functionality of VHDL output for the MPEG tutorial using a testbench.

Added new flag PrintSynopsysVHDL under new section "[OutputVHDLRules]" to generate VHDL that is not Synopsys specific.
VHDL output is now synthesizable using Xilinix synthesis tools (XST).