New SystemC release

[Andy Tomlin]

After trying to track down tricky failure, I eventually ran valgrind with Released 2.3.3. This had to be abandoned due to the sheer number of errors. I then tried the tip of the github repo, and that seems to be much cleaner on valgrind. It also seems to have cleaned up my error. At my previous company we had a very hard to track down memory corruption that failed after 20+ hours, which we never were able to isolate. The systemc tip github seems much cleaner than 2.33, is there a reason you dont release it? It would help a lot of people I expect.

Cheers Andy

[David Black]

A key to successful C++ is to turn on -pedantic -Wall -Wextra and accept NO WARNINGS. If you think a particular warning is acceptable (check the language manual), then you can use an attribute or pragma with a carefully worded comment to make singular exceptions around the smallest fragment of code you can. Using a proper toolchain and running all the static checks helps as well.

I have found JetBrain's CLion (commercial cross-platform IDE) to be immensely helpful and easy to use in this regard. A lot of large corporations have adopted CLion for C++ development. JetBrain's work hard to improve CLion and have a very responsive support team. Of course they can only comment on C++ issues, but most SystemC issues are actually C++ issues.

Visual Studio Code editor with the right plugins can do similarly.

The SystemC LWG is working on releasing version 2.3.4, but they require consensus of the membership and there are some other issues. I am not allowed to say more. If your company is an Accellera member, you can join the discussion.

Anybody can use https://github.com/accellera-official/systemc.git , which defaults to an early version 2.3.4 available (I believe it is technically beta status). I have had no issues with it.