Hi Guys:
You know, once I lock something down, its because I figure from here on out, only small tweaks will be required, the idea is to build stability thorugh bug elimination so there is a very stable verison for people
to fall back to from R&D versions. Small changes rarely affect many, so things just keep getting better.
Several people have had various crashing issues when dealing with certain VB macro's, or spindle calls and such, I think tonight I finally found out why. I tore into the windows stacks, and starting tracing things much deeper than anyone with a brain likes to, and found something staring me in the face for a long time that I missed. The following file woudl crash after about 15 minutes..
M3S100
G0X1
G0x0
M5
M47
I noticed the number of handles raising over time in the task monitor. This led me to the VB subsystem itself, and the way I was calling it. I wont go into great boring technical detail, but its a case of the program using reams more handles than it should, and windows reserves 1Meg for each handle. These handles woudl not go away, basically, each time a macro was called, 1 meg of ram and a handle disappeared. This has been true since about version 1.85 . A very very long time. IT explains a great deal to me about weirdness on some systems. Even a system with lots of Ram may have been affected, but not till much later in a run. Version .035 address's this , and if you watch the task monitor during a run, youll now see no handles are generated, and the above file will run for days or years. This is a serious bug. With a great deal of trepidation, I have had to recode some very serious sections of code, I have tested for a few hours, and Im satified that I cant see anythign bad, everythign looks much more stable, and I cant get weirdness of any type, so I have to bite the bullet, and release a "lockdown" that has been seriously changed. I dont like doing that..but I dont think I have much choice..
So be cautious with this one, Let me know of any trouble right away, basic functionallity wont change, Im only worried about macro calls, and VB calls of any type. VB buttons as well. It all seems to behave under the new calling structure, and I cant find any trouble, but Im always a bit nervous with this large a change in a lockdown. Very high priority will be given to any faults you see, worst case I see is a macro possibly not working, and the program has been told to stop execution if it senses that. (Just in case..).
Upside is, this may cure so many faults that I have never been able to reproduce or find. This type of fault causes memory problems, which can lead to ArtCode errors, and other strangness.. So try it if you can, It shoudl actually be safer than any other version...but be carefull anyway.. for a few days till we know form feedback all seems well..
Thanks,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca
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