What's New in UD6 3.1 (UD6 2.1.05.1234 and later)

Builds of UD6 2.1.05 starting with 2.1.05.1234 include features designated as 'UD6 3.1'.

That probably sounds a bit confusing. It sounds confusing because it is. It's to do with the way we develop the UD6 software internally.

In order to ensure that new releases of UD6 remain as 'backwards compatible' as possible, we develop each new feature (disabled by default) within the 'old' release - in this case we are developing the 'new' 3.1 features inside the old 2.1.05 release.

When we release the first 'beta' of UD6 3.1 it will be identical to the last release of 2.1.05, except the 'default' settings will have changed.

UD6 3.1 is the first release where we are opening this up to customers. The process has already been going for a few years in fact: we first introduced the UD6 3.1 XML file format a few years ago with the UD6IDE Eclipse Based IDE for Uniface. But now we are going further and explaining all the new options and what we currently expect the 'default' 3.1 settings will be.

We will continue to build separate UD6 2.1.05 and 3.1 releases, however after the first beta they may diverge.

If you are currently using a version of UD6 prior to 2.1.05 then we strongly recommend you first upgrade to UD6 2.1.05.1234 or later before upgrading to UD6 3.1.

New to UD6 3.1 are:

• Improved performance (SSE Optimisations)*
• Uniface TEN (10.2.2, 10.3.0x, 10.4.01, 10.4.02 x32 and x64) support
• New default settings:
• New XML format which is more 'compatible' with modern standards (ud6ide)
• New GLOBALS default clustering (newglobals v2)
• New RELATIONSHIPS default clustering (newrels disable)
• New DTD default clustering (newdtd enable)
• New Messages default clustering (newmsg enable)
• Shell commands are 'hidden' by default (hidecmd)
• Makefile options (makefiles reverse group nocase)
• GitHub Integration GUI (Windows Only)
• Identify each running IDF: idftitle, idficon
• Auto-Defines
• Set UD6 parameters in registry rather than in ASN^

Note: *SSE Optimisations are not currently available for testing.
^Set UD6 Parameters in Registry/UD6 params GUI not currently available for testing.

March Hare appreciate any feedback that you have regarding this release. Please send feedback to: support@march-hare.com

Recommended settings:

The recommended settings are :

USYS$UD6_PARAMS=newglobals v2, newmsg, nouvers, newdtd disable, fix6870, ud6ide, xmlschema w3c-2001 ie11, xsl w3c ie11, config E:\Uniface_10-3-02\common\bin, supresszero v3, timeforce 4, boolforce 2, autodef disable, fix5635, compiledate cache file, numforce disable, bug6759 all threshold 80 memstep 4096, asnfile E:\Uniface_10-3-02\uniface\adm\ide.asn, notimestamp all, nocompstamp enable, forcedate cache file interval 0, ucrelsh 200, refresh 240, newrels disable, mmf files 2048, makefiles reverse group nocase enable wait filename .\sources\makefile.mak, option pack E:\Uniface_10-3-02\common\bin\mhgfp140.dll

Important Notes about Recommended Settings:

Note 1:

you will need to adjust the above example to replace directories such as E:\Uniface_10-3-02 with your own correct directory names.

Note 2:

The recommendation is to use NEWDTD ENABLE but it will require you change the pattern in the 'joins' configuration file. If this is your first time upgrading to Uniface 10 or first time using UD6 - use NEWDTD ENABLE and change the 'joins' file. There is a comment in the 'joins' that explains what you need to do.

Note 3:

autodef is a new feature, but unless you understand the impact of it and its use, we recommend you disable it. For early beta releases we did recommend this because it was a requested feature and we were wanting to test it.

Note 4:

Earlier versions of this document did not include the setting nouvers but it is required.

Note 5:

The NEWGLOBALS setting for UD6 for Uniface 10 works differently than for Uniface 9. In Uniface 9 all the 'global' objects like include procs and messages were stored in the USOURCE table. In Uniface 10 they are stored in different tables. Versions of UD6 before build 1236 included a 'joins' file which did not 'cluster' the same as UD6 did for Uniface 9 and also did not work with 'newglobals v2' and messages correctly. This is fixed in UD6 2.1.05.1236 however you can continue to use the 'old' setting newmsg disable if you prefer, or have completed your migration. For new migrations we recommend the new setting newmsg enable or newmsg v2.

NUMFORCE disable

We recommend you set numforce disable in your driver settings, details of what the setting does is available in settings reference.

Recommendations for new users:

New users should use UD6 3.1 (or UD6 2.1.05.1234 or later) as your first installation. Use the 'recommended settings' above (with NEWDTD ENABLE and the new JOINS file from build 1236 or later).

Recommendations for existing users:

Existing users should plan to upgrade to UD6 3.1 as soon as possible. If you cannot upgrade immediately, then you should use UD6 2.1.05.1234 or later until you are able to migrate to 3.1.

If you intend to upgrade to Uniface 10 at any point in the future, you should strongly consider changing to the new default file format first. You can elect to remain with the old file format, but some new UD6 3.1 features rely on the new file formats.

To upgrade to the new file formats you must:

• export all your source code (see note below)
• change your ASN to the 'recommended settings
• replace your old config files (eg: ofields, joins) with the new ones
• change the config files like 'joins' and 'renamedirs' so it matches your directory naming requirements.
• re-import your source code with the recommended settings above.
• re-compiile all.

When you export the Uniface 9 repository. for this to work correctly you must specify some additional settings in your ASN file USYS$UD6_PARAMS. These settings are:

USYS$UD6_PARAMS=performance 239, etc etc

"Incompatible" Error on start of IDF

Some settings are required when using UD6 with Uniface 10.

• $def_charset
• ud6ide
• option pack
• newglobals v2
• fix6870
• newrels
• performance' (bit 10)
• performance' (bit 11)
• performance' (bit 2)
• performance' (bit 3)
• performance' (bit 5)
• nouvers
• newsubtypes
• ukversion cache
• umversion cache
• forcedate cache interval
• supresszero v3 (set by option pack)

If you are missing a required setting then on Windows you will see an error dialog, eg: if you miss a required setting then you will see this error:

On Linux the log file will contain this error:

build   13-May-2024 14:17:38   UD6 has detected that you are using Uniface 10 but the driver settings
build   13-May-2024 14:17:38   are incompatible with UD6 3.1.  To continue please use the recommended settings.
build   13-May-2024 14:17:38   You can disable this message.  Please contact support@march-hare.com
build   13-May-2024 14:17:38   Incorrect: 'nouvers' 

Memory use with UD6 3.1

UD6 3.1 (including 2.1.05.1236) for Uniface 10 uses more memory than earlier versions of UD6.

The reason for more memory use is new functionality in Uniface 10 that requires UD6 to cache more data so that it can be used in subsequent queries.

A developer should not see any sign of this extra memory use, but if there are hardware memory constraints you may see errors. For automated build environments you can disable some of these features and have a smaller memory footprint. But for interactive GUI sessions it is not safe to disable this caching.

For automated build on Linux servers, if memory use is still too high with the performance settings, or you need to reserve some memory for other processes, then you may want to look at control groups (cgroups) which is a feature added in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Answers