XJTAG 4.3 Release Notes

New features and enhancements

Please see the Change Log for a list of new features and enhancements in XJTAG 4.3.

Breaking Changes

Board File Format

A change has been made to how lists of items are written out in board files, to make XJTAG friendlier to source control systems. Previously, devices with the same configuration (e.g. assigned to the same device file or with the same note) would be grouped together on the same line. This meant that changes to a single device categorisation could change a line that was associated with several devices, wbich made viewing diffs between versions more difficult and merge conflicts more likely.

In v4.3.0, each device is now written out on a separate line, thereby making differences easier to see and conflicts less likely. As a result, a project’s board files will change signficantly the first time they are saved in v4.3.0.

There will be no change in the compatibility of the newly formatted files with older versions of XJTAG.

XJIntegration major version change

The XJIntegration library assembly version has been incremented to version 3.0.0.0. This is due to a breaking change where the XJLink.SerialNumber property has been changed from an unsigned integer to a string. This change was necessary, because XJTAG now supports FTDI devices as JTAG controllers and their serial numbers are not necessarily numeric.

Constant expression evaluation in XJEase

Expressions in XJEase that contain only constant values are evaluated at by the compiler to avoid unnecessary work at run-time. An issue has been identified in all previous versions of XJTAG where the results of such evaluations were inconsistent with how the expression would be evaluated at run-time if the operands had not been constant.

The differences occur around the widths of sub-expressions during expression evaluation. The effects would be most noticeable after doing a subtraction or right-shift: the resulting value could be narrowed with leading zeroes removed. A subsequent bitwise NOT operation could then produce unexpected results.

These inconsistencies have been fixed in v4.3.0 and should not cause any issues with correctly written code. However, there could be projects which have inadvertently relied on this behaviour and may now function differently. Please contact XJTAG Support if you believe that your project’s behaviour has changed as a result of this fix.

XJEase GET_DEVICE_TYPE function

The GET_DEVICE_TYPE function returns a string that describes the type of a device in the circuit. It is possible for a device to have more than one type, e.g. a JTAG device that is functionally tested and so categorised as both a JTAG device and a test device. In this case, two values are returned separated with commas. Previously, the comma-separated values would be abbreviated compared to the values returned when a device belonged to a single category; for example a JTAG device returns "JTAG Device" and a test device returns "Test Device", but a functionally tested JTAG device was returning "JTAG, Test". In XJTAG 4.3, the returned values are consistent, so in this example the string returned is now "JTAG Device, Test Device".

Importing old projects in XJAnalyser

The project file format for XJAnalyser was completely replaced in XJTAG v3.0. Since then, XJAnalyser has had the ability to import projects from older versions of XJTAG. This functionality has now been removed in v4.3.

Supported Platforms

XJTAG recommends using the Windows 11 operating system, and is supported on all Intel x64 builds of Windows 11.

XJTAG will run on both the 32- and 64-bit Intel processor variants of the following obsolete operating systems: Windows 7^® Service Pack 1, Windows 8.1^® and Windows 10^® 1607 (Anniversary Update) and later. However in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 some minor UI functionality is missing and XJTAG may not be able to fully support running on these operating systems. XJTAG makes no guarantee that future updates to XJTAG will run on these operating systems.

This version does not support Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 8 or Windows 10 1507 or 1511 (November Update).

XJTAG recommends a screen resolution of 1920×1080 or higher.

Target Hardware

In order for XJTAG to interact with a circuit, the JTAG chain must be set up properly. To help with this, we have a produced a set of DFT guidelines, available from the XJTAG website. There is also a troubleshooting section in the help files.

Side-by-side installations

It is only possible to have one instance of each major release of XJTAG installed. It is possible, for example, to install any variant of version 3.4.x along side any variant of version 3.5.y; however it is not possible to install two variants of version 3.4, e.g. 3.4.3 and 3.4.4.

Changing Project File Associations

By default, double-clicking on an XJTAG project file of any kind will open it in the most recently installed version of XJTAG. The Version Check utility (XJVersion) can be used to control these file associations. It is recommended to do this using the copy installed with the latest version of XJTAG that you have installed.

Previous versions

4.2 | 4.1 | 4.0 | 3.13 | 3.12 | 3.11 | 3.10 | 3.9 | 3.8 | 3.7 | 3.6 | 3.5 | 3.4 | 3.3 | 3.2 | 3.1 | 3.0

We welcome any suggestions for improving our products. Please contact us with any comments you may have and we will look into incorporating your ideas into a future version.