Reviewed July 2020

Unfamiliar License Options and Terms

Although you will be familiar with most of the options that show up in your license, there are a few terms that may not be so familiar.

LFS stands for Large File Support, referring to support for files larger than 2GB. This is not a pay-for feature (although perhaps it should have been). It appears as a "license option" just because it seemed like a handy place to put it. It is more precise to call it an attribute of the build, as opposed to the license. Generally, all current versions of A-Shell support LFS, except perhaps the Windows "C" version.

W32IO is a similar kind of thing - this is a build option, not a licensing option. It means that we're using the WIN32 I/O routines, as opposed to the standard "C" library I/O routines.

VI(5.65.7) is a reference to the Victor Imaging library. That originally was a kind of licensing option (in that we did charge for it) but like the other two just described, doesn't relate to any bits in the actual PIC code.

COM, an acronym for Microsoft's Component Object Model, was an extra-cost option for A-Shell when it was introduced quite some time ago. It is no longer charged for, and may show up in both Windows and Linux licenses. Note that the COM interface is always enabled in A-Shell, and works regardless of whether "COM" is displayed with the license information.

Exceed A-Shell License

If you exceed your A-Shell license ("authorized nodes") by trying to log in when all available nodes are in use, you will be a message saying "node counted exceeded," and you will not be able to log in.

Exceed ATE License

If you exceed your ATE license authorization—i.e., you try to connect as the sixth ATE connection in a system where five ATE nodes are licensed—you will get a "nag" message but will be allowed to operate.

Group Licensing

Beginning with A-Shell 6.3.1540 of December 2016, A-Shell provides an option for group licensing. This allows fine tuning of the license usage by providing a means of reserving and/or limiting the license usage relative to license groups. For example, in a fifteen user license, you can reserve two licenses for "admin" users, and/or limit the "remote" users to no more than five licenses.

When group licensing is enabled, via an option encoded in the A-Shell license, A-Shell will call BAS:ASLICGRP.SBX on startup. The routine and its contents determine which license group the current user should be assigned to, and also specifies the various allocations or limits for each group.

See the sample program ASLICGRP in SOSLIB:[907,52] for details on the calling interface.