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4d61cba9 KR |
1 | -*- text -*- |
2 | ||
e675c634 ILT |
3 | Changes since 2.6: |
4 | ||
5 | The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.) | |
6 | if -mregnames is used. Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be | |
7 | used any time. PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added. | |
8 | ||
9 | Alpha Linux (ELF) support added. | |
10 | ||
11 | PowerPC ELF support added. | |
12 | ||
13 | m68k Linux (ELF) support added. | |
14 | ||
15 | i960 Hx/Jx support added. | |
16 | ||
17 | i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added. | |
18 | ||
19 | SCO ELF support added. For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the | |
20 | default is to build COFF-only support. To get a set of tools that generate ELF | |
21 | (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with | |
22 | target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf. | |
23 | ||
24 | m88k-motorola-sysv* support added. | |
25 | ||
7e047ac2 ILT |
26 | Changes since 2.5: |
27 | ||
28 | Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP. | |
29 | ||
e675c634 ILT |
30 | Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode. Use -M or --mri to select MRI |
31 | mode. The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri | |
32 | 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code. | |
33 | ||
34 | Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option. | |
7e047ac2 ILT |
35 | |
36 | Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler. | |
37 | ||
38 | Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler. | |
39 | ||
4d61cba9 KR |
40 | Changes since 2.3: |
41 | ||
42 | Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script. | |
43 | ||
44 | ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw. | |
45 | ||
46 | Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging | |
47 | support. | |
48 | ||
49 | Support for the control registers in the 68060. | |
50 | ||
51 | Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to | |
52 | provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some | |
53 | features not available in the native assembler. If the native assembler is | |
54 | used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is. | |
55 | ||
56 | Usage message is available with "--help". | |
57 | ||
7e047ac2 ILT |
58 | The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included. (Actually, it was in 2.3 |
59 | also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.) | |
60 | ||
4d61cba9 KR |
61 | Weak symbol support for a.out. |
62 | ||
63 | A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed. | |
64 | Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed. | |
65 | ||
66 | Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul | |
7e047ac2 | 67 | Kranenburg. |
4d61cba9 KR |
68 | |
69 | Improved Alpha support. Immediate constants can have a much larger range now. | |
7e047ac2 | 70 | Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital. |
4d61cba9 KR |
71 | |
72 | Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall. | |
73 | ||
74 | Changes since 2.2: | |
75 | ||
76 | Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn. | |
77 | ||
78 | RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor. | |
79 | ||
80 | VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit, | |
81 | based on mail received from various people. The `-h#' option should work again | |
82 | too. | |
83 | ||
84 | HP-PA work, by Jeff Law. Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work | |
85 | with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6. As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special | |
86 | version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3. You can retrieve | |
87 | this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu | |
88 | in the "dist" directory. | |
89 | ||
90 | Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple | |
91 | tests okay. I haven't put it through extensive testing. (GNU make is | |
92 | currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.) | |
93 | ||
94 | Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format). The gas support is | |
95 | based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format. I'm afraid the | |
96 | alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it | |
97 | work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways. | |
98 | ||
99 | Irix 5 support. | |
100 | ||
101 | The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a | |
102 | couple different versions of expect and dejagnu. | |
103 | ||
104 | Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more | |
105 | flexibility in evaluating them in some cases. Some details of relocation | |
106 | handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added, | |
107 | to make the Alpha port easier. | |
108 | ||
109 | New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times. This is intended | |
110 | to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various | |
111 | phases of compilation. (You should be able to get all of them printed out with | |
112 | "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.) | |
113 | ||
114 | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
115 | ||
116 | Changes since 2.1: | |
117 | ||
118 | RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added. | |
119 | ||
120 | Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to | |
121 | have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to | |
122 | gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the | |
123 | impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be | |
124 | reliable. | |
125 | ||
126 | The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is | |
127 | displayed. This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional | |
128 | messages about "internal errors". | |
129 | ||
130 | ELF support is falling into place. Support for the 386 should be working. | |
131 | Support for SPARC Solaris is in. HPPA support from Utah is being integrated. | |
132 | ||
133 | Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled | |
134 | down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant. This permits slightly more | |
135 | complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known. | |
136 | ||
137 | DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats. | |
138 | If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new | |
139 | sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section. The format of the .stab | |
140 | section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is | |
141 | its string table. For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC | |
142 | to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB | |
143 | that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later). | |
144 | ||
145 | LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported. SPARC LynxOS | |
146 | support is in progress. | |
147 | ||
148 | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
149 | ||
150 | Changes for 2.1: | |
151 | ||
152 | Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been | |
153 | incorporated, but not well tested yet. | |
154 | ||
155 | Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile | |
156 | with gcc now. | |
157 | ||
158 | Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support, | |
159 | suggested by Ronald Cole. | |
160 | ||
161 | HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah. This | |
162 | includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris | |
163 | 2.x. Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work. | |
164 | ||
165 | HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in. | |
166 | ||
167 | Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support. | |
168 | ||
169 | Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux). | |
170 | ||
171 | Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable. | |
172 | ||
173 | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
174 | ||
175 | Changes for 2.0: | |
176 | ||
177 | Mostly bug fixes. | |
178 | ||
179 | Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work. | |
180 | ||
181 | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
182 | ||
183 | Changes for 1.94: | |
184 | ||
185 | BFD merge is partly done. Adventurous souls may try giving configure the | |
186 | "--with-bfd-assembler" option. Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format | |
187 | accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it. It's the default only for OS "elf" or | |
188 | "solaris". (ELF isn't really supported yet. It needs work. I've got some | |
189 | code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully | |
190 | merged yet.) | |
191 | ||
192 | The 68K opcode table has been split in half. It should now compile under gcc | |
193 | without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory. | |
194 | ||
195 | A couple data structures have been reduced in size. This should result in | |
196 | saving a little bit of space at runtime. | |
197 | ||
198 | Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in. The OSF | |
199 | code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet. (I can make | |
200 | it available, if anyone wants to try it out.) Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4, | |
201 | supports a.out format. We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming. | |
202 | ||
203 | Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added. | |
204 | ||
205 | VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric | |
206 | Youngdale. | |
207 | ||
208 | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
209 | ||
210 | Changes for 1.93.01: | |
211 | ||
212 | For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851. | |
213 | ||
214 | For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes. | |
215 | ||
216 | For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names. For COFF format, which | |
217 | doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0" | |
218 | can be distinguished from the register. | |
219 | ||
220 | Last public release was 1.38. Lots of configuration changes since then, lots | |
221 | of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed. | |
222 | ||
223 | \f | |
224 | Local variables: | |
225 | fill-column: 79 | |
226 | End: |