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252b5132 | 1 | -*- text -*- |
5b343f5a | 2 | |
18e03609 NC |
3 | * Support added for eliminating duplicate DWARF2 debug information by |
4 | having the compiler generate the information in sections called | |
5 | .gnu.linkonce.wi.XXXX where XXXX is a checksum for the contents. The | |
6 | linker then merges these sections together into the normal .debug_info | |
7 | section. | |
252b5132 | 8 | |
ec4eb78a L |
9 | * The native ELF linker now searches the directories in DT_RUNPATH or |
10 | DT_RPATH of a shared library for shared libraries needed by it. | |
11 | ||
2d30b3da TW |
12 | * TI C54x support, by Timothy Wall. |
13 | ||
176355da NC |
14 | * Added command line switch --section-start to set the start address of any |
15 | specified section. | |
16 | ||
a712da20 NC |
17 | * Added ability to emit full relocation information in linked executables, |
18 | enabled by --emit-relocs. Some post-linkage optimization tools need | |
19 | this information in order to be able to correctly identify and perform | |
20 | symbol relative addressing in the event of changes in section contents | |
21 | (instructions being added or deleted, extending data sections, etc.) | |
22 | ||
22b36938 JE |
23 | * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt (preliminary, alpha quality). |
24 | ||
5bcac8a4 HPN |
25 | * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series). |
26 | ||
919e4093 AM |
27 | Changes in version 2.10: |
28 | ||
5948916f TW |
29 | * Added AT> to the linker script language to allow load-time allocation of |
30 | sections into regions. | |
31 | ||
252b5132 RH |
32 | * Added garbage collection of unused sections, enabled by --gc-sections. |
33 | It does require a bit of backend support; currently implemented are | |
4667035e AM |
34 | arm-elf, avr-elf, d10v-elf, fr30-elf, i386-elf, m32r-elf, m68k-elf, |
35 | mcore-elf, mips-elf, mn10300-elf, ppc-elf, sh-elf, sparc-elf, and v850-elf. | |
987fd5b4 | 36 | Others will ignore the option. |
252b5132 RH |
37 | |
38 | * Added SORT to the linker script language to permit sorting sections by file | |
39 | name or section name. | |
40 | ||
41 | * Added EXTERN to the linker script language as an equivalent to the -u | |
42 | command-line option. | |
43 | ||
44 | * Added ASSERT to the linker script language. | |
45 | ||
277c9afe ILT |
46 | * Added EXCLUDE_FILE to the linker script language for further control over |
47 | wildcard file names. | |
48 | ||
252b5132 RH |
49 | * Added -O option to optimize linker output (as of this writing, this only |
50 | affects ELF shared library generation). | |
51 | ||
52 | * The -e option now accepts a number as well as a symbol name. | |
53 | ||
2575273d ILT |
54 | * Added --no-undefined option to disallow undefined symbols when creating a |
55 | shared library. | |
56 | ||
9b1d3b78 ILT |
57 | * The linker now issues a warning, not an error, for an undefined symbol when |
58 | using -Bsymbolic; use the new --no-undefined option to get the old | |
59 | behaviour. | |
60 | ||
252b5132 RH |
61 | * Added --demangle and --no-demangle options. |
62 | ||
63 | Changes in version 2.9: | |
64 | ||
65 | * Added SQUAD to the linker script language. | |
66 | ||
67 | * New option --no-warn-mismatch. | |
68 | ||
69 | * The MEMORY command now parses the attributes to determine where sections that | |
70 | are not placed in a specific memory region are placed. | |
71 | ||
72 | Changes in version 2.8: | |
73 | ||
74 | * Linker scripts may now contain shell wildcard characters for file and section | |
75 | names. | |
76 | ||
77 | * The linker now supports symbol versions in ELF. | |
78 | ||
79 | * The NOCROSSREFS command was added to the linker script language. | |
80 | ||
81 | * The LOADADDR expression was added to the linker script language. | |
82 | ||
83 | * MAX and MIN functions were added to the linker script language. | |
84 | ||
85 | * The OVERLAY construct was added to the linker script language. | |
86 | ||
87 | * New option --warn-section-align to warn when the address of an output section | |
88 | changes due to alignment of an input section. | |
89 | ||
90 | * New options --filter/-F and --auxiliary/-f. | |
91 | ||
92 | Changes in version 2.7: | |
93 | ||
94 | * New option --cref to print out a cross reference table. | |
95 | ||
96 | * New option --wrap SYMBOL. | |
97 | ||
98 | * New option --no-whole-archive, to turn off the effect of --whole-archive. | |
99 | ||
100 | * Input sections assigned to the output section /DISCARD/ in the linker script | |
101 | are not included in the output file. | |
102 | ||
103 | * The SunOS and ELF linkers now merge stabs debugging information which uses | |
104 | the N_BINCL and N_EINCL stab types. This reduces the amount of debugging | |
105 | information generated. | |
106 | ||
107 | Changes in version 2.6: | |
108 | ||
109 | * When an ELF section name is representable as a C identifier (this is not true | |
110 | of most ELF section names), the linker will automatically define symbols | |
111 | __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the section name, at the | |
112 | beginning and the end of the section. This is used by glibc. | |
113 | ||
114 | * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning is encountered in an input file, the | |
115 | contents of the section are displayed as an error message, and the section is | |
116 | not copied into the output file. This is used by glibc. | |
117 | ||
118 | * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning.SYMBOL is encountered in an input | |
119 | file, and the symbol SYMBOL is referenced by some object file, the contents of | |
120 | the section are displayed as an error message. The section is not copied into | |
121 | the output file, unless doing a relocateable or shared link. This is used by | |
122 | glibc. | |
123 | ||
124 | * New options -split-by-reloc and -split-by-file. | |
125 | ||
126 | * The linker now supports linking PIC compiled code on SPARC SunOS. It can | |
127 | also create SPARC SunOS shared libraries, and, like the native SunOS linker, | |
128 | will do so whenever there is an undefined symbol in the link and neither the -e | |
129 | nor the -r option was used. | |
130 | ||
131 | * The -rpath option may be used on SunOS to set the list of directories to be | |
132 | searched at run time. This overrides the default of building the list from the | |
133 | -L options. | |
134 | ||
135 | * The COFF linker now combines debugging information for structs, unions, and | |
136 | enums, so that even if the same type is defined in multiple input files it will | |
137 | only be defined once in the output file. The --traditional-format switch will | |
138 | prevent this optimization. | |
139 | ||
140 | Changes in version 2.5: | |
141 | ||
142 | * The linker now supports linking against SunOS shared libraries. It still can | |
143 | not link SunOS PIC (Position Independent Code) files, so it can not be used to | |
144 | generate shared libaries. | |
145 | ||
146 | * The linker now supports linking against ELF shared libraries for the i386 | |
147 | (UnixWare) and SPARC (Solaris). It can also link ELF PIC files, and can be | |
148 | used to generate shared libraries. Shared library generation is not well | |
149 | tested; please report any problems encountered. The linker is now enabled for | |
150 | Solaris again. | |
151 | ||
152 | * Eric Youngdale has contributed Linux support code, including linking against | |
153 | Linux a.out shared libraries. The linker produces Linux QMAGIC binaries. | |
154 | ||
155 | * The ELF backend has been converted to the new linker code. To use the new | |
156 | ELF linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So far, | |
157 | this function has been written for i386 (UnixWare), SPARC (Solaris) MIPS (Irix | |
158 | 5), and HPPA ELF targets. | |
159 | ||
160 | * The -( (--start-group) and -) (--end-group) options have been added to | |
161 | support searching a group of archives as though they were a single archive. | |
162 | This can also be used in a linker script, as GROUP ( files ). | |
163 | ||
164 | * When a file is named on the command line, and the linker does not recognize | |
165 | it as an object file, the linker will now treat the file as a linker script | |
166 | file. A linker script named in this way augments, but does not replace, the | |
167 | default linker script. | |
168 | ||
169 | * The -warn-once option was added. It causes the linker to only warn once per | |
170 | undefined symbol, rather than once per reference. | |
171 | ||
172 | * The COFF backend has been converted to the new linker code. As with ELF, to | |
173 | use the new linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So | |
174 | far, this function has been written for the i386, m68k, a29k and SH targets. | |
175 | ||
176 | * The -V flag was made a synonym for -v, for SVR4 compatibility. The old -V | |
177 | behaviour is available via --verbose. | |
178 | ||
179 | Changes in version 2.4: | |
180 | ||
181 | * New linker code, by Steve Chamberlain and Ian Taylor. For a.out and ecoff | |
182 | formats (so far), this should result in considerable savings in time | |
183 | and memory used while linking; slightly poorer performance than | |
184 | before for formats not converted yet. | |
185 | ||
186 | * Command-line parsing is no longer done with flex. This means | |
187 | oddball characters in filenames won't get treated as argument | |
188 | separators. | |
189 | ||
190 | * HP-PA ELF support, by Jeff Law. (No SOM support yet.) | |
191 | ||
192 | * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie. | |
193 | ||
194 | * Irix 4 shared libraries are now supported (Irix 5 uses ELF, and ELF shared | |
195 | libraries are not yet supported). | |
196 | ||
197 | * COFF shared libraries (as on SCO) should work as well. | |
198 | ||
199 | * The linker is disabled for Solaris. (Actually, it was in 2.3 also, I just | |
200 | forgot to note it.) Some of their C library routines don't work when | |
201 | statically linked, and the GNU linker doesn't support dynamic linking yet. | |
202 | ||
203 | Changes in version 2.3: | |
204 | ||
205 | * Weak symbols are now supported. | |
206 | ||
207 | * ELF support has been added. The linker has been bootstrapped on | |
208 | UnixWare and Solaris. | |
209 | ||
210 | * Alpha OSF/1 support has been added (non dynamic linking only). | |
211 | ||
212 | Changes in version 2.2: | |
213 | ||
214 | * The `bfd' library has been updated to reduce a.out-format string | |
215 | table size. The effect of this is that files linked from many input | |
216 | files with duplicate symbols (`-g' debugging records, or identical | |
217 | static symbols) should be much smaller. | |
218 | ||
219 | Changes in version 2.1: | |
220 | ||
221 | * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) is now implemented. | |
222 | ||
223 | * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the | |
224 | other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix. | |
225 | ||
226 | \f | |
227 | Local variables: | |
228 | fill-column: 79 | |
229 | End: |