gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
   4   definitions created by ".req".
   5
   6 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
   7
   8 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
   9   information with GNU extensions.
  10
  11 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
  12
  13 * Added support for v850e1.
  14
  15 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
  16   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
  17   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
  18   switch disables the optimization.
  19
  20 Changes in 2.14:
  21
  22 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
  23
  24 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
  25
  26 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
  27
  28 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
  29   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
  30
  31 * Support for SH2E added.
  32
  33 * GASP has now been removed.
  34
  35 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
  36   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
  37
  38 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
  39
  40 Changes in 2.13:
  41
  42 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
  43   and FR500 included.
  44
  45 * Support for DLX processor added.
  46
  47 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
  48   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
  49
  50 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
  51   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
  52   the currently specified base.
  53
  54 Changes in 2.12:
  55
  56 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
  57
  58 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
  59
  60 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
  61   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
  62   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
  63   compatibility.
  64
  65 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
  66   the ARM assembler.
  67
  68 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
  69   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
  70
  71 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
  72   but still works for compatability.
  73
  74 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
  75   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
  76   -n will turn on the warning.
  77
  78 Changes in 2.11:
  79
  80 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
  81
  82 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
  83
  84 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
  85
  86 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
  87
  88 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
  89
  90 * Support for IA-64.
  91
  92 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
  93
  94 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
  95
  96 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
  97
  98 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
  99   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 100   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 101
 102 Changes in 2.10:
 103
 104 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 105   operand when altering the flags field.
 106
 107 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 108
 109 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 110
 111 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 112
 113 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 114
 115 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 116
 117 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 118
 119 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 120
 121 * picoJava architecture support added.
 122
 123 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 124
 125 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 126   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 127
 128 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 129
 130 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 131
 132 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 133
 134 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 135   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 136   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 137   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 138
 139 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 140
 141 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 142
 143 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 144
 145 * i960 ELF support added.
 146
 147 * ARM ELF support added.
 148
 149 Changes in 2.9:
 150
 151 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 152
 153 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 154   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 155
 156 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 157
 158 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 159   listing.
 160
 161 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 162
 163 Changes in 2.8:
 164
 165 * BeOS support added.
 166
 167 * MIPS16 support added.
 168
 169 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 170
 171 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 172
 173 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 174   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 175
 176 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 177   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 178   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 179   all.
 180
 181 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 182
 183 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 184   conditionals in listings.
 185
 186 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 187   the symbol is already defined.
 188
 189 Changes in 2.7:
 190
 191 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 192   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 193   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 194   added.
 195
 196 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 197
 198 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 199
 200 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 201
 202 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 203
 204 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 205
 206 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 207   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 208   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 209   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 210
 211 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 212
 213 Changes in 2.6:
 214
 215 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 216
 217 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 218   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 219   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 220
 221 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 222
 223 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 224
 225 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 226
 227 Changes in 2.4:
 228
 229 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 230
 231 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 232
 233 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 234   debugging support.
 235
 236 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 237
 238 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 239   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 240   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 241   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 242
 243 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 244
 245 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 246   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 247
 248 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 249
 250 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 251   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 252
 253 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 254   Paul Kranenburg.
 255
 256 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 257   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 258
 259 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 260
 261 Changes in 2.3:
 262
 263 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 264
 265 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 266
 267 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 268   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 269   again too.
 270
 271 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 272   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 273   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 274   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 275   in the "dist" directory.
 276
 277 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 278   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 279   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 280
 281 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 282   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 283   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 284   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 285
 286 * Irix 5 support.
 287
 288 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 289   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 290
 291 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 292   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 293   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 294   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 295
 296 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 297   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 298   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 299   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 300
 301 Changes in 2.2:
 302
 303 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 304
 305 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 306   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 307   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 308   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 309   reliable.
 310
 311 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 312   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 313   messages about "internal errors".
 314
 315 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 316   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 317
 318 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 319   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 320   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 321   known.
 322
 323 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 324   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 325   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 326   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 327   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 328   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 329   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 330
 331 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 332   support is in progress.
 333
 334 Changes in 2.1:
 335
 336 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 337   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 338
 339 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 340   with gcc now.
 341
 342 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 343   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 344
 345 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 346   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 347   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 348
 349 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 350
 351 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 352
 353 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 354
 355 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 356
 357 Changes in 2.0:
 358
 359 * Mostly bug fixes.
 360
 361 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 362
 363 Changes in 1.94:
 364
 365 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 366   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 367   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 368   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 369   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 370   fully merged yet.)
 371
 372 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 373   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 374
 375 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 376   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 377
 378 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 379   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 380   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 381   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 382   coming.
 383
 384 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 385
 386 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 387   Youngdale.
 388
 389 Changes in 1.93.01:
 390
 391 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 392
 393 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 394
 395 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 396   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 397   can be distinguished from the register.
 398
 399 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 400   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 401
 402 \f
 403 Local variables:
 404 fill-column: 79
 405 End: