gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
   4   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
   5
   6 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
   7
   8 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
   9   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  10   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  11   the value.
  12
  13 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  14
  15 Changes in 2.19:
  16
  17 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  18   tables without runtime relocation.
  19
  20 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  21   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  22
  23 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  24   targets.
  25
  26 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
  27   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
  28   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
  29   command line options used, and a time stamp.
  30
  31 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
  32   instructions with VEX prefix.
  33
  34 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
  35
  36 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
  37   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
  38   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
  39
  40 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
  41   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
  42
  43 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
  44
  45 Changes in 2.18:
  46
  47 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
  48
  49 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
  50
  51 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
  52   relocations.
  53
  54 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
  55
  56 * Add support for Score target.
  57
  58 Changes in 2.17:
  59
  60 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
  61
  62 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
  63
  64 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
  65
  66 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
  67   switches can be read from <file>.
  68
  69 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
  70   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
  71   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
  72
  73 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
  74   documentation for how this works.
  75
  76 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
  77   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
  78   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
  79
  80 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
  81   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
  82   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
  83   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
  84   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
  85
  86 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
  87   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
  88   assembler.
  89
  90 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
  91
  92 Changes in 2.16:
  93
  94 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
  95
  96 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
  97
  98 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
  99   targets.
 100
 101 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 102   mode.
 103
 104 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 105
 106 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 107
 108 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 109   preferred debug format.
 110
 111 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 112
 113 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 114
 115 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 116   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 117
 118 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 119
 120 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 121   instrucitons.
 122
 123 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 124
 125 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 126   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 127
 128 Changes in 2.15:
 129
 130 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 131   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 132
 133 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 134
 135 * Added support for ARM V6.
 136
 137 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 138
 139 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 140
 141 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 142   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 143
 144 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 145   definitions created by ".req".
 146
 147 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 148
 149 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 150   information with GNU extensions.
 151
 152 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 153
 154 * Added support for v850e1.
 155
 156 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 157   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 158   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 159   switch disables the optimization.
 160
 161 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 162   existing -non_shared option.
 163
 164 Changes in 2.14:
 165
 166 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 167
 168 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 169
 170 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 171
 172 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 173   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 174
 175 * Support for SH2E added.
 176
 177 * GASP has now been removed.
 178
 179 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 180   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 181
 182 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 183
 184 Changes in 2.13:
 185
 186 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 187   and FR500 included.
 188
 189 * Support for DLX processor added.
 190
 191 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 192   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 193
 194 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 195   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 196   the currently specified base.
 197
 198 Changes in 2.12:
 199
 200 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 201
 202 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 203
 204 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 205   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 206   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 207   compatibility.
 208
 209 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 210   the ARM assembler.
 211
 212 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 213   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 214
 215 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 216   but still works for compatability.
 217
 218 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 219   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 220   -n will turn on the warning.
 221
 222 Changes in 2.11:
 223
 224 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 225
 226 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 227
 228 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 229
 230 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 231
 232 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 233
 234 * Support for IA-64.
 235
 236 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 237
 238 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 239
 240 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 241
 242 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 243   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 244   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 245
 246 Changes in 2.10:
 247
 248 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 249   operand when altering the flags field.
 250
 251 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 252
 253 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 254
 255 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 256
 257 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 258
 259 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 260
 261 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 262
 263 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 264
 265 * picoJava architecture support added.
 266
 267 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 268
 269 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 270   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 271
 272 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 273
 274 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 275
 276 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 277
 278 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 279   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 280   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 281   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 282
 283 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 284
 285 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 286
 287 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 288
 289 * i960 ELF support added.
 290
 291 * ARM ELF support added.
 292
 293 Changes in 2.9:
 294
 295 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 296
 297 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 298   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 299
 300 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 301
 302 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 303   listing.
 304
 305 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 306
 307 Changes in 2.8:
 308
 309 * BeOS support added.
 310
 311 * MIPS16 support added.
 312
 313 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 314
 315 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 316
 317 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 318   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 319
 320 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 321   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 322   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 323   all.
 324
 325 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 326
 327 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 328   conditionals in listings.
 329
 330 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 331   the symbol is already defined.
 332
 333 Changes in 2.7:
 334
 335 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 336   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 337   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 338   added.
 339
 340 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 341
 342 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 343
 344 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 345
 346 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 347
 348 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 349
 350 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 351   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 352   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 353   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 354
 355 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 356
 357 Changes in 2.6:
 358
 359 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 360
 361 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 362   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 363   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 364
 365 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 366
 367 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 368
 369 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 370
 371 Changes in 2.4:
 372
 373 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 374
 375 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 376
 377 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 378   debugging support.
 379
 380 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 381
 382 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 383   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 384   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 385   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 386
 387 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 388
 389 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 390   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 391
 392 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 393
 394 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 395   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 396
 397 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 398   Paul Kranenburg.
 399
 400 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 401   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 402
 403 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 404
 405 Changes in 2.3:
 406
 407 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 408
 409 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 410
 411 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 412   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 413   again too.
 414
 415 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 416   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 417   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 418   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 419   in the "dist" directory.
 420
 421 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 422   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 423   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 424
 425 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 426   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 427   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 428   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 429
 430 * Irix 5 support.
 431
 432 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 433   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 434
 435 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 436   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 437   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 438   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 439
 440 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 441   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 442   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 443   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 444
 445 Changes in 2.2:
 446
 447 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 448
 449 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 450   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 451   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 452   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 453   reliable.
 454
 455 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 456   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 457   messages about "internal errors".
 458
 459 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 460   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 461
 462 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 463   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 464   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 465   known.
 466
 467 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 468   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 469   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 470   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 471   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 472   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 473   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 474
 475 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 476   support is in progress.
 477
 478 Changes in 2.1:
 479
 480 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 481   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 482
 483 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 484   with gcc now.
 485
 486 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 487   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 488
 489 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 490   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 491   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 492
 493 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 494
 495 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 496
 497 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 498
 499 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 500
 501 Changes in 2.0:
 502
 503 * Mostly bug fixes.
 504
 505 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 506
 507 Changes in 1.94:
 508
 509 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 510   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 511   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 512   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 513   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 514   fully merged yet.)
 515
 516 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 517   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 518
 519 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 520   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 521
 522 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 523   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 524   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 525   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 526   coming.
 527
 528 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 529
 530 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 531   Youngdale.
 532
 533 Changes in 1.93.01:
 534
 535 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 536
 537 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 538
 539 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 540   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 541   can be distinguished from the register.
 542
 543 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 544   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 545
 546 \f
 547 Local variables:
 548 fill-column: 79
 549 End: