gas/NEWS

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