gas/NEWS

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