gas/NEWS

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