gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for .nop directive.  It is currently supported only for
   4   x86 targets.
   5
   6 Changes in 2.30:
   7
   8 * Add support for loaction views in DWARF debug line information.
   9
  10 Changes in 2.29:
  11
  12 * Add support for ELF SHF_GNU_MBIND.
  13
  14 * Add support for the WebAssembly file format and wasm32 ELF conversion.
  15
  16 * PowerPC gas now checks that the correct register class is used in
  17   instructions.  For instance, "addi %f4,%cr3,%r31" warns three times
  18   that the registers are invalid.
  19
  20 * Add support for the Texas Instruments PRU processor.
  21
  22 * Support for the ARMv8-R architecture and Cortex-R52 processor has been
  23   added to the ARM port.
  24
  25 Changes in 2.28:
  26
  27 * Add support for the RISC-V architecture.
  28
  29 * Add support for the ARM Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 processors.
  30
  31 Changes in 2.27:
  32
  33 * Default to --enable-compressed-debug-sections=gas for Linux/x86 targets.
  34
  35 * Add --no-pad-sections to stop the assembler from padding the end of output
  36   sections up to their alignment boundary.
  37
  38 * Support for the ARMv8-M architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
  39   for the ARMv8-M Security and DSP Extensions has also been added to the ARM
  40   port.
  41
  42 * ARC backend accepts .extInstruction, .extCondCode, .extAuxRegister, and
  43   .extCoreRegister pseudo-ops that allow an user to define custom
  44   instructions, conditional codes, auxiliary and core registers.
  45
  46 * Add a configure option --enable-elf-stt-common to decide whether ELF
  47   assembler should generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type by
  48   default.  Default to no.
  49
  50 * New command line option --elf-stt-common= for ELF targets to control
  51   whether to generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type.
  52
  53 * Add ability to set section flags and types via numeric values for ELF
  54   based targets.
  55
  56 * Add a configure option --enable-x86-relax-relocations to decide whether
  57   x86 assembler should generate relax relocations by default.  Default to
  58   yes, except for x86 Solaris targets older than Solaris 12.
  59
  60 * New command line option -mrelax-relocations= for x86 target to control
  61   whether to generate relax relocations.
  62
  63 * New command line option -mfence-as-lock-add=yes for x86 target to encode
  64   lfence, mfence and sfence as "lock addl $0x0, (%[re]sp)".
  65
  66 * Add assembly-time relaxation option for ARC cpus.
  67
  68 * Add --with-cpu=TYPE configure option for ARC gas.  This allows the default
  69   cpu type to be adjusted at configure time.
  70
  71 Changes in 2.26:
  72
  73 * Add a configure option --enable-compressed-debug-sections={all,gas} to
  74   decide whether DWARF debug sections should be compressed by default.
  75
  76 * Add support for the ARC EM/HS, and ARC600/700 architectures.  Remove
  77   assembler support for Argonaut RISC architectures.
  78
  79 * Symbol and label names can now be enclosed in double quotes (") which allows
  80   them to contain characters that are not part of valid symbol names in high
  81   level languages.
  82
  83 * Added the correctly spelled -march=armv6kz, for ARMv6KZ support.  The
  84   previous spelling, -march=armv6zk, is still accepted.
  85
  86 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the Aarch64 port.
  87   Support for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD, LOR and PAN architecture
  88   extensions has also been added to the Aarch64 port.
  89
  90 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
  91   for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD and PAN architecture extensions has also
  92   been added to the ARM port.
  93
  94 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
  95   --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
  96   targets.
  97
  98 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
  99
 100 Changes in 2.25:
 101
 102 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
 103
 104 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
 105
 106 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
 107   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
 108
 109 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
 110
 111 Changes in 2.24:
 112
 113 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
 114
 115 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
 116   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
 117
 118 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
 119
 120 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
 121
 122 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
 123
 124 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
 125
 126 Changes in 2.23:
 127
 128 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
 129
 130 * Add support for S12X processor.
 131
 132 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
 133
 134 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
 135
 136 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
 137   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
 138
 139 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
 140
 141 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
 142
 143 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
 144
 145 Changes in 2.22:
 146
 147 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
 148
 149 Changes in 2.21:
 150
 151 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
 152
 153 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
 154
 155 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
 156   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
 157   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
 158   2.20.1.
 159
 160 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
 161
 162 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
 163   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
 164   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
 165   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
 166
 167 Changes in 2.20:
 168
 169 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
 170
 171 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
 172   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
 173   process.
 174
 175 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
 176   in binary rather than text.
 177
 178 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
 179
 180 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
 181   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
 182
 183 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
 184
 185 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
 186   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
 187   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
 188   the value.
 189
 190 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
 191
 192 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
 193
 194 Changes in 2.19:
 195
 196 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
 197   tables without runtime relocation.
 198
 199 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
 200   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 201
 202 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 203   targets.
 204
 205 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 206   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 207   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 208   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 209
 210 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 211   instructions with VEX prefix.
 212
 213 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 214
 215 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 216   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 217   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 218
 219 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 220   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 221
 222 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 223
 224 Changes in 2.18:
 225
 226 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 227
 228 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 229
 230 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 231   relocations.
 232
 233 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 234
 235 * Add support for Score target.
 236
 237 Changes in 2.17:
 238
 239 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 240
 241 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 242
 243 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 244
 245 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 246   switches can be read from <file>.
 247
 248 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 249   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 250   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 251
 252 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 253   documentation for how this works.
 254
 255 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 256   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 257   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 258
 259 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 260   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 261   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 262   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 263   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 264
 265 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 266   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 267   assembler.
 268
 269 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 270
 271 Changes in 2.16:
 272
 273 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 274
 275 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 276
 277 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 278   targets.
 279
 280 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 281   mode.
 282
 283 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 284
 285 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 286
 287 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 288   preferred debug format.
 289
 290 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 291
 292 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 293
 294 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 295   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 296
 297 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 298
 299 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 300   instrucitons.
 301
 302 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 303
 304 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 305   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 306
 307 Changes in 2.15:
 308
 309 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 310   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 311
 312 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 313
 314 * Added support for ARM V6.
 315
 316 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 317
 318 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 319
 320 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 321   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 322
 323 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 324   definitions created by ".req".
 325
 326 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 327
 328 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 329   information with GNU extensions.
 330
 331 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 332
 333 * Added support for v850e1.
 334
 335 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 336   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 337   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 338   switch disables the optimization.
 339
 340 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 341   existing -non_shared option.
 342
 343 Changes in 2.14:
 344
 345 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 346
 347 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 348
 349 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 350
 351 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 352   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 353
 354 * Support for SH2E added.
 355
 356 * GASP has now been removed.
 357
 358 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 359   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 360
 361 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 362
 363 Changes in 2.13:
 364
 365 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 366   and FR500 included.
 367
 368 * Support for DLX processor added.
 369
 370 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 371   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 372
 373 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 374   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 375   the currently specified base.
 376
 377 Changes in 2.12:
 378
 379 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 380
 381 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 382
 383 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 384   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 385   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 386   compatibility.
 387
 388 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 389   the ARM assembler.
 390
 391 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 392   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 393
 394 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 395   but still works for compatability.
 396
 397 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 398   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 399   -n will turn on the warning.
 400
 401 Changes in 2.11:
 402
 403 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 404
 405 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 406
 407 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 408
 409 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 410
 411 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 412
 413 * Support for IA-64.
 414
 415 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 416
 417 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 418
 419 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 420
 421 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 422   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 423   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 424
 425 Changes in 2.10:
 426
 427 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 428   operand when altering the flags field.
 429
 430 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 431
 432 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 433
 434 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 435
 436 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 437
 438 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 439
 440 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 441
 442 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 443
 444 * picoJava architecture support added.
 445
 446 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 447
 448 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 449   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 450
 451 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 452
 453 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 454
 455 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 456
 457 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 458   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 459   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 460   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 461
 462 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 463
 464 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 465
 466 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 467
 468 * i960 ELF support added.
 469
 470 * ARM ELF support added.
 471
 472 Changes in 2.9:
 473
 474 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 475
 476 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 477   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 478
 479 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 480
 481 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 482   listing.
 483
 484 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 485
 486 Changes in 2.8:
 487
 488 * BeOS support added.
 489
 490 * MIPS16 support added.
 491
 492 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 493
 494 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 495
 496 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 497   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 498
 499 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 500   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 501   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 502   all.
 503
 504 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 505
 506 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 507   conditionals in listings.
 508
 509 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 510   the symbol is already defined.
 511
 512 Changes in 2.7:
 513
 514 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 515   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 516   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 517   added.
 518
 519 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 520
 521 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 522
 523 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 524
 525 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 526
 527 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 528
 529 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 530   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 531   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 532   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 533
 534 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 535
 536 Changes in 2.6:
 537
 538 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 539
 540 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 541   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 542   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 543
 544 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 545
 546 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 547
 548 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 549
 550 Changes in 2.4:
 551
 552 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 553
 554 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 555
 556 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 557   debugging support.
 558
 559 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 560
 561 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 562   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 563   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 564   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 565
 566 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 567
 568 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 569   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 570
 571 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 572
 573 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 574   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 575
 576 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 577   Paul Kranenburg.
 578
 579 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 580   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 581
 582 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 583
 584 Changes in 2.3:
 585
 586 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 587
 588 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 589
 590 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 591   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 592   again too.
 593
 594 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 595   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 596   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 597   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 598   in the "dist" directory.
 599
 600 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 601   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 602   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 603
 604 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 605   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 606   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 607   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 608
 609 * Irix 5 support.
 610
 611 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 612   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 613
 614 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 615   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 616   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 617   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 618
 619 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 620   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 621   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 622   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 623
 624 Changes in 2.2:
 625
 626 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 627
 628 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 629   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 630   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 631   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 632   reliable.
 633
 634 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 635   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 636   messages about "internal errors".
 637
 638 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 639   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 640
 641 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 642   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 643   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 644   known.
 645
 646 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 647   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 648   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 649   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 650   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 651   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 652   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 653
 654 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 655   support is in progress.
 656
 657 Changes in 2.1:
 658
 659 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 660   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 661
 662 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 663   with gcc now.
 664
 665 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 666   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 667
 668 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 669   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 670   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 671
 672 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 673
 674 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 675
 676 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 677
 678 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 679
 680 Changes in 2.0:
 681
 682 * Mostly bug fixes.
 683
 684 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 685
 686 Changes in 1.94:
 687
 688 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 689   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 690   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 691   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 692   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 693   fully merged yet.)
 694
 695 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 696   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 697
 698 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 699   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 700
 701 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 702   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 703   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 704   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 705   coming.
 706
 707 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 708
 709 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 710   Youngdale.
 711
 712 Changes in 1.93.01:
 713
 714 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 715
 716 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 717
 718 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 719   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 720   can be distinguished from the register.
 721
 722 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 723   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 724
 725 \f
 726 Copyright (C) 2012-2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 727
 728 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 729 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 730 notice and this notice are preserved.
 731
 732 Local variables:
 733 fill-column: 79
 734 End: