gas/NEWS

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