gas/NEWS

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