gas/NEWS

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