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