gas/NEWS

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