gas/NEWS

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