gas/NEWS

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