gas/NEWS

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