gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.34:
   4
   5 * Add -malign-branch-boundary=NUM, -malign-branch=TYPE[+TYPE...],
   6   -malign-branch-prefix-size=NUM and -mbranches-within-32B-boundaries
   7   options to x86 assembler to align branches within a fixed boundary
   8   with segment prefixes or NOPs.
   9
  10 * Add support for Zilog eZ80 and Zilog Z180 CPUs.
  11
  12 * Add support for z80-elf target.
  13
  14 * Add support for relocation of each byte or word of multibyte value to Z80
  15   targets (just use right shift to 0, 8, 16, or 24 bits or AND operation
  16   with 0xff/0xffff mask): ld a, label >> 16 \ ld hl, label & 0xffff
  17
  18 * Add SDCC support for Z80 targets.
  19
  20 Changes in 2.33:
  21
  22 * Add support for the Arm Scalable Vector Extension version 2 (SVE2)
  23   instructions.
  24
  25 * Add support for the Arm Transactional Memory Extension (TME)
  26   instructions.
  27
  28 * Add support for the Armv8.1-M Mainline and M-profile Vector Extension (MVE)
  29   instructions.
  30
  31 * For MIPS, Add -m[no-]fix-loongson3-llsc option to fix (or not) Loongson3
  32   LLSC Errata.  Add a --enable-mips-fix-loongson3-llsc=[yes|no] configure
  33   time option to set the default behavior. Set the default if the configure
  34   option is not used to "no".
  35
  36 * Add support for the Arm Cortex-A76AE, Cortex-A77 and Cortex-M35P
  37   processors.
  38
  39 * Add support for the AArch64 Cortex-A34, Cortex-A65, Cortex-A65AE,
  40   Cortex-A76AE, and Cortex-A77 processors.
  41
  42 * Add .float16 directive for both Arm and AArch64 to allow encoding of 16-bit
  43   floating point literals.  Add .float16_format directive and
  44   -mfp16-format=[ieee|alternative] option for Arm to control the format of the
  45   encoding.
  46
  47 * Add --gdwarf-cie-version command line flag.  This allows control over which
  48   version of DWARF CIE the assembler creates.
  49
  50 Changes in 2.32:
  51
  52 * Add -mvexwig=[0|1] option to x86 assembler to control encoding of
  53   VEX.W-ignored (WIG) VEX instructions.
  54
  55 * Add -mx86-used-note=[yes|no] option to generate (or not) x86 GNU property
  56   notes.  Add a --enable-x86-used-note configure time option to set the
  57   default behavior.  Set the default if the configure option is not used
  58   to "no".
  59
  60 * Add support for the MIPS Loongson EXTensions R2 (EXT2) instructions.
  61
  62 * Add support for the MIPS Loongson EXTensions (EXT) instructions.
  63
  64 * Add support for the MIPS Loongson Content Address Memory (CAM) ASE.
  65
  66 * Add support for the C-SKY processor series.
  67
  68 * Add support for the MIPS Loongson MultiMedia extensions Instructions (MMI)
  69   ASE.
  70
  71 Changes in 2.31:
  72
  73 * The ADR and ADRL pseudo-instructions supported by the ARM assembler
  74   now only set the bottom bit of the address of thumb function symbols
  75   if the -mthumb-interwork command line option is active.
  76
  77 * Add support for the MIPS Global INValidate (GINV) ASE.
  78
  79 * Add support for the MIPS Cyclic Redudancy Check (CRC) ASE.
  80
  81 * Add support for the Freescale S12Z architecture.
  82
  83 * Add --generate-missing-build-notes=[yes|no] option to create (or not) GNU
  84   Build Attribute notes if none are present in the input sources.  Add a
  85   --enable-generate-build-notes=[yes|no] configure time option to set the
  86   default behaviour.  Set the default if the configure option is not used
  87   to "no".
  88
  89 * Remove -mold-gcc command-line option for x86 targets.
  90
  91 * Add -O[2|s] command-line options to x86 assembler to enable alternate
  92   shorter instruction encoding.
  93
  94 * Add support for .nops directive.  It is currently supported only for
  95   x86 targets.
  96
  97 Changes in 2.30:
  98
  99 * Add support for loaction views in DWARF debug line information.
 100
 101 Changes in 2.29:
 102
 103 * Add support for ELF SHF_GNU_MBIND.
 104
 105 * Add support for the WebAssembly file format and wasm32 ELF conversion.
 106
 107 * PowerPC gas now checks that the correct register class is used in
 108   instructions.  For instance, "addi %f4,%cr3,%r31" warns three times
 109   that the registers are invalid.
 110
 111 * Add support for the Texas Instruments PRU processor.
 112
 113 * Support for the ARMv8-R architecture and Cortex-R52 processor has been
 114   added to the ARM port.
 115
 116 Changes in 2.28:
 117
 118 * Add support for the RISC-V architecture.
 119
 120 * Add support for the ARM Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 processors.
 121
 122 Changes in 2.27:
 123
 124 * Default to --enable-compressed-debug-sections=gas for Linux/x86 targets.
 125
 126 * Add --no-pad-sections to stop the assembler from padding the end of output
 127   sections up to their alignment boundary.
 128
 129 * Support for the ARMv8-M architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
 130   for the ARMv8-M Security and DSP Extensions has also been added to the ARM
 131   port.
 132
 133 * ARC backend accepts .extInstruction, .extCondCode, .extAuxRegister, and
 134   .extCoreRegister pseudo-ops that allow an user to define custom
 135   instructions, conditional codes, auxiliary and core registers.
 136
 137 * Add a configure option --enable-elf-stt-common to decide whether ELF
 138   assembler should generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type by
 139   default.  Default to no.
 140
 141 * New command-line option --elf-stt-common= for ELF targets to control
 142   whether to generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type.
 143
 144 * Add ability to set section flags and types via numeric values for ELF
 145   based targets.
 146
 147 * Add a configure option --enable-x86-relax-relocations to decide whether
 148   x86 assembler should generate relax relocations by default.  Default to
 149   yes, except for x86 Solaris targets older than Solaris 12.
 150
 151 * New command-line option -mrelax-relocations= for x86 target to control
 152   whether to generate relax relocations.
 153
 154 * New command-line option -mfence-as-lock-add=yes for x86 target to encode
 155   lfence, mfence and sfence as "lock addl $0x0, (%[re]sp)".
 156
 157 * Add assembly-time relaxation option for ARC cpus.
 158
 159 * Add --with-cpu=TYPE configure option for ARC gas.  This allows the default
 160   cpu type to be adjusted at configure time.
 161
 162 Changes in 2.26:
 163
 164 * Add a configure option --enable-compressed-debug-sections={all,gas} to
 165   decide whether DWARF debug sections should be compressed by default.
 166
 167 * Add support for the ARC EM/HS, and ARC600/700 architectures.  Remove
 168   assembler support for Argonaut RISC architectures.
 169
 170 * Symbol and label names can now be enclosed in double quotes (") which allows
 171   them to contain characters that are not part of valid symbol names in high
 172   level languages.
 173
 174 * Added the correctly spelled -march=armv6kz, for ARMv6KZ support.  The
 175   previous spelling, -march=armv6zk, is still accepted.
 176
 177 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the Aarch64 port.
 178   Support for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD, LOR and PAN architecture
 179   extensions has also been added to the Aarch64 port.
 180
 181 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
 182   for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD and PAN architecture extensions has also
 183   been added to the ARM port.
 184
 185 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
 186   --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
 187   targets.
 188
 189 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
 190
 191 Changes in 2.25:
 192
 193 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
 194
 195 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
 196
 197 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
 198   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command-line option -mccs.
 199
 200 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
 201
 202 Changes in 2.24:
 203
 204 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
 205
 206 * Add -gdwarf-sections command-line option to enable per-code-section
 207   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
 208
 209 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
 210
 211 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
 212
 213 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
 214
 215 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
 216
 217 Changes in 2.23:
 218
 219 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
 220
 221 * Add support for S12X processor.
 222
 223 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
 224
 225 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
 226
 227 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
 228   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
 229
 230 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
 231
 232 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
 233
 234 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
 235
 236 Changes in 2.22:
 237
 238 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
 239
 240 Changes in 2.21:
 241
 242 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
 243
 244 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
 245
 246 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
 247   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
 248   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
 249   2.20.1.
 250
 251 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
 252
 253 * New command-line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
 254   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
 255   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
 256   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
 257
 258 Changes in 2.20:
 259
 260 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
 261
 262 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
 263   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
 264   process.
 265
 266 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
 267   in binary rather than text.
 268
 269 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
 270
 271 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
 272   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
 273
 274 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
 275
 276 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
 277   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
 278   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
 279   the value.
 280
 281 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
 282
 283 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
 284
 285 Changes in 2.19:
 286
 287 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
 288   tables without runtime relocation.
 289
 290 * New command-line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
 291   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 292
 293 * New command-line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 294   targets.
 295
 296 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command-line switch to
 297   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 298   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 299   command-line options used, and a time stamp.
 300
 301 * New command-line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 302   instructions with VEX prefix.
 303
 304 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 305
 306 * New command-line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 307   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 308   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 309
 310 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 311   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 312
 313 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 314
 315 Changes in 2.18:
 316
 317 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 318
 319 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 320
 321 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 322   relocations.
 323
 324 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 325
 326 * Add support for Score target.
 327
 328 Changes in 2.17:
 329
 330 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 331
 332 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 333
 334 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 335
 336 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 337   switches can be read from <file>.
 338
 339 * The SH target supports a new command-line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 340   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 341   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 342
 343 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 344   documentation for how this works.
 345
 346 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 347   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 348   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 349
 350 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 351   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 352   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 353   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 354   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 355
 356 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 357   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 358   assembler.
 359
 360 * New command-line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 361
 362 Changes in 2.16:
 363
 364 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 365
 366 * New command-line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 367
 368 * New command-line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 369   targets.
 370
 371 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 372   mode.
 373
 374 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 375
 376 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 377
 378 * Add a -g command-line option to generate debug information in the target's
 379   preferred debug format.
 380
 381 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 382
 383 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 384
 385 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 386   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 387
 388 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 389
 390 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 391   instrucitons.
 392
 393 * New command-line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 394
 395 * New command-line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 396   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 397
 398 Changes in 2.15:
 399
 400 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 401   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 402
 403 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 404
 405 * Added support for ARM V6.
 406
 407 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 408
 409 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 410
 411 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 412   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 413
 414 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 415   definitions created by ".req".
 416
 417 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 418
 419 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 420   information with GNU extensions.
 421
 422 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 423
 424 * Added support for v850e1.
 425
 426 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 427   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 428   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 429   switch disables the optimization.
 430
 431 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 432   existing -non_shared option.
 433
 434 Changes in 2.14:
 435
 436 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 437
 438 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 439
 440 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 441
 442 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 443   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 444
 445 * Support for SH2E added.
 446
 447 * GASP has now been removed.
 448
 449 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 450   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 451
 452 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 453
 454 Changes in 2.13:
 455
 456 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 457   and FR500 included.
 458
 459 * Support for DLX processor added.
 460
 461 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 462   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 463
 464 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 465   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 466   the currently specified base.
 467
 468 Changes in 2.12:
 469
 470 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 471
 472 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 473
 474 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 475   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 476   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 477   compatibility.
 478
 479 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 480   the ARM assembler.
 481
 482 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 483   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 484
 485 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 486   but still works for compatability.
 487
 488 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 489   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command-line option
 490   -n will turn on the warning.
 491
 492 Changes in 2.11:
 493
 494 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 495
 496 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 497
 498 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 499
 500 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 501
 502 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 503
 504 * Support for IA-64.
 505
 506 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 507
 508 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 509
 510 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 511
 512 * x86 gas -q command-line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 513   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 514   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 515
 516 Changes in 2.10:
 517
 518 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 519   operand when altering the flags field.
 520
 521 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 522
 523 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 524
 525 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 526
 527 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 528
 529 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 530
 531 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 532
 533 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 534
 535 * picoJava architecture support added.
 536
 537 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 538
 539 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 540   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 541
 542 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 543
 544 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 545
 546 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 547
 548 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 549   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 550   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 551   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 552
 553 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 554
 555 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 556
 557 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 558
 559 * i960 ELF support added.
 560
 561 * ARM ELF support added.
 562
 563 Changes in 2.9:
 564
 565 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 566
 567 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 568   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 569
 570 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 571
 572 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 573   listing.
 574
 575 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 576
 577 Changes in 2.8:
 578
 579 * BeOS support added.
 580
 581 * MIPS16 support added.
 582
 583 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 584
 585 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 586
 587 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 588   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 589
 590 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 591   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 592   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 593   all.
 594
 595 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 596
 597 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 598   conditionals in listings.
 599
 600 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 601   the symbol is already defined.
 602
 603 Changes in 2.7:
 604
 605 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 606   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 607   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 608   added.
 609
 610 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 611
 612 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 613
 614 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 615
 616 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 617
 618 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 619
 620 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 621   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 622   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 623   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 624
 625 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 626
 627 Changes in 2.6:
 628
 629 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 630
 631 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 632   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 633   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 634
 635 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 636
 637 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 638
 639 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 640
 641 Changes in 2.4:
 642
 643 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 644
 645 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 646
 647 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 648   debugging support.
 649
 650 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 651
 652 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 653   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 654   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 655   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 656
 657 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 658
 659 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 660   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 661
 662 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 663
 664 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 665   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 666
 667 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 668   Paul Kranenburg.
 669
 670 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 671   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 672
 673 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 674
 675 Changes in 2.3:
 676
 677 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 678
 679 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 680
 681 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 682   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 683   again too.
 684
 685 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 686   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 687   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 688   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 689   in the "dist" directory.
 690
 691 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 692   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 693   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 694
 695 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 696   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 697   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 698   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 699
 700 * Irix 5 support.
 701
 702 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 703   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 704
 705 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 706   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 707   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 708   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 709
 710 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 711   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 712   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 713   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 714
 715 Changes in 2.2:
 716
 717 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 718
 719 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 720   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 721   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 722   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 723   reliable.
 724
 725 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 726   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 727   messages about "internal errors".
 728
 729 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 730   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 731
 732 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 733   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 734   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 735   known.
 736
 737 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 738   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 739   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 740   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 741   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 742   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 743   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 744
 745 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 746   support is in progress.
 747
 748 Changes in 2.1:
 749
 750 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 751   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 752
 753 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 754   with gcc now.
 755
 756 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 757   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 758
 759 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 760   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 761   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 762
 763 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 764
 765 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 766
 767 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 768
 769 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 770
 771 Changes in 2.0:
 772
 773 * Mostly bug fixes.
 774
 775 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 776
 777 Changes in 1.94:
 778
 779 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 780   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 781   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 782   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 783   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 784   fully merged yet.)
 785
 786 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 787   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 788
 789 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 790   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 791
 792 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 793   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 794   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 795   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 796   coming.
 797
 798 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 799
 800 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 801   Youngdale.
 802
 803 Changes in 1.93.01:
 804
 805 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 806
 807 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 808
 809 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 810   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 811   can be distinguished from the register.
 812
 813 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 814   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 815
 816 \f
 817 Copyright (C) 2012-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 818
 819 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 820 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 821 notice and this notice are preserved.
 822
 823 Local variables:
 824 fill-column: 79
 825 End: