gas/NEWS

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