gas/NEWS

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