gas/NEWS

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