gas/NEWS

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