gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
   4
   5 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
   6   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
   7   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
   8   2.20.1.
   9
  10 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  11
  12 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  13   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  14   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  15   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  16
  17 Changes in 2.20:
  18
  19 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  20
  21 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  22   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  23   process.
  24
  25 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  26   in binary rather than text.
  27
  28 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  29
  30 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  31   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  32
  33 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  34
  35 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  36   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  37   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  38   the value.
  39
  40 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  41
  42 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  43
  44 Changes in 2.19:
  45
  46 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  47   tables without runtime relocation.
  48
  49 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  50   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  51
  52 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  53   targets.
  54
  55 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
  56   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
  57   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
  58   command line options used, and a time stamp.
  59
  60 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
  61   instructions with VEX prefix.
  62
  63 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
  64
  65 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
  66   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
  67   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
  68
  69 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
  70   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
  71
  72 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
  73
  74 Changes in 2.18:
  75
  76 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
  77
  78 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
  79
  80 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
  81   relocations.
  82
  83 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
  84
  85 * Add support for Score target.
  86
  87 Changes in 2.17:
  88
  89 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
  90
  91 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
  92
  93 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
  94
  95 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
  96   switches can be read from <file>.
  97
  98 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
  99   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 100   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 101
 102 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 103   documentation for how this works.
 104
 105 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 106   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 107   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 108
 109 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 110   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 111   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 112   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 113   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 114
 115 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 116   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 117   assembler.
 118
 119 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 120
 121 Changes in 2.16:
 122
 123 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 124
 125 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 126
 127 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 128   targets.
 129
 130 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 131   mode.
 132
 133 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 134
 135 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 136
 137 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 138   preferred debug format.
 139
 140 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 141
 142 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 143
 144 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 145   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 146
 147 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 148
 149 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 150   instrucitons.
 151
 152 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 153
 154 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 155   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 156
 157 Changes in 2.15:
 158
 159 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 160   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 161
 162 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 163
 164 * Added support for ARM V6.
 165
 166 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 167
 168 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 169
 170 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 171   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 172
 173 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 174   definitions created by ".req".
 175
 176 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 177
 178 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 179   information with GNU extensions.
 180
 181 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 182
 183 * Added support for v850e1.
 184
 185 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 186   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 187   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 188   switch disables the optimization.
 189
 190 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 191   existing -non_shared option.
 192
 193 Changes in 2.14:
 194
 195 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 196
 197 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 198
 199 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 200
 201 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 202   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 203
 204 * Support for SH2E added.
 205
 206 * GASP has now been removed.
 207
 208 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 209   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 210
 211 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 212
 213 Changes in 2.13:
 214
 215 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 216   and FR500 included.
 217
 218 * Support for DLX processor added.
 219
 220 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 221   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 222
 223 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 224   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 225   the currently specified base.
 226
 227 Changes in 2.12:
 228
 229 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 230
 231 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 232
 233 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 234   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 235   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 236   compatibility.
 237
 238 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 239   the ARM assembler.
 240
 241 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 242   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 243
 244 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 245   but still works for compatability.
 246
 247 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 248   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 249   -n will turn on the warning.
 250
 251 Changes in 2.11:
 252
 253 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 254
 255 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 256
 257 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 258
 259 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 260
 261 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 262
 263 * Support for IA-64.
 264
 265 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 266
 267 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 268
 269 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 270
 271 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 272   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 273   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 274
 275 Changes in 2.10:
 276
 277 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 278   operand when altering the flags field.
 279
 280 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 281
 282 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 283
 284 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 285
 286 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 287
 288 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 289
 290 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 291
 292 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 293
 294 * picoJava architecture support added.
 295
 296 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 297
 298 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 299   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 300
 301 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 302
 303 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 304
 305 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 306
 307 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 308   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 309   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 310   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 311
 312 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 313
 314 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 315
 316 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 317
 318 * i960 ELF support added.
 319
 320 * ARM ELF support added.
 321
 322 Changes in 2.9:
 323
 324 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 325
 326 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 327   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 328
 329 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 330
 331 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 332   listing.
 333
 334 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 335
 336 Changes in 2.8:
 337
 338 * BeOS support added.
 339
 340 * MIPS16 support added.
 341
 342 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 343
 344 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 345
 346 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 347   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 348
 349 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 350   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 351   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 352   all.
 353
 354 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 355
 356 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 357   conditionals in listings.
 358
 359 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 360   the symbol is already defined.
 361
 362 Changes in 2.7:
 363
 364 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 365   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 366   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 367   added.
 368
 369 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 370
 371 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 372
 373 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 374
 375 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 376
 377 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 378
 379 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 380   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 381   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 382   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 383
 384 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 385
 386 Changes in 2.6:
 387
 388 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 389
 390 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 391   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 392   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 393
 394 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 395
 396 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 397
 398 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 399
 400 Changes in 2.4:
 401
 402 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 403
 404 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 405
 406 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 407   debugging support.
 408
 409 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 410
 411 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 412   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 413   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 414   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 415
 416 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 417
 418 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 419   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 420
 421 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 422
 423 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 424   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 425
 426 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 427   Paul Kranenburg.
 428
 429 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 430   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 431
 432 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 433
 434 Changes in 2.3:
 435
 436 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 437
 438 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 439
 440 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 441   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 442   again too.
 443
 444 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 445   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 446   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 447   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 448   in the "dist" directory.
 449
 450 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 451   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 452   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 453
 454 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 455   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 456   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 457   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 458
 459 * Irix 5 support.
 460
 461 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 462   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 463
 464 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 465   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 466   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 467   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 468
 469 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 470   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 471   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 472   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 473
 474 Changes in 2.2:
 475
 476 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 477
 478 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 479   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 480   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 481   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 482   reliable.
 483
 484 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 485   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 486   messages about "internal errors".
 487
 488 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 489   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 490
 491 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 492   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 493   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 494   known.
 495
 496 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 497   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 498   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 499   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 500   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 501   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 502   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 503
 504 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 505   support is in progress.
 506
 507 Changes in 2.1:
 508
 509 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 510   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 511
 512 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 513   with gcc now.
 514
 515 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 516   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 517
 518 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 519   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 520   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 521
 522 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 523
 524 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 525
 526 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 527
 528 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 529
 530 Changes in 2.0:
 531
 532 * Mostly bug fixes.
 533
 534 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 535
 536 Changes in 1.94:
 537
 538 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 539   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 540   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 541   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 542   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 543   fully merged yet.)
 544
 545 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 546   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 547
 548 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 549   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 550
 551 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 552   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 553   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 554   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 555   coming.
 556
 557 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 558
 559 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 560   Youngdale.
 561
 562 Changes in 1.93.01:
 563
 564 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 565
 566 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 567
 568 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 569   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 570   can be distinguished from the register.
 571
 572 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 573   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 574
 575 \f
 576 Local variables:
 577 fill-column: 79
 578 End: