gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
   4
   5 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
   6   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
   7
   8 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
   9
  10 Changes in 2.24:
  11
  12 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
  13
  14 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
  15   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
  16
  17 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
  18
  19 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
  20
  21 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
  22
  23 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
  24
  25 Changes in 2.23:
  26
  27 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
  28
  29 * Add support for S12X processor.
  30
  31 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
  32
  33 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
  34
  35 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
  36   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
  37
  38 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
  39
  40 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
  41
  42 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
  43
  44 Changes in 2.22:
  45
  46 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
  47
  48 Changes in 2.21:
  49
  50 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
  51
  52 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
  53
  54 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
  55   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
  56   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
  57   2.20.1.
  58
  59 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  60
  61 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  62   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  63   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  64   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  65
  66 Changes in 2.20:
  67
  68 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  69
  70 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  71   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  72   process.
  73
  74 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  75   in binary rather than text.
  76
  77 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  78
  79 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  80   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  81
  82 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  83
  84 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  85   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  86   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  87   the value.
  88
  89 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  90
  91 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  92
  93 Changes in 2.19:
  94
  95 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  96   tables without runtime relocation.
  97
  98 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  99   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 100
 101 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 102   targets.
 103
 104 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 105   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 106   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 107   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 108
 109 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 110   instructions with VEX prefix.
 111
 112 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 113
 114 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 115   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 116   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 117
 118 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 119   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 120
 121 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 122
 123 Changes in 2.18:
 124
 125 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 126
 127 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 128
 129 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 130   relocations.
 131
 132 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 133
 134 * Add support for Score target.
 135
 136 Changes in 2.17:
 137
 138 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 139
 140 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 141
 142 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 143
 144 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 145   switches can be read from <file>.
 146
 147 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 148   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 149   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 150
 151 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 152   documentation for how this works.
 153
 154 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 155   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 156   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 157
 158 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 159   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 160   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 161   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 162   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 163
 164 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 165   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 166   assembler.
 167
 168 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 169
 170 Changes in 2.16:
 171
 172 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 173
 174 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 175
 176 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 177   targets.
 178
 179 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 180   mode.
 181
 182 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 183
 184 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 185
 186 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 187   preferred debug format.
 188
 189 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 190
 191 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 192
 193 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 194   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 195
 196 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 197
 198 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 199   instrucitons.
 200
 201 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 202
 203 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 204   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 205
 206 Changes in 2.15:
 207
 208 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 209   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 210
 211 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 212
 213 * Added support for ARM V6.
 214
 215 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 216
 217 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 218
 219 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 220   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 221
 222 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 223   definitions created by ".req".
 224
 225 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 226
 227 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 228   information with GNU extensions.
 229
 230 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 231
 232 * Added support for v850e1.
 233
 234 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 235   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 236   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 237   switch disables the optimization.
 238
 239 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 240   existing -non_shared option.
 241
 242 Changes in 2.14:
 243
 244 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 245
 246 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 247
 248 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 249
 250 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 251   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 252
 253 * Support for SH2E added.
 254
 255 * GASP has now been removed.
 256
 257 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 258   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 259
 260 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 261
 262 Changes in 2.13:
 263
 264 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 265   and FR500 included.
 266
 267 * Support for DLX processor added.
 268
 269 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 270   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 271
 272 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 273   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 274   the currently specified base.
 275
 276 Changes in 2.12:
 277
 278 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 279
 280 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 281
 282 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 283   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 284   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 285   compatibility.
 286
 287 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 288   the ARM assembler.
 289
 290 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 291   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 292
 293 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 294   but still works for compatability.
 295
 296 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 297   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 298   -n will turn on the warning.
 299
 300 Changes in 2.11:
 301
 302 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 303
 304 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 305
 306 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 307
 308 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 309
 310 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 311
 312 * Support for IA-64.
 313
 314 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 315
 316 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 317
 318 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 319
 320 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 321   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 322   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 323
 324 Changes in 2.10:
 325
 326 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 327   operand when altering the flags field.
 328
 329 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 330
 331 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 332
 333 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 334
 335 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 336
 337 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 338
 339 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 340
 341 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 342
 343 * picoJava architecture support added.
 344
 345 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 346
 347 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 348   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 349
 350 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 351
 352 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 353
 354 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 355
 356 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 357   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 358   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 359   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 360
 361 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 362
 363 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 364
 365 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 366
 367 * i960 ELF support added.
 368
 369 * ARM ELF support added.
 370
 371 Changes in 2.9:
 372
 373 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 374
 375 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 376   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 377
 378 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 379
 380 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 381   listing.
 382
 383 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 384
 385 Changes in 2.8:
 386
 387 * BeOS support added.
 388
 389 * MIPS16 support added.
 390
 391 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 392
 393 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 394
 395 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 396   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 397
 398 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 399   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 400   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 401   all.
 402
 403 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 404
 405 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 406   conditionals in listings.
 407
 408 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 409   the symbol is already defined.
 410
 411 Changes in 2.7:
 412
 413 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 414   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 415   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 416   added.
 417
 418 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 419
 420 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 421
 422 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 423
 424 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 425
 426 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 427
 428 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 429   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 430   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 431   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 432
 433 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 434
 435 Changes in 2.6:
 436
 437 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 438
 439 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 440   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 441   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 442
 443 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 444
 445 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 446
 447 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 448
 449 Changes in 2.4:
 450
 451 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 452
 453 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 454
 455 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 456   debugging support.
 457
 458 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 459
 460 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 461   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 462   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 463   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 464
 465 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 466
 467 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 468   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 469
 470 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 471
 472 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 473   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 474
 475 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 476   Paul Kranenburg.
 477
 478 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 479   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 480
 481 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 482
 483 Changes in 2.3:
 484
 485 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 486
 487 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 488
 489 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 490   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 491   again too.
 492
 493 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 494   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 495   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 496   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 497   in the "dist" directory.
 498
 499 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 500   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 501   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 502
 503 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 504   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 505   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 506   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 507
 508 * Irix 5 support.
 509
 510 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 511   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 512
 513 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 514   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 515   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 516   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 517
 518 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 519   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 520   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 521   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 522
 523 Changes in 2.2:
 524
 525 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 526
 527 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 528   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 529   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 530   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 531   reliable.
 532
 533 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 534   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 535   messages about "internal errors".
 536
 537 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 538   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 539
 540 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 541   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 542   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 543   known.
 544
 545 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 546   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 547   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 548   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 549   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 550   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 551   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 552
 553 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 554   support is in progress.
 555
 556 Changes in 2.1:
 557
 558 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 559   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 560
 561 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 562   with gcc now.
 563
 564 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 565   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 566
 567 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 568   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 569   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 570
 571 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 572
 573 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 574
 575 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 576
 577 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 578
 579 Changes in 2.0:
 580
 581 * Mostly bug fixes.
 582
 583 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 584
 585 Changes in 1.94:
 586
 587 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 588   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 589   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 590   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 591   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 592   fully merged yet.)
 593
 594 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 595   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 596
 597 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 598   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 599
 600 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 601   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 602   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 603   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 604   coming.
 605
 606 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 607
 608 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 609   Youngdale.
 610
 611 Changes in 1.93.01:
 612
 613 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 614
 615 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 616
 617 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 618   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 619   can be distinguished from the register.
 620
 621 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 622   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 623
 624 \f
 625 Copyright (C) 2012-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 626
 627 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 628 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 629 notice and this notice are preserved.
 630
 631 Local variables:
 632 fill-column: 79
 633 End: