gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.10:
   4
   5 Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
   6
   7 Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
   8 produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions of
   9 gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with older
  10 versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
  11
  12 Changes in 2.9:
  13
  14 Texas Instruction c30 (tms320c30) support added.
  15
  16 The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
  17 and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
  18
  19 Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
  20
  21 The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
  22 listing.
  23
  24 Added -MD option to print dependencies.
  25
  26 Changes in 2.8:
  27
  28 BeOS support added.
  29
  30 MIPS16 support added.
  31
  32 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
  33
  34 Alpha/VMS support added.
  35
  36 m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
  37 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
  38
  39 The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
  40 maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require skipping
  41 more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.
  42
  43 The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
  44
  45 The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
  46 in listings.
  47
  48 Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
  49 symbol is already defined.
  50
  51 Changes in 2.7:
  52
  53 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
  54 if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
  55 used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
  56
  57 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
  58
  59 PowerPC ELF support added.
  60
  61 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
  62
  63 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
  64
  65 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
  66
  67 SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
  68 default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate ELF
  69 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
  70 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
  71
  72 m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
  73
  74 Changes in 2.6:
  75
  76 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
  77
  78 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select MRI
  79 mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
  80 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
  81
  82 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
  83
  84 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
  85
  86 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
  87
  88 Changes in 2.4:
  89
  90 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
  91
  92 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
  93
  94 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
  95 support.
  96
  97 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
  98
  99 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 100 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 101 features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 102 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 103
 104 Usage message is available with "--help".
 105
 106 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 107 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 108
 109 Weak symbol support for a.out.
 110
 111 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 112 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 113
 114 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
 115 Kranenburg.
 116
 117 Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
 118 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 119
 120 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 121
 122 Changes in 2.3:
 123
 124 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 125
 126 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 127
 128 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 129 based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
 130 too.
 131
 132 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 133 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 134 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 135 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 136 in the "dist" directory.
 137
 138 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
 139 tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 140 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 141
 142 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 143 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
 144 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
 145 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 146
 147 Irix 5 support.
 148
 149 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 150 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 151
 152 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 153 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 154 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
 155 to make the Alpha port easier.
 156
 157 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
 158 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
 159 phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
 160 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 161
 162 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 163
 164 Changes in 2.2:
 165
 166 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 167
 168 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 169 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 170 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 171 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 172 reliable.
 173
 174 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 175 displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 176 messages about "internal errors".
 177
 178 ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 179 Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 180
 181 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
 182 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
 183 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
 184
 185 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 186 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 187 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 188 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 189 its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 190 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 191 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 192
 193 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 194 support is in progress.
 195
 196 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 197
 198 Changes in 2.1:
 199
 200 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 201 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 202
 203 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 204 with gcc now.
 205
 206 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 207 suggested by Ronald Cole.
 208
 209 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 210 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 211 2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 212
 213 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 214
 215 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 216
 217 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 218
 219 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 220
 221 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 222
 223 Changes in 2.0:
 224
 225 Mostly bug fixes.
 226
 227 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 228
 229 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 230
 231 Changes in 1.94:
 232
 233 BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 234 "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
 235 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
 236 "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
 237 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
 238 merged yet.)
 239
 240 The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 241 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 242
 243 A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 244 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 245
 246 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 247 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
 248 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
 249 supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
 250
 251 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 252
 253 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 254 Youngdale.
 255
 256 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 257
 258 Changes in 1.93.01:
 259
 260 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 261
 262 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 263
 264 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 265 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 266 can be distinguished from the register.
 267
 268 Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 269 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 270
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