gas/NEWS

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