gas/NEWS

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