gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
   4
   5 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
   6   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
   7
   8 * Support for SH2E added.
   9
  10 * GASP has now been removed.
  11
  12 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
  13   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
  14
  15 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
  16
  17 Changes in 2.13:
  18
  19 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
  20   and FR500 included.
  21
  22 * Support for DLX processor added.
  23
  24 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
  25   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
  26
  27 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
  28   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
  29   the currently specified base.
  30
  31 Changes in 2.12:
  32
  33 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
  34
  35 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
  36
  37 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
  38   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
  39   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
  40   compatibility.
  41
  42 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
  43   the ARM assembler.
  44
  45 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
  46   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
  47
  48 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
  49   but still works for compatability.
  50
  51 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
  52   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
  53   -n will turn on the warning.
  54
  55 Changes in 2.11:
  56
  57 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
  58
  59 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
  60
  61 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
  62
  63 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
  64
  65 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
  66
  67 * Support for IA-64.
  68
  69 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
  70
  71 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
  72
  73 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
  74
  75 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
  76   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
  77   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
  78
  79 Changes in 2.10:
  80
  81 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
  82   operand when altering the flags field.
  83
  84 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
  85
  86 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
  87
  88 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
  89
  90 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
  91
  92 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
  93
  94 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
  95
  96 * New --fatal-warnings option.
  97
  98 * picoJava architecture support added.
  99
 100 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 101
 102 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 103   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 104
 105 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 106
 107 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 108
 109 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 110
 111 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 112   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 113   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 114   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 115
 116 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 117
 118 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 119
 120 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 121
 122 * i960 ELF support added.
 123
 124 * ARM ELF support added.
 125
 126 Changes in 2.9:
 127
 128 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 129
 130 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 131   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 132
 133 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 134
 135 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 136   listing.
 137
 138 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 139
 140 Changes in 2.8:
 141
 142 * BeOS support added.
 143
 144 * MIPS16 support added.
 145
 146 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 147
 148 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 149
 150 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 151   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 152
 153 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 154   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 155   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 156   all.
 157
 158 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 159
 160 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 161   conditionals in listings.
 162
 163 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 164   the symbol is already defined.
 165
 166 Changes in 2.7:
 167
 168 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 169   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 170   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 171   added.
 172
 173 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 174
 175 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 176
 177 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 178
 179 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 180
 181 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 182
 183 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 184   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 185   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 186   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 187
 188 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 189
 190 Changes in 2.6:
 191
 192 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 193
 194 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 195   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 196   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 197
 198 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 199
 200 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 201
 202 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 203
 204 Changes in 2.4:
 205
 206 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 207
 208 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 209
 210 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 211   debugging support.
 212
 213 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 214
 215 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 216   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 217   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 218   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 219
 220 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 221
 222 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 223   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 224
 225 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 226
 227 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 228   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 229
 230 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 231   Paul Kranenburg.
 232
 233 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 234   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 235
 236 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 237
 238 Changes in 2.3:
 239
 240 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 241
 242 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 243
 244 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 245   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 246   again too.
 247
 248 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 249   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 250   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 251   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 252   in the "dist" directory.
 253
 254 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 255   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 256   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 257
 258 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 259   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 260   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 261   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 262
 263 * Irix 5 support.
 264
 265 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 266   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 267
 268 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 269   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 270   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 271   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 272
 273 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 274   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 275   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 276   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 277
 278 Changes in 2.2:
 279
 280 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 281
 282 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 283   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 284   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 285   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 286   reliable.
 287
 288 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 289   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 290   messages about "internal errors".
 291
 292 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 293   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 294
 295 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 296   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 297   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 298   known.
 299
 300 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 301   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 302   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 303   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 304   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 305   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 306   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 307
 308 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 309   support is in progress.
 310
 311 Changes in 2.1:
 312
 313 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 314   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 315
 316 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 317   with gcc now.
 318
 319 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 320   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 321
 322 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 323   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 324   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 325
 326 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 327
 328 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 329
 330 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 331
 332 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 333
 334 Changes in 2.0:
 335
 336 * Mostly bug fixes.
 337
 338 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 339
 340 Changes in 1.94:
 341
 342 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 343   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 344   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 345   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 346   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 347   fully merged yet.)
 348
 349 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 350   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 351
 352 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 353   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 354
 355 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 356   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 357   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 358   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 359   coming.
 360
 361 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 362
 363 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 364   Youngdale.
 365
 366 Changes in 1.93.01:
 367
 368 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 369
 370 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 371
 372 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 373   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 374   can be distinguished from the register.
 375
 376 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 377   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 378
 379 \f
 380 Local variables:
 381 fill-column: 79
 382 End: