gas/NEWS

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