gas/NEWS

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