ld/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes since version 2.7:
   4
   5 * Linker scripts may now contain shell wildcard characters for file and section
   6   names.
   7
   8 * The NOCROSSREFS command was added to the linker script language.
   9
  10 * The LOADADDR expression was added to the linker script language.
  11
  12 Changes since version 2.6:
  13
  14 * New option --cref to print out a cross reference table.
  15
  16 * New option --wrap SYMBOL.
  17
  18 * New option --no-whole-archive, to turn off the effect of --whole-archive.
  19
  20 * Input sections assigned to the output section /DISCARD/ in the linker script
  21   are not included in the output file.
  22
  23 * The SunOS and ELF linkers now merge stabs debugging information which uses
  24   the N_BINCL and N_EINCL stab types.  This reduces the amount of debugging
  25   information generated.
  26
  27 Changes since version 2.5:
  28
  29 * When an ELF section name is representable as a C identifier (this is not true
  30 of most ELF section names), the linker will automatically define symbols
  31 __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the section name, at the
  32 beginning and the end of the section.  This is used by glibc.
  33
  34 * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning is encountered in an input file, the
  35 contents of the section are displayed as an error message, and the section is
  36 not copied into the output file.  This is used by glibc.
  37
  38 * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning.SYMBOL is encountered in an input
  39 file, and the symbol SYMBOL is referenced by some object file, the contents of
  40 the section are displayed as an error message.  The section is not copied into
  41 the output file, unless doing a relocateable or shared link.  This is used by
  42 glibc.
  43
  44 * New options -split-by-reloc and -split-by-file.
  45
  46 * The linker now supports linking PIC compiled code on SPARC SunOS.  It can
  47 also create SPARC SunOS shared libraries, and, like the native SunOS linker,
  48 will do so whenever there is an undefined symbol in the link and neither the -e
  49 nor the -r option was used.
  50
  51 * The -rpath option may be used on SunOS to set the list of directories to be
  52 searched at run time.  This overrides the default of building the list from the
  53 -L options.
  54
  55 * The COFF linker now combines debugging information for structs, unions, and
  56 enums, so that even if the same type is defined in multiple input files it will
  57 only be defined once in the output file.  The --traditional-format switch will
  58 prevent this optimization.
  59
  60 Changes since version 2.4:
  61
  62 * The linker now supports linking against SunOS shared libraries.  It still can
  63 not link SunOS PIC (Position Independent Code) files, so it can not be used to
  64 generate shared libaries.
  65
  66 * The linker now supports linking against ELF shared libraries for the i386
  67 (UnixWare) and SPARC (Solaris).  It can also link ELF PIC files, and can be
  68 used to generate shared libraries.  Shared library generation is not well
  69 tested; please report any problems encountered.  The linker is now enabled for
  70 Solaris again.
  71
  72 * Eric Youngdale has contributed Linux support code, including linking against
  73 Linux a.out shared libraries.  The linker produces Linux QMAGIC binaries.
  74
  75 * The ELF backend has been converted to the new linker code.  To use the new
  76 ELF linker, each particular target requires a relocation function.  So far,
  77 this function has been written for i386 (UnixWare), SPARC (Solaris) MIPS (Irix
  78 5), and HPPA ELF targets.
  79
  80 * The -( (--start-group) and -) (--end-group) options have been added to
  81 support searching a group of archives as though they were a single archive.
  82 This can also be used in a linker script, as GROUP ( files ).
  83
  84 * When a file is named on the command line, and the linker does not recognize
  85 it as an object file, the linker will now treat the file as a linker script
  86 file.  A linker script named in this way augments, but does not replace, the
  87 default linker script.
  88
  89 * The -warn-once option was added.  It causes the linker to only warn once per
  90 undefined symbol, rather than once per reference.
  91
  92 * The COFF backend has been converted to the new linker code.  As with ELF, to
  93 use the new linker, each particular target requires a relocation function.  So
  94 far, this function has been written for the i386, m68k, a29k and SH targets.
  95
  96 * The -V flag was made a synonym for -v, for SVR4 compatibility.  The old -V
  97 behaviour is available via --verbose.
  98
  99 Changes since version 2.3:
 100
 101 * New linker code, by Steve Chamberlain and Ian Taylor.  For a.out and ecoff
 102   formats (so far), this should result in considerable savings in time
 103   and memory used while linking; slightly poorer performance than
 104   before for formats not converted yet.
 105
 106 * Command-line parsing is no longer done with flex.  This means
 107   oddball characters in filenames won't get treated as argument
 108   separators.
 109
 110 * HP-PA ELF support, by Jeff Law.  (No SOM support yet.)
 111
 112 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie.
 113
 114 * Irix 4 shared libraries are now supported (Irix 5 uses ELF, and ELF shared
 115   libraries are not yet supported).
 116
 117 * COFF shared libraries (as on SCO) should work as well.
 118
 119 * The linker is disabled for Solaris.  (Actually, it was in 2.3 also, I just
 120   forgot to note it.)  Some of their C library routines don't work when
 121   statically linked, and the GNU linker doesn't support dynamic linking yet.
 122
 123 Changes since version 2.2:
 124
 125 * Weak symbols are now supported.
 126
 127 * ELF support has been added.  The linker has been bootstrapped on
 128   UnixWare and Solaris.
 129
 130 * Alpha OSF/1 support has been added (non dynamic linking only).
 131
 132 Changes since version 2.1:
 133
 134 * The `bfd' library has been updated to reduce a.out-format string
 135   table size.  The effect of this is that files linked from many input
 136   files with duplicate symbols (`-g' debugging records, or identical
 137   static symbols) should be much smaller.
 138
 139 Changes since version 2.0:
 140
 141 * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) is now implemented.
 142
 143 * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the
 144   other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix.
 145
 146 \f
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