gas/NEWS

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