gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for the MIPS Loongson MultiMedia extensions Instructions (MMI)
   4   ASE.
   5
   6 Changes in 2.31:
   7
   8 * The ADR and ADRL pseudo-instructions supported by the ARM assembler
   9   now only set the bottom bit of the address of thumb function symbols
  10   if the -mthumb-interwork command line option is active.
  11
  12 * Add support for the MIPS Global INValidate (GINV) ASE.
  13
  14 * Add support for the MIPS Cyclic Redudancy Check (CRC) ASE.
  15
  16 * Add support for the Freescale S12Z architecture.
  17
  18 * Add --generate-missing-build-notes=[yes|no] option to create (or not) GNU
  19   Build Attribute notes if none are present in the input sources.  Add a
  20   --enable-generate-build-notes=[yes|no] configure time option to set the
  21   default behaviour.  Set the default if the configure option is not used
  22   to "no".
  23
  24 * Remove -mold-gcc command-line option for x86 targets.
  25
  26 * Add -O[2|s] command-line options to x86 assembler to enable alternate
  27   shorter instruction encoding.
  28
  29 * Add support for .nops directive.  It is currently supported only for
  30   x86 targets.
  31
  32 Changes in 2.30:
  33
  34 * Add support for loaction views in DWARF debug line information.
  35
  36 Changes in 2.29:
  37
  38 * Add support for ELF SHF_GNU_MBIND.
  39
  40 * Add support for the WebAssembly file format and wasm32 ELF conversion.
  41
  42 * PowerPC gas now checks that the correct register class is used in
  43   instructions.  For instance, "addi %f4,%cr3,%r31" warns three times
  44   that the registers are invalid.
  45
  46 * Add support for the Texas Instruments PRU processor.
  47
  48 * Support for the ARMv8-R architecture and Cortex-R52 processor has been
  49   added to the ARM port.
  50
  51 Changes in 2.28:
  52
  53 * Add support for the RISC-V architecture.
  54
  55 * Add support for the ARM Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 processors.
  56
  57 Changes in 2.27:
  58
  59 * Default to --enable-compressed-debug-sections=gas for Linux/x86 targets.
  60
  61 * Add --no-pad-sections to stop the assembler from padding the end of output
  62   sections up to their alignment boundary.
  63
  64 * Support for the ARMv8-M architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
  65   for the ARMv8-M Security and DSP Extensions has also been added to the ARM
  66   port.
  67
  68 * ARC backend accepts .extInstruction, .extCondCode, .extAuxRegister, and
  69   .extCoreRegister pseudo-ops that allow an user to define custom
  70   instructions, conditional codes, auxiliary and core registers.
  71
  72 * Add a configure option --enable-elf-stt-common to decide whether ELF
  73   assembler should generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type by
  74   default.  Default to no.
  75
  76 * New command-line option --elf-stt-common= for ELF targets to control
  77   whether to generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type.
  78
  79 * Add ability to set section flags and types via numeric values for ELF
  80   based targets.
  81
  82 * Add a configure option --enable-x86-relax-relocations to decide whether
  83   x86 assembler should generate relax relocations by default.  Default to
  84   yes, except for x86 Solaris targets older than Solaris 12.
  85
  86 * New command-line option -mrelax-relocations= for x86 target to control
  87   whether to generate relax relocations.
  88
  89 * New command-line option -mfence-as-lock-add=yes for x86 target to encode
  90   lfence, mfence and sfence as "lock addl $0x0, (%[re]sp)".
  91
  92 * Add assembly-time relaxation option for ARC cpus.
  93
  94 * Add --with-cpu=TYPE configure option for ARC gas.  This allows the default
  95   cpu type to be adjusted at configure time.
  96
  97 Changes in 2.26:
  98
  99 * Add a configure option --enable-compressed-debug-sections={all,gas} to
 100   decide whether DWARF debug sections should be compressed by default.
 101
 102 * Add support for the ARC EM/HS, and ARC600/700 architectures.  Remove
 103   assembler support for Argonaut RISC architectures.
 104
 105 * Symbol and label names can now be enclosed in double quotes (") which allows
 106   them to contain characters that are not part of valid symbol names in high
 107   level languages.
 108
 109 * Added the correctly spelled -march=armv6kz, for ARMv6KZ support.  The
 110   previous spelling, -march=armv6zk, is still accepted.
 111
 112 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the Aarch64 port.
 113   Support for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD, LOR and PAN architecture
 114   extensions has also been added to the Aarch64 port.
 115
 116 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
 117   for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD and PAN architecture extensions has also
 118   been added to the ARM port.
 119
 120 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
 121   --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
 122   targets.
 123
 124 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
 125
 126 Changes in 2.25:
 127
 128 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
 129
 130 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
 131
 132 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
 133   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command-line option -mccs.
 134
 135 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
 136
 137 Changes in 2.24:
 138
 139 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
 140
 141 * Add -gdwarf-sections command-line option to enable per-code-section
 142   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
 143
 144 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
 145
 146 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
 147
 148 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
 149
 150 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
 151
 152 Changes in 2.23:
 153
 154 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
 155
 156 * Add support for S12X processor.
 157
 158 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
 159
 160 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
 161
 162 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
 163   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
 164
 165 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
 166
 167 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
 168
 169 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
 170
 171 Changes in 2.22:
 172
 173 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
 174
 175 Changes in 2.21:
 176
 177 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
 178
 179 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
 180
 181 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
 182   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
 183   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
 184   2.20.1.
 185
 186 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
 187
 188 * New command-line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
 189   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
 190   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
 191   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
 192
 193 Changes in 2.20:
 194
 195 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
 196
 197 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
 198   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
 199   process.
 200
 201 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
 202   in binary rather than text.
 203
 204 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
 205
 206 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
 207   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
 208
 209 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
 210
 211 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
 212   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
 213   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
 214   the value.
 215
 216 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
 217
 218 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
 219
 220 Changes in 2.19:
 221
 222 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
 223   tables without runtime relocation.
 224
 225 * New command-line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
 226   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 227
 228 * New command-line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 229   targets.
 230
 231 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command-line switch to
 232   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 233   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 234   command-line options used, and a time stamp.
 235
 236 * New command-line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 237   instructions with VEX prefix.
 238
 239 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 240
 241 * New command-line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 242   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 243   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 244
 245 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 246   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 247
 248 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 249
 250 Changes in 2.18:
 251
 252 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 253
 254 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 255
 256 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 257   relocations.
 258
 259 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 260
 261 * Add support for Score target.
 262
 263 Changes in 2.17:
 264
 265 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 266
 267 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 268
 269 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 270
 271 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 272   switches can be read from <file>.
 273
 274 * The SH target supports a new command-line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 275   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 276   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 277
 278 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 279   documentation for how this works.
 280
 281 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 282   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 283   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 284
 285 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 286   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 287   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 288   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 289   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 290
 291 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 292   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 293   assembler.
 294
 295 * New command-line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 296
 297 Changes in 2.16:
 298
 299 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 300
 301 * New command-line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 302
 303 * New command-line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 304   targets.
 305
 306 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 307   mode.
 308
 309 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 310
 311 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 312
 313 * Add a -g command-line option to generate debug information in the target's
 314   preferred debug format.
 315
 316 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 317
 318 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 319
 320 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 321   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 322
 323 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 324
 325 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 326   instrucitons.
 327
 328 * New command-line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 329
 330 * New command-line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 331   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 332
 333 Changes in 2.15:
 334
 335 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 336   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 337
 338 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 339
 340 * Added support for ARM V6.
 341
 342 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 343
 344 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 345
 346 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 347   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 348
 349 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 350   definitions created by ".req".
 351
 352 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 353
 354 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 355   information with GNU extensions.
 356
 357 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 358
 359 * Added support for v850e1.
 360
 361 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 362   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 363   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 364   switch disables the optimization.
 365
 366 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 367   existing -non_shared option.
 368
 369 Changes in 2.14:
 370
 371 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 372
 373 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 374
 375 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 376
 377 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 378   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 379
 380 * Support for SH2E added.
 381
 382 * GASP has now been removed.
 383
 384 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 385   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 386
 387 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 388
 389 Changes in 2.13:
 390
 391 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 392   and FR500 included.
 393
 394 * Support for DLX processor added.
 395
 396 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 397   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 398
 399 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 400   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 401   the currently specified base.
 402
 403 Changes in 2.12:
 404
 405 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 406
 407 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 408
 409 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 410   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 411   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 412   compatibility.
 413
 414 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 415   the ARM assembler.
 416
 417 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 418   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 419
 420 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 421   but still works for compatability.
 422
 423 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 424   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command-line option
 425   -n will turn on the warning.
 426
 427 Changes in 2.11:
 428
 429 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 430
 431 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 432
 433 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 434
 435 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 436
 437 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 438
 439 * Support for IA-64.
 440
 441 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 442
 443 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 444
 445 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 446
 447 * x86 gas -q command-line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 448   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 449   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 450
 451 Changes in 2.10:
 452
 453 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 454   operand when altering the flags field.
 455
 456 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 457
 458 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 459
 460 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 461
 462 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 463
 464 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 465
 466 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 467
 468 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 469
 470 * picoJava architecture support added.
 471
 472 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 473
 474 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 475   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 476
 477 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 478
 479 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 480
 481 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 482
 483 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 484   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 485   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 486   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 487
 488 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 489
 490 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 491
 492 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 493
 494 * i960 ELF support added.
 495
 496 * ARM ELF support added.
 497
 498 Changes in 2.9:
 499
 500 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 501
 502 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 503   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 504
 505 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 506
 507 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 508   listing.
 509
 510 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 511
 512 Changes in 2.8:
 513
 514 * BeOS support added.
 515
 516 * MIPS16 support added.
 517
 518 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 519
 520 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 521
 522 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 523   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 524
 525 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 526   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 527   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 528   all.
 529
 530 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 531
 532 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 533   conditionals in listings.
 534
 535 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 536   the symbol is already defined.
 537
 538 Changes in 2.7:
 539
 540 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 541   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 542   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 543   added.
 544
 545 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 546
 547 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 548
 549 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 550
 551 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 552
 553 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 554
 555 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 556   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 557   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 558   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 559
 560 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 561
 562 Changes in 2.6:
 563
 564 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 565
 566 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 567   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 568   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 569
 570 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 571
 572 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 573
 574 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 575
 576 Changes in 2.4:
 577
 578 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 579
 580 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 581
 582 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 583   debugging support.
 584
 585 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 586
 587 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 588   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 589   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 590   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 591
 592 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 593
 594 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 595   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 596
 597 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 598
 599 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 600   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 601
 602 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 603   Paul Kranenburg.
 604
 605 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 606   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 607
 608 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 609
 610 Changes in 2.3:
 611
 612 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 613
 614 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 615
 616 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 617   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 618   again too.
 619
 620 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 621   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 622   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 623   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 624   in the "dist" directory.
 625
 626 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 627   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 628   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 629
 630 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 631   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 632   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 633   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 634
 635 * Irix 5 support.
 636
 637 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 638   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 639
 640 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 641   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 642   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 643   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 644
 645 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 646   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 647   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 648   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 649
 650 Changes in 2.2:
 651
 652 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 653
 654 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 655   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 656   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 657   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 658   reliable.
 659
 660 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 661   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 662   messages about "internal errors".
 663
 664 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 665   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 666
 667 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 668   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 669   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 670   known.
 671
 672 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 673   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 674   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 675   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 676   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 677   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 678   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 679
 680 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 681   support is in progress.
 682
 683 Changes in 2.1:
 684
 685 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 686   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 687
 688 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 689   with gcc now.
 690
 691 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 692   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 693
 694 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 695   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 696   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 697
 698 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 699
 700 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 701
 702 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 703
 704 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 705
 706 Changes in 2.0:
 707
 708 * Mostly bug fixes.
 709
 710 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 711
 712 Changes in 1.94:
 713
 714 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 715   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 716   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 717   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 718   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 719   fully merged yet.)
 720
 721 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 722   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 723
 724 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 725   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 726
 727 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 728   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 729   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 730   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 731   coming.
 732
 733 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 734
 735 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 736   Youngdale.
 737
 738 Changes in 1.93.01:
 739
 740 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 741
 742 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 743
 744 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 745   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 746   can be distinguished from the register.
 747
 748 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 749   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 750
 751 \f
 752 Copyright (C) 2012-2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 753
 754 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 755 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 756 notice and this notice are preserved.
 757
 758 Local variables:
 759 fill-column: 79
 760 End: