ld/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in version 2.10:
   4
   5 * Added garbage collection of unused sections, enabled by --gc-sections.
   6   It does require a bit of backend support; currently implemented are
   7   ppc-elf, mips-elf, and mn10300-elf.  Others will ignore the option.
   8
   9 * Added SORT to the linker script language to permit sorting sections by file
  10   name or section name.
  11
  12 * Added EXTERN to the linker script language as an equivalent to the -u
  13   command-line option.
  14
  15 * The -e option now accepts a number as well as a symbol name.
  16
  17 Changes in version 2.9:
  18
  19 * Added SQUAD to the linker script language.
  20
  21 * New option --no-warn-mismatch.
  22
  23 * The MEMORY command now parses the attributes to determine where sections that
  24   are not placed in a specific memory region are placed.
  25
  26 Changes in version 2.8:
  27
  28 * Linker scripts may now contain shell wildcard characters for file and section
  29   names.
  30
  31 * The linker now supports symbol versions in ELF.
  32
  33 * The NOCROSSREFS command was added to the linker script language.
  34
  35 * The LOADADDR expression was added to the linker script language.
  36
  37 * MAX and MIN functions were added to the linker script language.
  38
  39 * The OVERLAY construct was added to the linker script language.
  40
  41 * New option --warn-section-align to warn when the address of an output section
  42   changes due to alignment of an input section.
  43
  44 * New options --filter/-F and --auxiliary/-f.
  45
  46 Changes in version 2.7:
  47
  48 * New option --cref to print out a cross reference table.
  49
  50 * New option --wrap SYMBOL.
  51
  52 * New option --no-whole-archive, to turn off the effect of --whole-archive.
  53
  54 * Input sections assigned to the output section /DISCARD/ in the linker script
  55   are not included in the output file.
  56
  57 * The SunOS and ELF linkers now merge stabs debugging information which uses
  58   the N_BINCL and N_EINCL stab types.  This reduces the amount of debugging
  59   information generated.
  60
  61 Changes in version 2.6:
  62
  63 * When an ELF section name is representable as a C identifier (this is not true
  64 of most ELF section names), the linker will automatically define symbols
  65 __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the section name, at the
  66 beginning and the end of the section.  This is used by glibc.
  67
  68 * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning is encountered in an input file, the
  69 contents of the section are displayed as an error message, and the section is
  70 not copied into the output file.  This is used by glibc.
  71
  72 * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning.SYMBOL is encountered in an input
  73 file, and the symbol SYMBOL is referenced by some object file, the contents of
  74 the section are displayed as an error message.  The section is not copied into
  75 the output file, unless doing a relocateable or shared link.  This is used by
  76 glibc.
  77
  78 * New options -split-by-reloc and -split-by-file.
  79
  80 * The linker now supports linking PIC compiled code on SPARC SunOS.  It can
  81 also create SPARC SunOS shared libraries, and, like the native SunOS linker,
  82 will do so whenever there is an undefined symbol in the link and neither the -e
  83 nor the -r option was used.
  84
  85 * The -rpath option may be used on SunOS to set the list of directories to be
  86 searched at run time.  This overrides the default of building the list from the
  87 -L options.
  88
  89 * The COFF linker now combines debugging information for structs, unions, and
  90 enums, so that even if the same type is defined in multiple input files it will
  91 only be defined once in the output file.  The --traditional-format switch will
  92 prevent this optimization.
  93
  94 Changes in version 2.5:
  95
  96 * The linker now supports linking against SunOS shared libraries.  It still can
  97 not link SunOS PIC (Position Independent Code) files, so it can not be used to
  98 generate shared libaries.
  99
 100 * The linker now supports linking against ELF shared libraries for the i386
 101 (UnixWare) and SPARC (Solaris).  It can also link ELF PIC files, and can be
 102 used to generate shared libraries.  Shared library generation is not well
 103 tested; please report any problems encountered.  The linker is now enabled for
 104 Solaris again.
 105
 106 * Eric Youngdale has contributed Linux support code, including linking against
 107 Linux a.out shared libraries.  The linker produces Linux QMAGIC binaries.
 108
 109 * The ELF backend has been converted to the new linker code.  To use the new
 110 ELF linker, each particular target requires a relocation function.  So far,
 111 this function has been written for i386 (UnixWare), SPARC (Solaris) MIPS (Irix
 112 5), and HPPA ELF targets.
 113
 114 * The -( (--start-group) and -) (--end-group) options have been added to
 115 support searching a group of archives as though they were a single archive.
 116 This can also be used in a linker script, as GROUP ( files ).
 117
 118 * When a file is named on the command line, and the linker does not recognize
 119 it as an object file, the linker will now treat the file as a linker script
 120 file.  A linker script named in this way augments, but does not replace, the
 121 default linker script.
 122
 123 * The -warn-once option was added.  It causes the linker to only warn once per
 124 undefined symbol, rather than once per reference.
 125
 126 * The COFF backend has been converted to the new linker code.  As with ELF, to
 127 use the new linker, each particular target requires a relocation function.  So
 128 far, this function has been written for the i386, m68k, a29k and SH targets.
 129
 130 * The -V flag was made a synonym for -v, for SVR4 compatibility.  The old -V
 131 behaviour is available via --verbose.
 132
 133 Changes in version 2.4:
 134
 135 * New linker code, by Steve Chamberlain and Ian Taylor.  For a.out and ecoff
 136   formats (so far), this should result in considerable savings in time
 137   and memory used while linking; slightly poorer performance than
 138   before for formats not converted yet.
 139
 140 * Command-line parsing is no longer done with flex.  This means
 141   oddball characters in filenames won't get treated as argument
 142   separators.
 143
 144 * HP-PA ELF support, by Jeff Law.  (No SOM support yet.)
 145
 146 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie.
 147
 148 * Irix 4 shared libraries are now supported (Irix 5 uses ELF, and ELF shared
 149   libraries are not yet supported).
 150
 151 * COFF shared libraries (as on SCO) should work as well.
 152
 153 * The linker is disabled for Solaris.  (Actually, it was in 2.3 also, I just
 154   forgot to note it.)  Some of their C library routines don't work when
 155   statically linked, and the GNU linker doesn't support dynamic linking yet.
 156
 157 Changes in version 2.3:
 158
 159 * Weak symbols are now supported.
 160
 161 * ELF support has been added.  The linker has been bootstrapped on
 162   UnixWare and Solaris.
 163
 164 * Alpha OSF/1 support has been added (non dynamic linking only).
 165
 166 Changes in version 2.2:
 167
 168 * The `bfd' library has been updated to reduce a.out-format string
 169   table size.  The effect of this is that files linked from many input
 170   files with duplicate symbols (`-g' debugging records, or identical
 171   static symbols) should be much smaller.
 172
 173 Changes in version 2.1:
 174
 175 * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) is now implemented.
 176
 177 * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the
 178   other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix.
 179
 180 \f
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