gas/NEWS

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