gas/NEWS

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