gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
   4   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
   5
   6 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
   7
   8 Changes in 2.24:
   9
  10 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
  11
  12 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
  13   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
  14
  15 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
  16
  17 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
  18
  19 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
  20
  21 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
  22
  23 Changes in 2.23:
  24
  25 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
  26
  27 * Add support for S12X processor.
  28
  29 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
  30
  31 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
  32
  33 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
  34   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
  35
  36 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
  37
  38 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
  39
  40 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
  41
  42 Changes in 2.22:
  43
  44 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
  45
  46 Changes in 2.21:
  47
  48 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
  49
  50 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
  51
  52 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
  53   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
  54   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
  55   2.20.1.
  56
  57 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  58
  59 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  60   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  61   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  62   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  63
  64 Changes in 2.20:
  65
  66 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  67
  68 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  69   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  70   process.
  71
  72 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  73   in binary rather than text.
  74
  75 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  76
  77 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  78   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  79
  80 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  81
  82 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  83   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  84   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  85   the value.
  86
  87 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  88
  89 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  90
  91 Changes in 2.19:
  92
  93 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  94   tables without runtime relocation.
  95
  96 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  97   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  98
  99 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 100   targets.
 101
 102 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 103   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 104   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 105   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 106
 107 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 108   instructions with VEX prefix.
 109
 110 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 111
 112 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 113   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 114   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 115
 116 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 117   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 118
 119 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 120
 121 Changes in 2.18:
 122
 123 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 124
 125 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 126
 127 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 128   relocations.
 129
 130 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 131
 132 * Add support for Score target.
 133
 134 Changes in 2.17:
 135
 136 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 137
 138 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 139
 140 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 141
 142 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 143   switches can be read from <file>.
 144
 145 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 146   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 147   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 148
 149 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 150   documentation for how this works.
 151
 152 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 153   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 154   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 155
 156 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 157   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 158   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 159   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 160   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 161
 162 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 163   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 164   assembler.
 165
 166 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 167
 168 Changes in 2.16:
 169
 170 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 171
 172 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 173
 174 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 175   targets.
 176
 177 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 178   mode.
 179
 180 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 181
 182 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 183
 184 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 185   preferred debug format.
 186
 187 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 188
 189 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 190
 191 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 192   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 193
 194 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 195
 196 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 197   instrucitons.
 198
 199 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 200
 201 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 202   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 203
 204 Changes in 2.15:
 205
 206 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 207   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 208
 209 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 210
 211 * Added support for ARM V6.
 212
 213 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 214
 215 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 216
 217 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 218   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 219
 220 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 221   definitions created by ".req".
 222
 223 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 224
 225 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 226   information with GNU extensions.
 227
 228 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 229
 230 * Added support for v850e1.
 231
 232 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 233   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 234   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 235   switch disables the optimization.
 236
 237 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 238   existing -non_shared option.
 239
 240 Changes in 2.14:
 241
 242 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 243
 244 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 245
 246 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 247
 248 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 249   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 250
 251 * Support for SH2E added.
 252
 253 * GASP has now been removed.
 254
 255 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 256   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 257
 258 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 259
 260 Changes in 2.13:
 261
 262 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 263   and FR500 included.
 264
 265 * Support for DLX processor added.
 266
 267 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 268   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 269
 270 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 271   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 272   the currently specified base.
 273
 274 Changes in 2.12:
 275
 276 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 277
 278 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 279
 280 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 281   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 282   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 283   compatibility.
 284
 285 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 286   the ARM assembler.
 287
 288 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 289   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 290
 291 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 292   but still works for compatability.
 293
 294 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 295   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 296   -n will turn on the warning.
 297
 298 Changes in 2.11:
 299
 300 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 301
 302 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 303
 304 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 305
 306 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 307
 308 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 309
 310 * Support for IA-64.
 311
 312 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 313
 314 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 315
 316 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 317
 318 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 319   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 320   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 321
 322 Changes in 2.10:
 323
 324 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 325   operand when altering the flags field.
 326
 327 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 328
 329 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 330
 331 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 332
 333 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 334
 335 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 336
 337 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 338
 339 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 340
 341 * picoJava architecture support added.
 342
 343 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 344
 345 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 346   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 347
 348 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 349
 350 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 351
 352 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 353
 354 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 355   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 356   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 357   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 358
 359 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 360
 361 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 362
 363 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 364
 365 * i960 ELF support added.
 366
 367 * ARM ELF support added.
 368
 369 Changes in 2.9:
 370
 371 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 372
 373 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 374   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 375
 376 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 377
 378 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 379   listing.
 380
 381 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 382
 383 Changes in 2.8:
 384
 385 * BeOS support added.
 386
 387 * MIPS16 support added.
 388
 389 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 390
 391 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 392
 393 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 394   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 395
 396 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 397   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 398   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 399   all.
 400
 401 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 402
 403 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 404   conditionals in listings.
 405
 406 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 407   the symbol is already defined.
 408
 409 Changes in 2.7:
 410
 411 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 412   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 413   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 414   added.
 415
 416 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 417
 418 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 419
 420 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 421
 422 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 423
 424 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 425
 426 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 427   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 428   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 429   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 430
 431 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 432
 433 Changes in 2.6:
 434
 435 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 436
 437 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 438   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 439   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 440
 441 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 442
 443 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 444
 445 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 446
 447 Changes in 2.4:
 448
 449 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 450
 451 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 452
 453 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 454   debugging support.
 455
 456 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 457
 458 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 459   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 460   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 461   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 462
 463 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 464
 465 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 466   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 467
 468 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 469
 470 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 471   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 472
 473 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 474   Paul Kranenburg.
 475
 476 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 477   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 478
 479 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 480
 481 Changes in 2.3:
 482
 483 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 484
 485 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 486
 487 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 488   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 489   again too.
 490
 491 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 492   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 493   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 494   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 495   in the "dist" directory.
 496
 497 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 498   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 499   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 500
 501 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 502   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 503   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 504   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 505
 506 * Irix 5 support.
 507
 508 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 509   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 510
 511 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 512   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 513   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 514   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 515
 516 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 517   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 518   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 519   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 520
 521 Changes in 2.2:
 522
 523 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 524
 525 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 526   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 527   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 528   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 529   reliable.
 530
 531 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 532   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 533   messages about "internal errors".
 534
 535 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 536   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 537
 538 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 539   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 540   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 541   known.
 542
 543 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 544   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 545   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 546   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 547   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 548   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 549   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 550
 551 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 552   support is in progress.
 553
 554 Changes in 2.1:
 555
 556 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 557   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 558
 559 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 560   with gcc now.
 561
 562 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 563   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 564
 565 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 566   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 567   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 568
 569 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 570
 571 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 572
 573 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 574
 575 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 576
 577 Changes in 2.0:
 578
 579 * Mostly bug fixes.
 580
 581 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 582
 583 Changes in 1.94:
 584
 585 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 586   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 587   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 588   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 589   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 590   fully merged yet.)
 591
 592 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 593   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 594
 595 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 596   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 597
 598 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 599   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 600   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 601   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 602   coming.
 603
 604 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 605
 606 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 607   Youngdale.
 608
 609 Changes in 1.93.01:
 610
 611 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 612
 613 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 614
 615 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 616   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 617   can be distinguished from the register.
 618
 619 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 620   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 621
 622 \f
 623 Copyright (C) 2012-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 624
 625 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 626 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 627 notice and this notice are preserved.
 628
 629 Local variables:
 630 fill-column: 79
 631 End: