gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * GASP has now been removed.
   4
   5 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
   6   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
   7
   8 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
   9
  10 Changes in 2.13:
  11
  12 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
  13   and FR500 included.
  14
  15 * Support for DLX processor added.
  16
  17 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
  18   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
  19
  20 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
  21   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
  22   the currently specified base.
  23
  24 Changes in 2.12:
  25
  26 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
  27
  28 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
  29
  30 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
  31   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
  32   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
  33   compatibility.
  34
  35 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
  36   the ARM assembler.
  37
  38 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
  39   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
  40
  41 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
  42   but still works for compatability.
  43
  44 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
  45   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
  46   -n will turn on the warning.
  47
  48 Changes in 2.11:
  49
  50 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
  51
  52 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
  53
  54 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
  55
  56 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
  57
  58 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
  59
  60 * Support for IA-64.
  61
  62 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
  63
  64 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
  65
  66 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
  67
  68 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
  69   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
  70   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
  71
  72 Changes in 2.10:
  73
  74 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
  75   operand when altering the flags field.
  76
  77 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
  78
  79 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
  80
  81 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
  82
  83 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
  84
  85 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
  86
  87 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
  88
  89 * New --fatal-warnings option.
  90
  91 * picoJava architecture support added.
  92
  93 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
  94
  95 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
  96   assembly programs with intel syntax.
  97
  98 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
  99
 100 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 101
 102 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 103
 104 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 105   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 106   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 107   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 108
 109 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 110
 111 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 112
 113 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 114
 115 * i960 ELF support added.
 116
 117 * ARM ELF support added.
 118
 119 Changes in 2.9:
 120
 121 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 122
 123 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 124   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 125
 126 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 127
 128 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 129   listing.
 130
 131 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 132
 133 Changes in 2.8:
 134
 135 * BeOS support added.
 136
 137 * MIPS16 support added.
 138
 139 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 140
 141 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 142
 143 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 144   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 145
 146 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 147   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 148   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 149   all.
 150
 151 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 152
 153 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 154   conditionals in listings.
 155
 156 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 157   the symbol is already defined.
 158
 159 Changes in 2.7:
 160
 161 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 162   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 163   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 164   added.
 165
 166 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 167
 168 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 169
 170 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 171
 172 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 173
 174 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 175
 176 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 177   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 178   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 179   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 180
 181 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 182
 183 Changes in 2.6:
 184
 185 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 186
 187 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 188   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 189   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 190
 191 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 192
 193 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 194
 195 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 196
 197 Changes in 2.4:
 198
 199 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 200
 201 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 202
 203 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 204   debugging support.
 205
 206 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 207
 208 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 209   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 210   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 211   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 212
 213 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 214
 215 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 216   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 217
 218 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 219
 220 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 221   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 222
 223 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 224   Paul Kranenburg.
 225
 226 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 227   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 228
 229 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 230
 231 Changes in 2.3:
 232
 233 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 234
 235 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 236
 237 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 238   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 239   again too.
 240
 241 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 242   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 243   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 244   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 245   in the "dist" directory.
 246
 247 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 248   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 249   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 250
 251 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 252   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 253   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 254   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 255
 256 * Irix 5 support.
 257
 258 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 259   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 260
 261 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 262   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 263   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 264   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 265
 266 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 267   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 268   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 269   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 270
 271 Changes in 2.2:
 272
 273 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 274
 275 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 276   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 277   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 278   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 279   reliable.
 280
 281 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 282   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 283   messages about "internal errors".
 284
 285 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 286   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 287
 288 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 289   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 290   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 291   known.
 292
 293 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 294   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 295   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 296   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 297   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 298   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 299   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 300
 301 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 302   support is in progress.
 303
 304 Changes in 2.1:
 305
 306 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 307   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 308
 309 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 310   with gcc now.
 311
 312 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 313   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 314
 315 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 316   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 317   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 318
 319 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 320
 321 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 322
 323 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 324
 325 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 326
 327 Changes in 2.0:
 328
 329 * Mostly bug fixes.
 330
 331 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 332
 333 Changes in 1.94:
 334
 335 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 336   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 337   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 338   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 339   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 340   fully merged yet.)
 341
 342 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 343   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 344
 345 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 346   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 347
 348 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 349   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 350   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 351   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 352   coming.
 353
 354 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 355
 356 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 357   Youngdale.
 358
 359 Changes in 1.93.01:
 360
 361 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 362
 363 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 364
 365 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 366   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 367   can be distinguished from the register.
 368
 369 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 370   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 371
 372 \f
 373 Local variables:
 374 fill-column: 79
 375 End: