gas/NEWS

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