gas/NEWS

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