gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for the MIPS Cyclic Redudancy Check (CRC) ASE.
   4
   5 * Add support for the Freescale S12Z architecture.
   6
   7 * Add --generate-missing-build-notes=[yes|no] option to create (or not) GNU
   8   Build Attribute notes if none are present in the input sources.  Add a
   9   --enable-generate-build-notes=[yes|no] configure time option to set the
  10   default behaviour.  Set the default if the configure option is not used
  11   to "no".
  12
  13 * Remove -mold-gcc command-line option for x86 targets.
  14
  15 * Add -O[2|s] command-line options to x86 assembler to enable alternate
  16   shorter instruction encoding.
  17
  18 * Add support for .nops directive.  It is currently supported only for
  19   x86 targets.
  20
  21 Changes in 2.30:
  22
  23 * Add support for loaction views in DWARF debug line information.
  24
  25 Changes in 2.29:
  26
  27 * Add support for ELF SHF_GNU_MBIND.
  28
  29 * Add support for the WebAssembly file format and wasm32 ELF conversion.
  30
  31 * PowerPC gas now checks that the correct register class is used in
  32   instructions.  For instance, "addi %f4,%cr3,%r31" warns three times
  33   that the registers are invalid.
  34
  35 * Add support for the Texas Instruments PRU processor.
  36
  37 * Support for the ARMv8-R architecture and Cortex-R52 processor has been
  38   added to the ARM port.
  39
  40 Changes in 2.28:
  41
  42 * Add support for the RISC-V architecture.
  43
  44 * Add support for the ARM Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 processors.
  45
  46 Changes in 2.27:
  47
  48 * Default to --enable-compressed-debug-sections=gas for Linux/x86 targets.
  49
  50 * Add --no-pad-sections to stop the assembler from padding the end of output
  51   sections up to their alignment boundary.
  52
  53 * Support for the ARMv8-M architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
  54   for the ARMv8-M Security and DSP Extensions has also been added to the ARM
  55   port.
  56
  57 * ARC backend accepts .extInstruction, .extCondCode, .extAuxRegister, and
  58   .extCoreRegister pseudo-ops that allow an user to define custom
  59   instructions, conditional codes, auxiliary and core registers.
  60
  61 * Add a configure option --enable-elf-stt-common to decide whether ELF
  62   assembler should generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type by
  63   default.  Default to no.
  64
  65 * New command line option --elf-stt-common= for ELF targets to control
  66   whether to generate common symbols with the STT_COMMON type.
  67
  68 * Add ability to set section flags and types via numeric values for ELF
  69   based targets.
  70
  71 * Add a configure option --enable-x86-relax-relocations to decide whether
  72   x86 assembler should generate relax relocations by default.  Default to
  73   yes, except for x86 Solaris targets older than Solaris 12.
  74
  75 * New command line option -mrelax-relocations= for x86 target to control
  76   whether to generate relax relocations.
  77
  78 * New command line option -mfence-as-lock-add=yes for x86 target to encode
  79   lfence, mfence and sfence as "lock addl $0x0, (%[re]sp)".
  80
  81 * Add assembly-time relaxation option for ARC cpus.
  82
  83 * Add --with-cpu=TYPE configure option for ARC gas.  This allows the default
  84   cpu type to be adjusted at configure time.
  85
  86 Changes in 2.26:
  87
  88 * Add a configure option --enable-compressed-debug-sections={all,gas} to
  89   decide whether DWARF debug sections should be compressed by default.
  90
  91 * Add support for the ARC EM/HS, and ARC600/700 architectures.  Remove
  92   assembler support for Argonaut RISC architectures.
  93
  94 * Symbol and label names can now be enclosed in double quotes (") which allows
  95   them to contain characters that are not part of valid symbol names in high
  96   level languages.
  97
  98 * Added the correctly spelled -march=armv6kz, for ARMv6KZ support.  The
  99   previous spelling, -march=armv6zk, is still accepted.
 100
 101 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the Aarch64 port.
 102   Support for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD, LOR and PAN architecture
 103   extensions has also been added to the Aarch64 port.
 104
 105 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the ARM port.  Support
 106   for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD and PAN architecture extensions has also
 107   been added to the ARM port.
 108
 109 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
 110   --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
 111   targets.
 112
 113 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
 114
 115 Changes in 2.25:
 116
 117 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
 118
 119 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
 120
 121 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
 122   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
 123
 124 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
 125
 126 Changes in 2.24:
 127
 128 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
 129
 130 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
 131   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
 132
 133 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
 134
 135 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
 136
 137 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
 138
 139 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
 140
 141 Changes in 2.23:
 142
 143 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
 144
 145 * Add support for S12X processor.
 146
 147 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
 148
 149 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
 150
 151 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
 152   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
 153
 154 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
 155
 156 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
 157
 158 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
 159
 160 Changes in 2.22:
 161
 162 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
 163
 164 Changes in 2.21:
 165
 166 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
 167
 168 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
 169
 170 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
 171   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
 172   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
 173   2.20.1.
 174
 175 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
 176
 177 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
 178   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
 179   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
 180   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
 181
 182 Changes in 2.20:
 183
 184 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
 185
 186 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
 187   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
 188   process.
 189
 190 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
 191   in binary rather than text.
 192
 193 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
 194
 195 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
 196   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
 197
 198 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
 199
 200 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
 201   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
 202   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
 203   the value.
 204
 205 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
 206
 207 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
 208
 209 Changes in 2.19:
 210
 211 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
 212   tables without runtime relocation.
 213
 214 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
 215   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 216
 217 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 218   targets.
 219
 220 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 221   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 222   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 223   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 224
 225 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 226   instructions with VEX prefix.
 227
 228 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 229
 230 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 231   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 232   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 233
 234 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 235   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 236
 237 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 238
 239 Changes in 2.18:
 240
 241 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 242
 243 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 244
 245 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 246   relocations.
 247
 248 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 249
 250 * Add support for Score target.
 251
 252 Changes in 2.17:
 253
 254 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 255
 256 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 257
 258 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 259
 260 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 261   switches can be read from <file>.
 262
 263 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 264   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 265   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 266
 267 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 268   documentation for how this works.
 269
 270 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 271   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 272   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 273
 274 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 275   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 276   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 277   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 278   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 279
 280 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 281   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 282   assembler.
 283
 284 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 285
 286 Changes in 2.16:
 287
 288 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 289
 290 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 291
 292 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 293   targets.
 294
 295 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 296   mode.
 297
 298 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 299
 300 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 301
 302 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 303   preferred debug format.
 304
 305 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 306
 307 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 308
 309 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 310   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 311
 312 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 313
 314 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 315   instrucitons.
 316
 317 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 318
 319 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 320   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 321
 322 Changes in 2.15:
 323
 324 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 325   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 326
 327 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 328
 329 * Added support for ARM V6.
 330
 331 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 332
 333 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 334
 335 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 336   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 337
 338 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 339   definitions created by ".req".
 340
 341 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 342
 343 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 344   information with GNU extensions.
 345
 346 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 347
 348 * Added support for v850e1.
 349
 350 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 351   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 352   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 353   switch disables the optimization.
 354
 355 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 356   existing -non_shared option.
 357
 358 Changes in 2.14:
 359
 360 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 361
 362 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 363
 364 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 365
 366 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 367   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 368
 369 * Support for SH2E added.
 370
 371 * GASP has now been removed.
 372
 373 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 374   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 375
 376 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 377
 378 Changes in 2.13:
 379
 380 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 381   and FR500 included.
 382
 383 * Support for DLX processor added.
 384
 385 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 386   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 387
 388 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 389   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 390   the currently specified base.
 391
 392 Changes in 2.12:
 393
 394 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 395
 396 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 397
 398 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 399   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 400   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 401   compatibility.
 402
 403 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 404   the ARM assembler.
 405
 406 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 407   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 408
 409 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 410   but still works for compatability.
 411
 412 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 413   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 414   -n will turn on the warning.
 415
 416 Changes in 2.11:
 417
 418 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 419
 420 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 421
 422 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 423
 424 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 425
 426 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 427
 428 * Support for IA-64.
 429
 430 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 431
 432 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 433
 434 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 435
 436 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 437   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 438   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 439
 440 Changes in 2.10:
 441
 442 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 443   operand when altering the flags field.
 444
 445 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 446
 447 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 448
 449 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 450
 451 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 452
 453 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 454
 455 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 456
 457 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 458
 459 * picoJava architecture support added.
 460
 461 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 462
 463 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 464   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 465
 466 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 467
 468 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 469
 470 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 471
 472 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 473   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 474   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 475   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 476
 477 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 478
 479 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 480
 481 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 482
 483 * i960 ELF support added.
 484
 485 * ARM ELF support added.
 486
 487 Changes in 2.9:
 488
 489 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 490
 491 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 492   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 493
 494 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 495
 496 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 497   listing.
 498
 499 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 500
 501 Changes in 2.8:
 502
 503 * BeOS support added.
 504
 505 * MIPS16 support added.
 506
 507 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 508
 509 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 510
 511 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 512   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 513
 514 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 515   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 516   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 517   all.
 518
 519 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 520
 521 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 522   conditionals in listings.
 523
 524 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 525   the symbol is already defined.
 526
 527 Changes in 2.7:
 528
 529 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 530   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 531   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 532   added.
 533
 534 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 535
 536 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 537
 538 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 539
 540 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 541
 542 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 543
 544 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 545   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 546   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 547   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 548
 549 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 550
 551 Changes in 2.6:
 552
 553 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 554
 555 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 556   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 557   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 558
 559 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 560
 561 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 562
 563 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 564
 565 Changes in 2.4:
 566
 567 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 568
 569 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 570
 571 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 572   debugging support.
 573
 574 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 575
 576 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 577   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 578   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 579   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 580
 581 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 582
 583 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 584   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 585
 586 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 587
 588 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 589   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 590
 591 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 592   Paul Kranenburg.
 593
 594 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 595   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 596
 597 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 598
 599 Changes in 2.3:
 600
 601 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 602
 603 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 604
 605 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 606   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 607   again too.
 608
 609 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 610   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 611   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 612   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 613   in the "dist" directory.
 614
 615 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 616   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 617   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 618
 619 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 620   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 621   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 622   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 623
 624 * Irix 5 support.
 625
 626 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 627   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 628
 629 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 630   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 631   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 632   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 633
 634 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 635   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 636   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 637   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 638
 639 Changes in 2.2:
 640
 641 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 642
 643 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 644   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 645   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 646   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 647   reliable.
 648
 649 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 650   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 651   messages about "internal errors".
 652
 653 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 654   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 655
 656 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 657   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 658   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 659   known.
 660
 661 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 662   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 663   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 664   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 665   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 666   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 667   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 668
 669 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 670   support is in progress.
 671
 672 Changes in 2.1:
 673
 674 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 675   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 676
 677 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 678   with gcc now.
 679
 680 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 681   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 682
 683 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 684   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 685   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 686
 687 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 688
 689 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 690
 691 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 692
 693 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 694
 695 Changes in 2.0:
 696
 697 * Mostly bug fixes.
 698
 699 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 700
 701 Changes in 1.94:
 702
 703 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 704   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 705   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 706   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 707   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 708   fully merged yet.)
 709
 710 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 711   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 712
 713 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 714   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 715
 716 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 717   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 718   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 719   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 720   coming.
 721
 722 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 723
 724 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 725   Youngdale.
 726
 727 Changes in 1.93.01:
 728
 729 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 730
 731 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 732
 733 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 734   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 735   can be distinguished from the register.
 736
 737 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 738   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 739
 740 \f
 741 Copyright (C) 2012-2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 742
 743 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 744 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 745 notice and this notice are preserved.
 746
 747 Local variables:
 748 fill-column: 79
 749 End: