[AArch64] Add support for ARMv8.1 command line option
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gas / NEWS
1 -*- text -*-
2
3 Changes in 2.26:
4
5 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the Aarch64 port.
6 Support for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD, LOR and PAN architecture
7 extensions has also been added to the Aarch64 port.
8
9 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the ARM port. Support
10 for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD and PAN architecture extensions has also
11 been added to the ARM port.
12
13 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
14 --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
15 targets.
16
17 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
18
19 Changes in 2.25:
20
21 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
22
23 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
24
25 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
26 Studio tool. Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
27
28 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
29
30 Changes in 2.24:
31
32 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
33
34 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
35 generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
36
37 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
38
39 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
40
41 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
42
43 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
44
45 Changes in 2.23:
46
47 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
48
49 * Add support for S12X processor.
50
51 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
52
53 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
54
55 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
56 directives. These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
57
58 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
59
60 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
61
62 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
63
64 Changes in 2.22:
65
66 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
67
68 Changes in 2.21:
69
70 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
71
72 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
73
74 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
75 for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified. This
76 feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
77 2.20.1.
78
79 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
80
81 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
82 compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
83 file. Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
84 gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
85
86 Changes in 2.20:
87
88 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
89
90 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
91 pseudo op. It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
92 process.
93
94 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
95 in binary rather than text.
96
97 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
98
99 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
100 with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
101
102 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
103
104 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
105 indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
106 not be use. Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
107 the value.
108
109 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
110
111 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
112
113 Changes in 2.19:
114
115 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
116 tables without runtime relocation.
117
118 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
119 adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
120
121 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
122 targets.
123
124 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
125 generate a listing output. The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
126 various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
127 command line options used, and a time stamp.
128
129 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
130 instructions with VEX prefix.
131
132 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
133
134 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
135 -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
136 -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
137
138 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
139 pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
140
141 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
142
143 Changes in 2.18:
144
145 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
146
147 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
148
149 * Added gas .reloc pseudo. This is a low-level interface for creating
150 relocations.
151
152 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
153
154 * Add support for Score target.
155
156 Changes in 2.17:
157
158 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
159
160 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
161
162 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
163
164 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
165 switches can be read from <file>.
166
167 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
168 if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
169 character. This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
170
171 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
172 documentation for how this works.
173
174 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
175 tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
176 --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
177
178 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
179 also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
180 known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
181 characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
182 be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
183
184 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
185 for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
186 assembler.
187
188 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
189
190 Changes in 2.16:
191
192 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
193
194 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
195
196 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
197 targets.
198
199 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
200 mode.
201
202 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
203
204 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
205
206 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
207 preferred debug format.
208
209 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
210
211 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
212
213 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
214 on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
215
216 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
217
218 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
219 instrucitons.
220
221 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
222
223 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
224 added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
225
226 Changes in 2.15:
227
228 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
229 deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
230
231 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
232
233 * Added support for ARM V6.
234
235 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
236
237 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
238
239 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
240 specification has been added to the arm assembler.
241
242 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
243 definitions created by ".req".
244
245 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
246
247 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
248 information with GNU extensions.
249
250 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
251
252 * Added support for v850e1.
253
254 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler. By default, x86 GAS replaces
255 multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
256 with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi. This
257 switch disables the optimization.
258
259 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler. It was not useful, and confused the
260 existing -non_shared option.
261
262 Changes in 2.14:
263
264 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
265
266 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
267
268 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
269
270 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
271 uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
272
273 * Support for SH2E added.
274
275 * GASP has now been removed.
276
277 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
278 DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
279
280 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
281
282 Changes in 2.13:
283
284 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
285 and FR500 included.
286
287 * Support for DLX processor added.
288
289 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use
290 the macro facilities in GAS instead.
291
292 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
293 explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
294 the currently specified base.
295
296 Changes in 2.12:
297
298 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
299
300 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
301
302 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
303 specifying the target instruction set. The old method of specifying the
304 target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
305 compatibility.
306
307 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
308 the ARM assembler.
309
310 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
311 in the assembly. Contributed by Anders Norlander.
312
313 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
314 but still works for compatability.
315
316 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
317 generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
318 -n will turn on the warning.
319
320 Changes in 2.11:
321
322 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
323
324 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
325
326 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
327
328 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
329
330 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
331
332 * Support for IA-64.
333
334 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
335
336 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
337
338 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
339
340 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
341 due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
342 translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
343
344 Changes in 2.10:
345
346 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
347 operand when altering the flags field.
348
349 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
350
351 * Support for IBM 370 ELF. Somewhat experimental.
352
353 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
354
355 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
356
357 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
358
359 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
360
361 * New --fatal-warnings option.
362
363 * picoJava architecture support added.
364
365 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
366
367 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
368 assembly programs with intel syntax.
369
370 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
371
372 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
373
374 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
375
376 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386. This change will
377 produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
378 of gas accepted. If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
379 older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
380
381 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
382
383 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
384
385 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
386
387 * i960 ELF support added.
388
389 * ARM ELF support added.
390
391 Changes in 2.9:
392
393 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
394
395 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
396 and gcc 2.8. The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
397
398 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
399
400 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
401 listing.
402
403 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
404
405 Changes in 2.8:
406
407 * BeOS support added.
408
409 * MIPS16 support added.
410
411 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
412
413 * Alpha/VMS support added.
414
415 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
416 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
417
418 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
419 maximum number of bytes to skip. If doing the alignment would require
420 skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
421 all.
422
423 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
424
425 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
426 conditionals in listings.
427
428 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
429 the symbol is already defined.
430
431 Changes in 2.7:
432
433 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
434 etc.) if -mregnames is used. Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
435 can be used any time. PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
436 added.
437
438 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
439
440 * PowerPC ELF support added.
441
442 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
443
444 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
445
446 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
447
448 * SCO ELF support added. For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
449 default is to build COFF-only support. To get a set of tools that generate
450 ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
451 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
452
453 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
454
455 Changes in 2.6:
456
457 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
458
459 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode. Use -M or --mri to select
460 MRI mode. The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
461 ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
462
463 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
464
465 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
466
467 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
468
469 Changes in 2.4:
470
471 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
472
473 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
474
475 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
476 debugging support.
477
478 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
479
480 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
481 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
482 features not available in the native assembler. If the native assembler is
483 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
484
485 * Usage message is available with "--help".
486
487 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included. (Actually, it was in 2.3
488 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
489
490 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
491
492 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
493 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
494
495 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
496 Paul Kranenburg.
497
498 * Improved Alpha support. Immediate constants can have a much larger range
499 now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
500
501 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
502
503 Changes in 2.3:
504
505 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
506
507 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
508
509 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
510 based on mail received from various people. The `-h#' option should work
511 again too.
512
513 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law. Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
514 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6. As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
515 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3. You can retrieve
516 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
517 in the "dist" directory.
518
519 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
520 simple tests okay. I haven't put it through extensive testing. (GNU make is
521 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
522
523 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format). The gas support is
524 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format. I'm afraid
525 the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
526 making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
527
528 * Irix 5 support.
529
530 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
531 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
532
533 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
534 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases. Some details of relocation
535 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
536 added, to make the Alpha port easier.
537
538 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times. This is
539 intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
540 various phases of compilation. (You should be able to get all of them
541 printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
542
543 Changes in 2.2:
544
545 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
546
547 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
548 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
549 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
550 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
551 reliable.
552
553 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
554 displayed. This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
555 messages about "internal errors".
556
557 * ELF support is falling into place. Support for the 386 should be working.
558 Support for SPARC Solaris is in. HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
559
560 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
561 boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant. This permits slightly
562 more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
563 known.
564
565 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
566 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
567 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section. The format of the .stab
568 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
569 its string table. For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
570 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
571 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
572
573 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported. SPARC LynxOS
574 support is in progress.
575
576 Changes in 2.1:
577
578 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
579 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
580
581 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
582 with gcc now.
583
584 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
585 suggested by Ronald Cole.
586
587 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah. This
588 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
589 2.x. Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
590
591 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
592
593 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
594
595 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
596
597 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
598
599 Changes in 2.0:
600
601 * Mostly bug fixes.
602
603 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
604
605 Changes in 1.94:
606
607 * BFD merge is partly done. Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
608 "--with-bfd-assembler" option. Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
609 format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it. It's the default only for OS "elf"
610 or "solaris". (ELF isn't really supported yet. It needs work. I've got
611 some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
612 fully merged yet.)
613
614 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half. It should now compile under gcc
615 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
616
617 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size. This should result in
618 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
619
620 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in. The OSF
621 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet. (I can
622 make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.) Ralph's code, for BSD
623 4.4, supports a.out format. We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
624 coming.
625
626 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
627
628 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
629 Youngdale.
630
631 Changes in 1.93.01:
632
633 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
634
635 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
636
637 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names. For COFF format, which
638 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
639 can be distinguished from the register.
640
641 * Last public release was 1.38. Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
642 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
643
644 \f
645 Copyright (C) 2012-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
646
647 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
648 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
649 notice and this notice are preserved.
650
651 Local variables:
652 fill-column: 79
653 End:
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