gas/NEWS

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