gas/NEWS

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