Copyright update for binutils
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / ld / NEWS
1 -*- text -*-
2
3 Changes in 2.26:
4
5 * Add --fix-stm32l4xx-629360 to the ARM linker to enable a link-time
6 workaround for a bug in the bus matrix / memory controller for some of
7 the STM32 Cortex-M4 based products (STM32L4xx)
8
9 * Add a configure option --enable-compressed-debug-sections={all,ld} to
10 decide whether DWARF debug sections should be compressed by default.
11
12 * Add support for the ARC EM/HS, and ARC600/700 architectures.
13
14 * Experimental support for linker garbage collection (--gc-sections)
15 has been enabled for COFF and PE based targets.
16
17 * New command line option for ELF targets to compress DWARF debug
18 sections, --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi].
19
20 * New command line option, --orphan-handling=[place|warn|error|discard], to
21 adjust how orphan sections are handled. The default is 'place' which gives
22 the current behaviour, 'warn' and 'error' issue a warning or error
23 respectively when orphan sections are found, and 'discard' will discard all
24 orphan sections.
25
26 * Add support for LLVM plugin.
27
28 * Add --print-memory-usage option to report memory blocks usage.
29
30 * Add --require-defined option, it's like --undefined except the new symbol
31 must be defined by the end of the link.
32
33 Changes in 2.25:
34
35 * PE binaries now once again contain real timestamps by default. To disable
36 the inclusion of a timestamp in a PE binary, use the --no-insert-timestamp
37 command line option.
38
39 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
40
41 * Add support for the --build-id command line option to COFF based targets.
42
43 * x86/x86_64 pe-coff now supports the --build-id option.
44
45 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
46
47 Changes in 2.24:
48
49 * Add LOG2CEIL() builtin function to the linker script language
50
51 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
52
53 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
54
55 * Add support for the V850E3V5 architecture.
56
57 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
58
59 * --enable-new-dtags no longer generates old dtags in addition to new dtags.
60
61 * Remove linker support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
62
63 * Add ALIGN_WITH_INPUT to the linker script language to force the alignment of
64 an output section to use the maximum alignment of all its input sections.
65
66 Changes in 2.23:
67
68 * Enable compressed debug section feature for x86/x86_64 pe-coff.
69
70 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
71
72 * Added SORT_NONE to the linker script language to disable section sorting.
73
74 * Add a linker-provided symbol when producing ELF output, '__ehdr_start'
75 to point to the ELF file header (and nearby program headers) in the
76 program's memory image.
77
78 * Add support for S12X processor.
79
80 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
81
82 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
83
84 * Add option -f FILE on AIX (for response file).
85
86 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
87
88 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
89
90 Changes in 2.22:
91
92 * --copy-dt-needed-entries is no longer enabled by default. Instead
93 --no-copy-dt-needed-entries is the default.
94
95 * INPUT_SECTION_FLAGS has been added to the linker script language
96 to allow selection of input sections by section header section flags.
97
98 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
99
100 * Added SORT_BY_INIT_PRIORITY to the linker script language to permit
101 sorting sections by numerical value of the GCC init_priority attribute
102 encoded in the section name.
103
104 Changes in 2.21:
105
106 * Linker script expression evaluation is somewhat more sane. This may
107 break scripts that depend on quirks of the old expression evaluation.
108
109 * Turn off underscoring for x86_64 PE+-COFF targets. For old behavior the
110 option --enable-leading-mingw64-underscores can be used on configure of
111 bfd.
112
113 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
114
115 * --add-needed renamed to --copy-dt-needed-entries in order to avoid confusion
116 with --as-needed option.
117
118 * Extend .def file syntax by '== <ID>' for imports and exports. This allows
119 to alias the import/export table name written in PE image.
120
121 * Add --exclude-all-symbols option to PE based linkers. This prevents all
122 symbols from automatically being exported.
123
124 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
125
126 * Add support for alpha-vms target.
127
128 Changes in 2.20:
129
130 * GNU/Linux targets now support the STB_GNU_UNIQUE symbol binding. This is a
131 GNU extension to the standard set of ELF symbol bindings. The binding will
132 be passed on to the dynamic linker which will make sure that in the entire
133 process there is just one symbol with the given name and type in use.
134
135 * PE targets now support a GNU extension to allow the alignment of common
136 common symbols to be specified. This support uses custom options in
137 the .drectve section, which will be disregarded by the native tools.
138
139 * PE targets now add primitive support for ELF version scripts; symbols
140 are not versioned, but the local and global symbol visibility directives
141 are respected when filtering symbols in auto-export mode.
142
143 * New option --no-export-dynamic to undo the effect of the -E and
144 --export-dynamic options.
145
146 * ELF: --warn-alternate-em option to warn if an object has alternate
147 ELF machine code.
148
149 * New script function REGION_ALIAS to add alias names to memory regions.
150
151 * PE targets no longer make use of the long section names PE extension to
152 the COFF format when generating executable images, by default. The old
153 (slightly non-conformant) behaviour can still be invoked by using the
154 new '--enable-long-section-names' command-line option. It is also enabled
155 automatically in the presence of un-stripped debug information, as GDB
156 needs to be able to find the debug info sections by their full names.
157
158 * For GNU/Linux systems the linker will now avoid processing any relocations
159 made against symbols of the STT_GNU_IFUNC type and instead emit them into
160 the resulting binary for processing by the loader.
161
162 * --as-needed now links in a dynamic library if it satisfies undefined
163 symbols in regular objects, or in other dynamic libraries. In the
164 latter case the library is not linked if it is found in a DT_NEEDED
165 entry of one of the libraries already linked.
166
167 * Add a new command line option, -Ttext-segment ADDR, for ELF targets
168 to set the address of the first byte of the text segment.
169
170 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
171
172 * Add new option --use-nul-prefixed-import-tables to ld for PE targets to
173 allow fallback to old import table generation with null element prefix.
174
175 * Windows PE systems now support a new --exclude-modules-for-implib option,
176 allowing users to partition object files and archive members between a DLL
177 and its associated import library as they are generated during linking.
178
179 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
180
181 * Add CR16 ELF --embedded-relocs (used to embedded relocations into binaries
182 for Embedded-PIC code) option.
183
184 * Add to the PE/PE+ targets the support of two different kinds of
185 pseudo-relocations. They can be selected by the switches
186 --enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc-v1 and --enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc-v2.
187 For the switch --enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc it uses for 32-bit
188 runtime pseudo relocation version one, for 64-bit the version two.
189
190 Changes in 2.19:
191
192 * Linker scripts support a new INSERT command that makes it easier to
193 augment the default script.
194
195 * Linker script input section filespecs may now specify a file within an
196 archive by writing "archive:file".
197
198 * The --sort-common switch now has an optional argument which specifies the
199 direction of sorting.
200
201 * The M68K linker now supports multiple GOT generation schemes controlled via
202 the --got=<type> command line option.
203
204 * The ARM EABI linker will now generate stubs for function calls to symbols
205 that are too far away. The placement of the stubs is controlled by a new
206 linker command line option: --stub-group-size=N.
207
208 Changes in 2.18:
209
210 * Linker sources now released under version 3 of the GNU General Public
211 License.
212
213 * ELF: New --build-id option to generate a unique per-binary identifier
214 embedded in a note section.
215
216 * Added support for National Semicondutor CompactRISC (ie CR16) target.
217
218 * -l:foo now searches the library path for a filename called foo,
219 without converting it to libfoo.a or libfoo.so.
220
221 * Add a new command line option '--default-script=FILE' or '-dT FILE'
222 which specifies a replacement for the built in, default linker
223 script.
224
225 * ELF: Add -Bsymbolic-functions, --dynamic-list-cpp-new, which puts C++
226 operator new and delete on the dynamic list, and --dynamic-list-data,
227 builtin list for --dynamic-list, which puts global data symbols on the
228 dynamic list.
229
230 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
231
232 * Add support for Score target.
233
234 * ELF: Add --dynamic-list option to specify a list of global symbols
235 whose references shouldn't be bound to the definition within the
236 shared library, or a list of symbols which should be added to the
237 symbol table in the executable.
238
239 * The default output section LMA has changed for allocatable sections from
240 being equal to VMA, to keeping the difference between LMA and VMA the same as
241 the previous output section in the same region. This is a more useful
242 default when using overlays and other cases where you specify an LMA
243 differing from the VMA for some sections.
244
245 * New switch: --print-gc-sections to list any sections removed by garabge
246 collection.
247
248 * ARM: Added --vfp11-denorm-fix option to work around an erratum in current
249 VFP11 coprocessors.
250
251 Changes in 2.17:
252
253 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
254
255 * Modify the Linux linker search order to better match ld.so search order.
256 Look for DT_NEEDED libraries in paths specified by ld.so.conf before
257 searching the default directories, rather than vice versa.
258 Use $prefix/etc/ld.so.conf if it exists, otherwise /etc/ld.so.conf.
259
260 * PE-COFF: Forward exports from DLL's can now be specified in .def files
261 passed directly to ld.
262
263 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
264
265 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
266 switches can be read from <file>.
267
268 Changes in 2.16:
269
270 * Support for the R_ARM_V4BX relocation as defined in the ARM AAELF
271 specification has been added via the --fix-v4bx command-line option.
272
273 * New linker script construct AS_NEEDED(), which sets the --as-needed flag
274 for input files listed inside of it.
275
276 * A new command-line option, --sysroot, can be used to override the
277 default sysroot location. It only applies to toolchains that were
278 configured using --with-sysroot.
279
280 * New linker script functions: ORIGIN() and LENGTH() which return information
281 about a specified memory region.
282
283 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
284
285 * Added SEGMENT_START to the linker script language to permit the user to
286 override the base address for a segment from the command-line.
287
288 * ELF: --warn-shared-textrel option to warn if adding a DT_TEXTREL to a shared
289 object.
290
291 * Added SORT_BY_NAME and SORT_BY_ALIGNMENT to the linker script
292 language to permit sorting sections by section name or section
293 maximum alignment.
294
295 * Added a new linker command line switch, --sort-section name|alignment,
296 to sort sections by section name or maximum alignment.
297
298 * ELF: --add-needed/--no-add-needed options to control if a DT_NEEDED tag
299 should be added when a shared library comes from DT_NEEDED tags.
300
301 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
302
303 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
304
305 * A new linker command line switch has been added which allows the hash table
306 size to be set to a suitable prime value near to its argument. This switch
307 is --hash-size=<NUMBER>. Also if the switch --reduce-memory-overheads is
308 used, and --hash-size has not been used, then the default value will be set
309 to 1021.
310
311 * Linker map files are now generated with an O(N) algorithm for finding symbols
312 that are defined in each section. This uses about 40% more memory for
313 symbols than the old O(N^2) algorithm. You can use the new
314 --reduce-memory-overheads option to select the old algorithm; this option
315 might also be used in the future to select similar tradeoffs.
316
317 Changes in 2.15:
318
319 * ELF: --as-needed/--no-as-needed options to control if a DT_NEEDED tag should
320 be added only when a shared library is referenced.
321
322 * PE: --large-address-aware option to indicate executables support virtual
323 addresses greater than 2 gigabytes.
324
325 * DWARF 2 support for i386pe added.
326
327 * The linker script operator DEFINED() will now yield 1 only for a symbol that
328 is defined before the statement where DEFINED is used.
329
330 * The MIPS --embedded-relocs (used to embed relocations into binaries for
331 Embedded-PIC code) is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
332
333 * cr16c support added by NSC.
334
335 * m32r Linux (ELF) support added by Renesas.
336
337 * Improved linker's handling of unresolved symbols. The switch
338 --unresolved-symbols=<method> has been added to tell the linker when it
339 should report them and the switch --warn-unresolved-symbols has been added to
340 make reports be issued as warning messages rather than errors.
341
342 Changes in 2.14:
343
344 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
345
346 * Added --with-sysroot configure switch to specify a target system root, for
347 linking against a target filesystem image.
348
349 * Added --accept-unknown-linker-format to restore old linker behaviour (pre
350 2.14) of silently accepting and linking in any files in an unknown binary
351 file format.
352
353 * Added --no-omagic to undo the effects of the -N option.
354
355 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
356 DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
357
358 * Added --with-lib-path configure switch to specify default value for
359 LIB_PATH.
360
361 * ARM port to QNX operating system added by Graeme Peterson.
362
363 * IP2K support added by Denis Chertykov.
364
365 Changes in 2.13:
366
367 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
368 and FR500 included.
369
370 Changes in version 2.13:
371
372 * DEC VAX ELF support, by Matt Thomas.
373
374 Changes in version 2.12:
375
376 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
377
378 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
379
380 * Support for -z nocopyreloc in the x86 ELF linker, which disables
381 production of copy relocs. Warning: using this option may result in
382 non-sharable applications.
383
384 * Support for -z combreloc in the ELF linker, which puts dynamic
385 relocations against the same symbol together, so that dynamic linker
386 can use an one-entry symbol lookup cache.
387
388 * Support for ELF SHF_MERGE section merging, by Jakub Jelinek.
389
390 Changes in version 2.11:
391
392 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
393
394 * Support added for eliminating duplicate DWARF2 debug information by
395 having the compiler generate the information in sections called
396 .gnu.linkonce.wi.XXXX where XXXX is a checksum for the contents. The
397 linker then merges these sections together into the normal .debug_info
398 section.
399
400 * The native ELF linker now searches the directories in DT_RUNPATH or
401 DT_RPATH of a shared library for shared libraries needed by it.
402
403 * TI C54x support, by Timothy Wall.
404
405 * Added command line switch --section-start to set the start address of any
406 specified section.
407
408 * Added ability to emit full relocation information in linked executables,
409 enabled by --emit-relocs. Some post-linkage optimization tools need
410 this information in order to be able to correctly identify and perform
411 symbol relative addressing in the event of changes in section contents
412 (instructions being added or deleted, extending data sections, etc.)
413
414 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt (preliminary, alpha quality).
415
416 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
417
418 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
419
420 Changes in version 2.10:
421
422 * Added AT> to the linker script language to allow load-time allocation of
423 sections into regions.
424
425 * Added garbage collection of unused sections, enabled by --gc-sections.
426 It does require a bit of backend support; currently implemented are
427 arm-elf, avr-elf, d10v-elf, fr30-elf, i386-elf, m32r-elf, m68k-elf,
428 mcore-elf, mips-elf, mn10300-elf, ppc-elf, sh-elf, sparc-elf, and v850-elf.
429 Others will ignore the option.
430
431 * Added SORT to the linker script language to permit sorting sections by file
432 name or section name.
433
434 * Added EXTERN to the linker script language as an equivalent to the -u
435 command-line option.
436
437 * Added ASSERT to the linker script language.
438
439 * Added EXCLUDE_FILE to the linker script language for further control over
440 wildcard file names.
441
442 * Added -O option to optimize linker output (as of this writing, this only
443 affects ELF shared library generation).
444
445 * The -e option now accepts a number as well as a symbol name.
446
447 * Added --no-undefined option to disallow undefined symbols when creating a
448 shared library.
449
450 * The linker now issues a warning, not an error, for an undefined symbol when
451 using -Bsymbolic; use the new --no-undefined option to get the old
452 behaviour.
453
454 * Added --demangle and --no-demangle options.
455
456 Changes in version 2.9:
457
458 * Added SQUAD to the linker script language.
459
460 * New option --no-warn-mismatch.
461
462 * The MEMORY command now parses the attributes to determine where sections that
463 are not placed in a specific memory region are placed.
464
465 Changes in version 2.8:
466
467 * Linker scripts may now contain shell wildcard characters for file and section
468 names.
469
470 * The linker now supports symbol versions in ELF.
471
472 * The NOCROSSREFS command was added to the linker script language.
473
474 * The LOADADDR expression was added to the linker script language.
475
476 * MAX and MIN functions were added to the linker script language.
477
478 * The OVERLAY construct was added to the linker script language.
479
480 * New option --warn-section-align to warn when the address of an output section
481 changes due to alignment of an input section.
482
483 * New options --filter/-F and --auxiliary/-f.
484
485 Changes in version 2.7:
486
487 * New option --cref to print out a cross reference table.
488
489 * New option --wrap SYMBOL.
490
491 * New option --no-whole-archive, to turn off the effect of --whole-archive.
492
493 * Input sections assigned to the output section /DISCARD/ in the linker script
494 are not included in the output file.
495
496 * The SunOS and ELF linkers now merge stabs debugging information which uses
497 the N_BINCL and N_EINCL stab types. This reduces the amount of debugging
498 information generated.
499
500 Changes in version 2.6:
501
502 * When an ELF section name is representable as a C identifier (this is not true
503 of most ELF section names), the linker will automatically define symbols
504 __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the section name, at the
505 beginning and the end of the section. This is used by glibc.
506
507 Addendum: Current versions of the linker (at least for version 2.18 onwards
508 and possibly much earlier as well) place two restrictions on this feature: The
509 symbols are only implemented for orphaned sections, not for explicitly placed
510 sections and they are PROVIDEd rather than being defined.
511
512 * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning is encountered in an input file, the
513 contents of the section are displayed as an error message, and the section is
514 not copied into the output file. This is used by glibc.
515
516 * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning.SYMBOL is encountered in an input
517 file, and the symbol SYMBOL is referenced by some object file, the contents of
518 the section are displayed as an error message. The section is not copied into
519 the output file, unless doing a relocatable or shared link. This is used by
520 glibc.
521
522 * New options -split-by-reloc and -split-by-file.
523
524 * The linker now supports linking PIC compiled code on SPARC SunOS. It can
525 also create SPARC SunOS shared libraries, and, like the native SunOS linker,
526 will do so whenever there is an undefined symbol in the link and neither the -e
527 nor the -r option was used.
528
529 * The -rpath option may be used on SunOS to set the list of directories to be
530 searched at run time. This overrides the default of building the list from the
531 -L options.
532
533 * The COFF linker now combines debugging information for structs, unions, and
534 enums, so that even if the same type is defined in multiple input files it will
535 only be defined once in the output file. The --traditional-format switch will
536 prevent this optimization.
537
538 Changes in version 2.5:
539
540 * The linker now supports linking against SunOS shared libraries. It still can
541 not link SunOS PIC (Position Independent Code) files, so it can not be used to
542 generate shared libraries.
543
544 * The linker now supports linking against ELF shared libraries for the i386
545 (UnixWare) and SPARC (Solaris). It can also link ELF PIC files, and can be
546 used to generate shared libraries. Shared library generation is not well
547 tested; please report any problems encountered. The linker is now enabled for
548 Solaris again.
549
550 * Eric Youngdale has contributed Linux support code, including linking against
551 Linux a.out shared libraries. The linker produces Linux QMAGIC binaries.
552
553 * The ELF backend has been converted to the new linker code. To use the new
554 ELF linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So far,
555 this function has been written for i386 (UnixWare), SPARC (Solaris) MIPS (Irix
556 5), and HPPA ELF targets.
557
558 * The -( (--start-group) and -) (--end-group) options have been added to
559 support searching a group of archives as though they were a single archive.
560 This can also be used in a linker script, as GROUP ( files ).
561
562 * When a file is named on the command line, and the linker does not recognize
563 it as an object file, the linker will now treat the file as a linker script
564 file. A linker script named in this way augments, but does not replace, the
565 default linker script.
566
567 * The -warn-once option was added. It causes the linker to only warn once per
568 undefined symbol, rather than once per reference.
569
570 * The COFF backend has been converted to the new linker code. As with ELF, to
571 use the new linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So
572 far, this function has been written for the i386, m68k, a29k and SH targets.
573
574 * The -V flag was made a synonym for -v, for SVR4 compatibility. The old -V
575 behaviour is available via --verbose.
576
577 Changes in version 2.4:
578
579 * New linker code, by Steve Chamberlain and Ian Taylor. For a.out and ecoff
580 formats (so far), this should result in considerable savings in time
581 and memory used while linking; slightly poorer performance than
582 before for formats not converted yet.
583
584 * Command-line parsing is no longer done with flex. This means
585 oddball characters in filenames won't get treated as argument
586 separators.
587
588 * HP-PA ELF support, by Jeff Law. (No SOM support yet.)
589
590 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie.
591
592 * Irix 4 shared libraries are now supported (Irix 5 uses ELF, and ELF shared
593 libraries are not yet supported).
594
595 * COFF shared libraries (as on SCO) should work as well.
596
597 * The linker is disabled for Solaris. (Actually, it was in 2.3 also, I just
598 forgot to note it.) Some of their C library routines don't work when
599 statically linked, and the GNU linker doesn't support dynamic linking yet.
600
601 Changes in version 2.3:
602
603 * Weak symbols are now supported.
604
605 * ELF support has been added. The linker has been bootstrapped on
606 UnixWare and Solaris.
607
608 * Alpha OSF/1 support has been added (non dynamic linking only).
609
610 Changes in version 2.2:
611
612 * The `bfd' library has been updated to reduce a.out-format string
613 table size. The effect of this is that files linked from many input
614 files with duplicate symbols (`-g' debugging records, or identical
615 static symbols) should be much smaller.
616
617 Changes in version 2.1:
618
619 * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) is now implemented.
620
621 * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the
622 other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix.
623
624 \f
625 Copyright (C) 2012-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
626
627 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
628 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
629 notice and this notice are preserved.
630
631 Local variables:
632 fill-column: 79
633 End:
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