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252b5132 | 1 | -*- text -*- |
18e03609 NC |
2 | * Support added for eliminating duplicate DWARF2 debug information by |
3 | having the compiler generate the information in sections called | |
4 | .gnu.linkonce.wi.XXXX where XXXX is a checksum for the contents. The | |
5 | linker then merges these sections together into the normal .debug_info | |
6 | section. | |
252b5132 | 7 | |
ec4eb78a L |
8 | * The native ELF linker now searches the directories in DT_RUNPATH or |
9 | DT_RPATH of a shared library for shared libraries needed by it. | |
10 | ||
2d30b3da TW |
11 | * TI C54x support, by Timothy Wall. |
12 | ||
176355da NC |
13 | * Added command line switch --section-start to set the start address of any |
14 | specified section. | |
15 | ||
a712da20 NC |
16 | * Added ability to emit full relocation information in linked executables, |
17 | enabled by --emit-relocs. Some post-linkage optimization tools need | |
18 | this information in order to be able to correctly identify and perform | |
19 | symbol relative addressing in the event of changes in section contents | |
20 | (instructions being added or deleted, extending data sections, etc.) | |
21 | ||
22b36938 JE |
22 | * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt (preliminary, alpha quality). |
23 | ||
5bcac8a4 HPN |
24 | * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series). |
25 | ||
919e4093 AM |
26 | Changes in version 2.10: |
27 | ||
5948916f TW |
28 | * Added AT> to the linker script language to allow load-time allocation of |
29 | sections into regions. | |
30 | ||
252b5132 RH |
31 | * Added garbage collection of unused sections, enabled by --gc-sections. |
32 | It does require a bit of backend support; currently implemented are | |
4667035e AM |
33 | arm-elf, avr-elf, d10v-elf, fr30-elf, i386-elf, m32r-elf, m68k-elf, |
34 | mcore-elf, mips-elf, mn10300-elf, ppc-elf, sh-elf, sparc-elf, and v850-elf. | |
987fd5b4 | 35 | Others will ignore the option. |
252b5132 RH |
36 | |
37 | * Added SORT to the linker script language to permit sorting sections by file | |
38 | name or section name. | |
39 | ||
40 | * Added EXTERN to the linker script language as an equivalent to the -u | |
41 | command-line option. | |
42 | ||
43 | * Added ASSERT to the linker script language. | |
44 | ||
277c9afe ILT |
45 | * Added EXCLUDE_FILE to the linker script language for further control over |
46 | wildcard file names. | |
47 | ||
252b5132 RH |
48 | * Added -O option to optimize linker output (as of this writing, this only |
49 | affects ELF shared library generation). | |
50 | ||
51 | * The -e option now accepts a number as well as a symbol name. | |
52 | ||
2575273d ILT |
53 | * Added --no-undefined option to disallow undefined symbols when creating a |
54 | shared library. | |
55 | ||
9b1d3b78 ILT |
56 | * The linker now issues a warning, not an error, for an undefined symbol when |
57 | using -Bsymbolic; use the new --no-undefined option to get the old | |
58 | behaviour. | |
59 | ||
252b5132 RH |
60 | * Added --demangle and --no-demangle options. |
61 | ||
62 | Changes in version 2.9: | |
63 | ||
64 | * Added SQUAD to the linker script language. | |
65 | ||
66 | * New option --no-warn-mismatch. | |
67 | ||
68 | * The MEMORY command now parses the attributes to determine where sections that | |
69 | are not placed in a specific memory region are placed. | |
70 | ||
71 | Changes in version 2.8: | |
72 | ||
73 | * Linker scripts may now contain shell wildcard characters for file and section | |
74 | names. | |
75 | ||
76 | * The linker now supports symbol versions in ELF. | |
77 | ||
78 | * The NOCROSSREFS command was added to the linker script language. | |
79 | ||
80 | * The LOADADDR expression was added to the linker script language. | |
81 | ||
82 | * MAX and MIN functions were added to the linker script language. | |
83 | ||
84 | * The OVERLAY construct was added to the linker script language. | |
85 | ||
86 | * New option --warn-section-align to warn when the address of an output section | |
87 | changes due to alignment of an input section. | |
88 | ||
89 | * New options --filter/-F and --auxiliary/-f. | |
90 | ||
91 | Changes in version 2.7: | |
92 | ||
93 | * New option --cref to print out a cross reference table. | |
94 | ||
95 | * New option --wrap SYMBOL. | |
96 | ||
97 | * New option --no-whole-archive, to turn off the effect of --whole-archive. | |
98 | ||
99 | * Input sections assigned to the output section /DISCARD/ in the linker script | |
100 | are not included in the output file. | |
101 | ||
102 | * The SunOS and ELF linkers now merge stabs debugging information which uses | |
103 | the N_BINCL and N_EINCL stab types. This reduces the amount of debugging | |
104 | information generated. | |
105 | ||
106 | Changes in version 2.6: | |
107 | ||
108 | * When an ELF section name is representable as a C identifier (this is not true | |
109 | of most ELF section names), the linker will automatically define symbols | |
110 | __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the section name, at the | |
111 | beginning and the end of the section. This is used by glibc. | |
112 | ||
113 | * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning is encountered in an input file, the | |
114 | contents of the section are displayed as an error message, and the section is | |
115 | not copied into the output file. This is used by glibc. | |
116 | ||
117 | * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning.SYMBOL is encountered in an input | |
118 | file, and the symbol SYMBOL is referenced by some object file, the contents of | |
119 | the section are displayed as an error message. The section is not copied into | |
120 | the output file, unless doing a relocateable or shared link. This is used by | |
121 | glibc. | |
122 | ||
123 | * New options -split-by-reloc and -split-by-file. | |
124 | ||
125 | * The linker now supports linking PIC compiled code on SPARC SunOS. It can | |
126 | also create SPARC SunOS shared libraries, and, like the native SunOS linker, | |
127 | will do so whenever there is an undefined symbol in the link and neither the -e | |
128 | nor the -r option was used. | |
129 | ||
130 | * The -rpath option may be used on SunOS to set the list of directories to be | |
131 | searched at run time. This overrides the default of building the list from the | |
132 | -L options. | |
133 | ||
134 | * The COFF linker now combines debugging information for structs, unions, and | |
135 | enums, so that even if the same type is defined in multiple input files it will | |
136 | only be defined once in the output file. The --traditional-format switch will | |
137 | prevent this optimization. | |
138 | ||
139 | Changes in version 2.5: | |
140 | ||
141 | * The linker now supports linking against SunOS shared libraries. It still can | |
142 | not link SunOS PIC (Position Independent Code) files, so it can not be used to | |
143 | generate shared libaries. | |
144 | ||
145 | * The linker now supports linking against ELF shared libraries for the i386 | |
146 | (UnixWare) and SPARC (Solaris). It can also link ELF PIC files, and can be | |
147 | used to generate shared libraries. Shared library generation is not well | |
148 | tested; please report any problems encountered. The linker is now enabled for | |
149 | Solaris again. | |
150 | ||
151 | * Eric Youngdale has contributed Linux support code, including linking against | |
152 | Linux a.out shared libraries. The linker produces Linux QMAGIC binaries. | |
153 | ||
154 | * The ELF backend has been converted to the new linker code. To use the new | |
155 | ELF linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So far, | |
156 | this function has been written for i386 (UnixWare), SPARC (Solaris) MIPS (Irix | |
157 | 5), and HPPA ELF targets. | |
158 | ||
159 | * The -( (--start-group) and -) (--end-group) options have been added to | |
160 | support searching a group of archives as though they were a single archive. | |
161 | This can also be used in a linker script, as GROUP ( files ). | |
162 | ||
163 | * When a file is named on the command line, and the linker does not recognize | |
164 | it as an object file, the linker will now treat the file as a linker script | |
165 | file. A linker script named in this way augments, but does not replace, the | |
166 | default linker script. | |
167 | ||
168 | * The -warn-once option was added. It causes the linker to only warn once per | |
169 | undefined symbol, rather than once per reference. | |
170 | ||
171 | * The COFF backend has been converted to the new linker code. As with ELF, to | |
172 | use the new linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So | |
173 | far, this function has been written for the i386, m68k, a29k and SH targets. | |
174 | ||
175 | * The -V flag was made a synonym for -v, for SVR4 compatibility. The old -V | |
176 | behaviour is available via --verbose. | |
177 | ||
178 | Changes in version 2.4: | |
179 | ||
180 | * New linker code, by Steve Chamberlain and Ian Taylor. For a.out and ecoff | |
181 | formats (so far), this should result in considerable savings in time | |
182 | and memory used while linking; slightly poorer performance than | |
183 | before for formats not converted yet. | |
184 | ||
185 | * Command-line parsing is no longer done with flex. This means | |
186 | oddball characters in filenames won't get treated as argument | |
187 | separators. | |
188 | ||
189 | * HP-PA ELF support, by Jeff Law. (No SOM support yet.) | |
190 | ||
191 | * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie. | |
192 | ||
193 | * Irix 4 shared libraries are now supported (Irix 5 uses ELF, and ELF shared | |
194 | libraries are not yet supported). | |
195 | ||
196 | * COFF shared libraries (as on SCO) should work as well. | |
197 | ||
198 | * The linker is disabled for Solaris. (Actually, it was in 2.3 also, I just | |
199 | forgot to note it.) Some of their C library routines don't work when | |
200 | statically linked, and the GNU linker doesn't support dynamic linking yet. | |
201 | ||
202 | Changes in version 2.3: | |
203 | ||
204 | * Weak symbols are now supported. | |
205 | ||
206 | * ELF support has been added. The linker has been bootstrapped on | |
207 | UnixWare and Solaris. | |
208 | ||
209 | * Alpha OSF/1 support has been added (non dynamic linking only). | |
210 | ||
211 | Changes in version 2.2: | |
212 | ||
213 | * The `bfd' library has been updated to reduce a.out-format string | |
214 | table size. The effect of this is that files linked from many input | |
215 | files with duplicate symbols (`-g' debugging records, or identical | |
216 | static symbols) should be much smaller. | |
217 | ||
218 | Changes in version 2.1: | |
219 | ||
220 | * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) is now implemented. | |
221 | ||
222 | * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the | |
223 | other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix. | |
224 | ||
225 | \f | |
226 | Local variables: | |
227 | fill-column: 79 | |
228 | End: |