| 1 | -*- text -*- |
| 2 | |
| 3 | * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | * Readelf can now display ARM unwind tables (.ARM.exidx / .ARM.extab) using |
| 6 | the -u / --unwind option. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | * Add --dyn-syms to readelf to dump dynamic symbol table. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | * A new tool - elfedit - has been added to directly manipulate ELF format |
| 11 | binaries. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | * Add to dlltool .def file feature of aliasing PE internal symbol name by |
| 14 | '== <ID>' option. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | * Add a new command line option -a / --addresses to addr2line to display the |
| 17 | address before function name or source filename. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | * Add a new command line option -p / --pretty-print to addr2line to have |
| 20 | a more human readable output. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | Changes in 2.20: |
| 23 | |
| 24 | * Add support for delay importing to dlltool. Use the --output-delaylib <file> |
| 25 | switch to create a delay-import library. The resulting app will load the dll |
| 26 | as soon as the first function is called. It will link to __delayLoadHelper2() |
| 27 | from the static delayimp library, which will import LoadLibraryA and |
| 28 | GetProcAddress from kernel32. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | * Add a new command line option, --insn-width=WIDTH, to objdump to specify |
| 31 | number of bytes to be displayed on a single line when disassembling |
| 32 | instructions. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | * Readelf can now display the relocated contents of a section as a sequence |
| 35 | of bytes via the --relocated-dump=<name|number> command line option. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | * The gprof program has been given a new command line option: |
| 38 | --external-symbols-table=<filename> which reads in symbols from a specified |
| 39 | file. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | * The plugin target has been added to bfd. It can load the same shared objects |
| 42 | used by gold and uses them to provide basic support for new file formats. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | * The verilog memory hex dump file format is now supported as an output format |
| 45 | for objcopy. |
| 46 | |
| 47 | * Add --file-alignment, --heap, --image-base, --section-alignment, |
| 48 | --stack and --subsystem command line options to objcopy, which will |
| 49 | set PE optional header. |
| 50 | |
| 51 | * Option --dwarf/-W of objdump is now as flexible as readelf --debug-dump/-w. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | * --as-needed now links in a dynamic library if it satisfies undefined |
| 54 | symbols in regular objects, or in other dynamic libraries. In the |
| 55 | latter case the library is not linked if it is found in a DT_NEEDED |
| 56 | entry of one of the libraries already linked. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | * Added --prefix=PREFIX and --prefix-strip=LEVEL switches to objdump to |
| 59 | add absolute paths for -S. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | * Add new option --use-nul-prefixed-import-tables to dlltool to allow fall- |
| 62 | back to old import table generation with null element prefix. |
| 63 | |
| 64 | * Added --identify-strict switch to cause --identify <implib> to |
| 65 | report an error when the import library is associated with |
| 66 | multiple DLLs. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | * Added --identify <implib> option to dlltool, which determines the |
| 69 | name of the DLL associated with the specified <implib>. |
| 70 | |
| 71 | * Support for PowerPC booke64 instructions has been removed. The assembler no |
| 72 | longer accepts -mbooke32 or -mbooke64 and the disassembler no longer accepts |
| 73 | -Mbooke32 or -Mbooke64. Instead, -mbooke and -Mbooke should be used. |
| 74 | |
| 75 | Changes in 2.19: |
| 76 | |
| 77 | * Added -wL switch to dump decoded contents of .debug_line. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | * Added support for "thin" archives which contain pathnames pointing to |
| 80 | object files rather than the files themselves and which contain a |
| 81 | flattened symbol index for all objects, and archives, which have been |
| 82 | added to the archive. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | * Added -F switch to objdump to include file offsets in the disassembly. |
| 85 | |
| 86 | * Added -c switch to readelf to allow string dumps of archive symbol index. |
| 87 | |
| 88 | * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port. |
| 89 | |
| 90 | * Added -p switch to readelf to allow string dumps of sections. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | Changes in 2.18: |
| 93 | |
| 94 | * Resolved 37 coding problems in bfd including static array overruns, null |
| 95 | pointer dereferences and use of a malloc buffer after it has been freed, as |
| 96 | revealed by static analysis donated by Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com). |
| 97 | |
| 98 | * The binutils sources are now released under version 3 of the GNU General |
| 99 | Public License. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | * A new tool "windmc" has been added for some targets. This is a message |
| 102 | compiler which attempts to be compatible with the MS version. |
| 103 | |
| 104 | * Add codepage support to the windres tool. It now supports many new |
| 105 | resource types (e.g. MANIFEST, TOOLBAR, etc). The output generation |
| 106 | for binary files is done now via bfd itself. The endianess problems |
| 107 | for different hosts are solved. Dumps of .res files can now be |
| 108 | re-compiled by windres without lossing resources or compilation errors. |
| 109 | Some problems on dialog resource translations are corrected. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | * Add --extract-symbol command line option to objcopy, which will |
| 112 | strip everything out of an ordinary object file or executable except |
| 113 | for its symbol table. Files containing just symbols can be useful |
| 114 | to some OSes. |
| 115 | |
| 116 | Changes in 2.17: |
| 117 | |
| 118 | * Add "-x NAME" to readelf in addition to "-x NUMBER". |
| 119 | |
| 120 | * Add -i and -t switches to cxxfilt. -i disables the display of implementation |
| 121 | specific extra demangling information (if any) and -t disables the demangling |
| 122 | of types. |
| 123 | |
| 124 | * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command lines of all tools, so |
| 125 | that extra switches can be read from <file>. |
| 126 | |
| 127 | * Add "-W/--dwarf" to objdump to display the contents of the DWARF |
| 128 | debug sections. |
| 129 | |
| 130 | * Add "-t/--section-details" to readelf to display section details. |
| 131 | "-N/--full-section-name" is deprecated. |
| 132 | |
| 133 | * powerpc-linux ld now supports a variant form of PLT and GOT for the security |
| 134 | conscious. This form will automatically be chosen when ld detects that all |
| 135 | code in regular object files was generated by gcc -msecure-plt. The old PLT |
| 136 | and GOT may be forced by a new ld option, --bss-plt. |
| 137 | |
| 138 | * Add "-i/--inlines" to addr2line to print enclosing scope information |
| 139 | for inlined function chains, back to first non-inlined function. |
| 140 | |
| 141 | * Add "-N/--full-section-name" to readelf to display full section name. |
| 142 | |
| 143 | * Add "-M entry:<addr>" switch to objdump to specify a function entry address |
| 144 | when disassembling VAX binaries. |
| 145 | |
| 146 | * Add "--globalize-symbol <name>" and "--globalize-symbols <filename>" switches |
| 147 | to objcopy to convert local symbols into global symbols. |
| 148 | |
| 149 | * gprof now allows input files to have histogram records for |
| 150 | several memory ranges, provided those ranges are disjoint. |
| 151 | |
| 152 | Changes in 2.16: |
| 153 | |
| 154 | * Add "-g/--section-groups" to readelf to display section groups. |
| 155 | |
| 156 | * objcopy recognizes two new options --strip-unneeded-symbol and |
| 157 | --strip-unneeded-symbols, namely for use together with the wildcard |
| 158 | matching the original --strip-symbol/--strip-symbols provided, but |
| 159 | retaining any symbols matching but needed by relocations. |
| 160 | |
| 161 | * readelf can now display address ranges from .debug_range sections. This |
| 162 | happens automatically when a DW_AT_range attribute is encountered. The |
| 163 | command line switch --debug-dump=Ranges (or -wR) can also be used to display |
| 164 | the contents of the .debug_range section. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | * nm and objdump now have a switch "--special-syms" to enable the displaying of |
| 167 | symbols which the target considers to be special. By default these symbols |
| 168 | are no longer displayed. Currently the only special symbols are the Mapping |
| 169 | symbols used by the ARM port to mark transitions between text and data and |
| 170 | between ARM and THUMB code. |
| 171 | |
| 172 | * dlltool has a switch "--ext-prefix-alias <prefix>" to generate additional |
| 173 | import and export symbols with <preifx> prepended to them. |
| 174 | |
| 175 | Changes in 2.15: |
| 176 | |
| 177 | * objcopy for MIPS targets now accepts "-M no-aliases" as an option to the |
| 178 | disassembler to print the "raw" mips instruction mnemonic instead of some |
| 179 | pseudo instruction name. I.E. print "daddu" or "or" instead of "move", |
| 180 | "sll" instead of "nop", etc. |
| 181 | |
| 182 | * objcopy and strip can now take wildcard patterns in symbol names specified on |
| 183 | the command line provided that the --wildcard switch is used to enable them. |
| 184 | |
| 185 | * readelf can now parse archives. |
| 186 | |
| 187 | * objdump now accepts --debugging-tags to print the debug information in a |
| 188 | format compatible with ctags tool. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | * objcopy and strip now accept --only-keep-debug to create a file containing |
| 191 | those sections that would be stripped out by --strip-debug. The idea is that |
| 192 | this can be used in conjunction with the --add-gnu-debuglink switch to create |
| 193 | a two part program distribution - one a stripped executable and the other the |
| 194 | debugging info. |
| 195 | |
| 196 | * objcopy now accepts --add-gnu-debuglink=<file> to insert a .gnu_debuglink |
| 197 | section into a (presumably stripped) executable. This allows the debug |
| 198 | information for the file to be held in a separate file. |
| 199 | |
| 200 | * BFD marks the sections .comment and .note as 'n' in the BSD/POSIX |
| 201 | single-character representation. This can be checked by running nm |
| 202 | with the -a switch. |
| 203 | |
| 204 | Changes in 2.14: |
| 205 | |
| 206 | * Added --info switch to objcopy and strip. |
| 207 | |
| 208 | * Support for Vitesse IQ2000 added by Red Hat. |
| 209 | |
| 210 | * Added 'S' encoding to strings to allow the display of 8-bit characters. |
| 211 | |
| 212 | * Added --prefix-symbols=<text>, --prefix-sections=<text> and |
| 213 | --prefix-alloc-sections=<text> to objcopy. |
| 214 | |
| 215 | * readelf can handle the extensions to the DWARF2 spec used by the Unified |
| 216 | Parallel C compiler. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | * BFD no longer declares a "boolean" type, to avoid clashes with other |
| 219 | headers that declare the same. Users of BFD should replace boolean, |
| 220 | false and true, with int, 0 and 1, or define their own boolean type. |
| 221 | |
| 222 | * Support for IP2K added by Denis Chertykov. |
| 223 | |
| 224 | Changes in 2.13: |
| 225 | |
| 226 | * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400 |
| 227 | and FR500 included. |
| 228 | |
| 229 | Changes in version 2.12: |
| 230 | |
| 231 | * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson. |
| 232 | |
| 233 | * size: Add --totals to display summary of sizes (Berkeley format only). |
| 234 | |
| 235 | * readelf: Add --wide option to not break section header or segment listing |
| 236 | lines to fit into 80 columns. |
| 237 | |
| 238 | * strings: Add --encoding to display wide character strings. By Markus Kuhn. |
| 239 | |
| 240 | * objcopy: Add --rename-section to change section names. |
| 241 | |
| 242 | * readelf: Support added for DWARF 2.1 extensions. Support added for |
| 243 | displaying the contents of .debug.macinfo sections. |
| 244 | |
| 245 | * New command line switches added to objcopy to allow symbols to be kept as |
| 246 | global symbols, and also to specify files containing lists of such symbols. |
| 247 | by Honda Hiroki. |
| 248 | |
| 249 | * Support for OpenRISC by Johan Rydberg. |
| 250 | |
| 251 | * New command line switch to objcopy --alt-machine-code which creates a binary |
| 252 | with an alternate machine code if one is defined in the architecture |
| 253 | description. Only supported for ELF targets. By Alexandre Oliva. |
| 254 | |
| 255 | * New command line switch to objcopy -B (or --binary-architecture) which sets |
| 256 | the architecture of the output file to the given argument. This option only |
| 257 | makes sense, if the input target is binary. Otherwise it is ignored. |
| 258 | By Stefan Geuken. |
| 259 | |
| 260 | * Support for PDP-11 by Lars Brinkhoff. |
| 261 | |
| 262 | Changes in binutils 2.11: |
| 263 | |
| 264 | * Add support for ARM v5t and v5te architectures and Intel's XScale ARM |
| 265 | extenstions. |
| 266 | |
| 267 | * Add --srec-len and --srec-forceS3 command line switch to objcopy. |
| 268 | By Luciano Gemme. |
| 269 | |
| 270 | * Support for the MIPS32, by Anders Norlander. |
| 271 | |
| 272 | * Support for the i860, by Jason Eckhardt. |
| 273 | |
| 274 | * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series). |
| 275 | |
| 276 | Changes in binutils 2.10: |
| 277 | |
| 278 | * Support for 64-bit ELF on HPPA. |
| 279 | |
| 280 | * New command line switch to objdump --file-start-context which shows the |
| 281 | entire file contents up to the source line first encountered for a given |
| 282 | file. |
| 283 | |
| 284 | * New command line switch to objdump -M (or --disassembler-options) which takes |
| 285 | a parameter which can then be interpreted on a per-target basis by the |
| 286 | disassembler. Used by ARM targets to select register name sets, ISA, APCS or |
| 287 | raw verions. |
| 288 | |
| 289 | * objdump support for -mi386:intel which causes disassembly to be displayed |
| 290 | with intel syntax. |
| 291 | |
| 292 | * New program: readelf. This displays the contents of ELF format files, |
| 293 | regardless of target machine. |
| 294 | |
| 295 | * objcopy now takes --change-section-lma, --change-section-vma, and |
| 296 | --change-section-address options. The old --adjust-section-vma option is |
| 297 | equivalent to --change-section-address. The other --adjust-* options are now |
| 298 | renamed to --change-*, although --adjust-* continues to work. |
| 299 | |
| 300 | * objcopy has a --redefine-sym option that lets you rename symbols. |
| 301 | |
| 302 | * objcopy now takes a -j/--only-section option to copy only the specified |
| 303 | sections. |
| 304 | |
| 305 | * dlltool now supports the IMPORTS command. |
| 306 | |
| 307 | * dlltool now takes --export-all-symbols, --no-export-all-symbols, |
| 308 | --exclude-symbols, and --no-default-excludes options. |
| 309 | |
| 310 | Changes in binutils 2.9: |
| 311 | |
| 312 | * Added windres program, which can be used to manipulate resources in WIN32 |
| 313 | files as used on Windows 95 and Windows NT. |
| 314 | |
| 315 | * The objcopy --gap-fill and --pad-to options operate on the LMA rather than |
| 316 | the VMA of the sections. |
| 317 | |
| 318 | * Added S modifier to ar to not build a symbol table. |
| 319 | |
| 320 | Changes in binutils 2.8: |
| 321 | |
| 322 | * The objdump disassembly format has been changed, and hopefully improved. Use |
| 323 | the new --prefix-addresses option to get the old format. There are also new |
| 324 | --disassemble-zeroes and --no-show-raw-insn options which affect disassembler |
| 325 | output. |
| 326 | |
| 327 | * Formats may now be specified as configuration triplets. For example, |
| 328 | objdump -b i386-pc-linux. The triplets are not passed through config.sub, |
| 329 | so they must be in canonical form. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | * Added new addr2line program. This uses the debugging information to convert |
| 332 | an address into a file name and line number within a program. |
| 333 | |
| 334 | * Added --change-leading-char argument to objcopy. |
| 335 | |
| 336 | * Added --weaken argument to objcopy. |
| 337 | |
| 338 | * objdump --dynamic-reloc now works on ELF executables and shared libraries. |
| 339 | |
| 340 | * Added --adjust-vma option to objdump. |
| 341 | |
| 342 | * Added -C/--demangle option to objdump. |
| 343 | |
| 344 | * Added -p/--preserve-dates option to strip and objcopy. |
| 345 | |
| 346 | Changes in binutils 2.7: |
| 347 | |
| 348 | * Added --enable-shared and --enable-commonbfdlib options to configure. |
| 349 | |
| 350 | * Added --debugging argument to objdump and objcopy. |
| 351 | |
| 352 | * Added --defined-only argument to nm. |
| 353 | |
| 354 | * Added --remove-leading-char argument to objcopy. |
| 355 | |
| 356 | * The objdump --line-numbers option is now meaningful with --reloc. |
| 357 | |
| 358 | * Added --line-numbers option to nm. |
| 359 | |
| 360 | * Added --endian/-EB/-EL option to objdump. |
| 361 | |
| 362 | * Added support for Alpha OpenVMS/AXP. |
| 363 | |
| 364 | Changes in binutils 2.6: |
| 365 | |
| 366 | * Added -N/--strip-symbol and -K/--keep-symbol arguments to strip and objcopy. |
| 367 | |
| 368 | * Added several arguments to objcopy to provide some control over how the new |
| 369 | file is laid out in memory. Also added binary output format to BFD to permit |
| 370 | generating plain binary files. |
| 371 | |
| 372 | * Added --start-address and --stop-address options to objdump. |
| 373 | |
| 374 | * ar and ranlib now work on AIX. The tools are now built by default on AIX. |
| 375 | |
| 376 | Changes in binutils 2.5: |
| 377 | |
| 378 | * Changed objdump -dr to dump the relocs interspersed with the assembly |
| 379 | listing, for a more useful listing of relocatable files. |
| 380 | |
| 381 | * Changed objdump -d/--disassemble to only disassemble SEC_CODE sections. |
| 382 | Added -D/--disassemble-all option to disassemble all sections. |
| 383 | |
| 384 | * Added --size-sort option to nm. |
| 385 | |
| 386 | * strip and objcopy should now be able to handle dynamically linked ELF |
| 387 | executables. |
| 388 | |
| 389 | Changes in binutils 2.4: |
| 390 | |
| 391 | * Support for HP-PA (by Jeff Law), i386 Mach (by David Mackenzie), RS/6000 and |
| 392 | PowerPC (except ar and ranlib; by Ian Taylor). |
| 393 | |
| 394 | * Support for Irix 5. |
| 395 | |
| 396 | * Programs `strip' and `objcopy' will not attempt to write dynamically linked |
| 397 | ELF output files, since BFD currently can't create them properly. |
| 398 | |
| 399 | Changes in binutils 2.3: |
| 400 | |
| 401 | * A new --stabs argument has been added to objdump to dump stabs sections in |
| 402 | ELF and COFF files. |
| 403 | |
| 404 | * A new program, nlmconv, has been added. It can convert object files into |
| 405 | Novell NetWare Loadable Modules. |
| 406 | |
| 407 | * The strings program has been added. |
| 408 | |
| 409 | Changes in binutils 2.2: |
| 410 | |
| 411 | * The 'copy' program has been renamed to 'objcopy', for consistency with |
| 412 | 'objdump', and because 'copy' might more plausibly be used as a synonym for |
| 413 | 'cp'. |
| 414 | |
| 415 | * The new stand-alone program c++filt is a filter that converts encoded |
| 416 | (mangled) C++ assembly-level identifiers to user-level names. (Note: This |
| 417 | may get moved to the gcc distribution.) |
| 418 | |
| 419 | * nm -o on an archive now prefixes each line with the archive name, matching |
| 420 | the output from BSD nm. |
| 421 | |
| 422 | * ar (and ld) can now read (but not write) BSD4.4-style archives. |
| 423 | |
| 424 | * New support for H8500, Z8000, and the Hitach SH. |
| 425 | |
| 426 | * Dis-assembler interface changed to allow sharing with gdb. |
| 427 | |
| 428 | * There is new Elf code, but it is not yet ready for general use. |
| 429 | |
| 430 | * There is the beginnings of a test suite. |
| 431 | |
| 432 | Changes in binutils 2.1: |
| 433 | |
| 434 | * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the other utilities |
| 435 | should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix. Please let us know how well this works. |
| 436 | |
| 437 | * ar now automatically creates a symbol table (a __.SYMDEF member, in the BSD |
| 438 | version), if there are any object files in the archive. So running ranlib is |
| 439 | now redundant (unless the non-standard q command is used). This is required |
| 440 | for Posix.2 conformance. |
| 441 | |
| 442 | * The archive-reading code now reads both BSD-style and SYSV-style archives |
| 443 | independently of the selected target format. This is to encourage people to |
| 444 | switch to SYSV-format, which has a number of advantages. |
| 445 | |
| 446 | * The strip and copy programs now have options to remove debug-symbols only |
| 447 | and/or local symbols only. They now also support long options. |
| 448 | |
| 449 | \f |
| 450 | Local variables: |
| 451 | fill-column: 79 |
| 452 | End: |