gas/NEWS

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