gas/NEWS

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