gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
   4
   5 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
   6   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
   7   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
   8   2.20.1.
   9
  10 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  11
  12 Changes in 2.20:
  13
  14 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  15   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  16   process.
  17
  18 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  19   in binary rather than text.
  20
  21 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  22
  23 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  24   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  25
  26 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  27
  28 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  29   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  30   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  31   the value.
  32
  33 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  34
  35 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  36
  37 Changes in 2.19:
  38
  39 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  40   tables without runtime relocation.
  41
  42 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  43   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  44
  45 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  46   targets.
  47
  48 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
  49   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
  50   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
  51   command line options used, and a time stamp.
  52
  53 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
  54   instructions with VEX prefix.
  55
  56 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
  57
  58 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
  59   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
  60   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
  61
  62 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
  63   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
  64
  65 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
  66
  67 Changes in 2.18:
  68
  69 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
  70
  71 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
  72
  73 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
  74   relocations.
  75
  76 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
  77
  78 * Add support for Score target.
  79
  80 Changes in 2.17:
  81
  82 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
  83
  84 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
  85
  86 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
  87
  88 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
  89   switches can be read from <file>.
  90
  91 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
  92   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
  93   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
  94
  95 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
  96   documentation for how this works.
  97
  98 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
  99   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 100   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 101
 102 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 103   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 104   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 105   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 106   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 107
 108 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 109   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 110   assembler.
 111
 112 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 113
 114 Changes in 2.16:
 115
 116 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 117
 118 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 119
 120 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 121   targets.
 122
 123 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 124   mode.
 125
 126 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 127
 128 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 129
 130 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 131   preferred debug format.
 132
 133 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 134
 135 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 136
 137 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 138   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 139
 140 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 141
 142 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 143   instrucitons.
 144
 145 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 146
 147 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 148   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 149
 150 Changes in 2.15:
 151
 152 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 153   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 154
 155 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 156
 157 * Added support for ARM V6.
 158
 159 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 160
 161 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 162
 163 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 164   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 165
 166 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 167   definitions created by ".req".
 168
 169 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 170
 171 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 172   information with GNU extensions.
 173
 174 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 175
 176 * Added support for v850e1.
 177
 178 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 179   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 180   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 181   switch disables the optimization.
 182
 183 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 184   existing -non_shared option.
 185
 186 Changes in 2.14:
 187
 188 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 189
 190 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 191
 192 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 193
 194 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 195   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 196
 197 * Support for SH2E added.
 198
 199 * GASP has now been removed.
 200
 201 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 202   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 203
 204 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 205
 206 Changes in 2.13:
 207
 208 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 209   and FR500 included.
 210
 211 * Support for DLX processor added.
 212
 213 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 214   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 215
 216 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 217   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 218   the currently specified base.
 219
 220 Changes in 2.12:
 221
 222 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 223
 224 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 225
 226 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 227   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 228   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 229   compatibility.
 230
 231 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 232   the ARM assembler.
 233
 234 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 235   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 236
 237 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 238   but still works for compatability.
 239
 240 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 241   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 242   -n will turn on the warning.
 243
 244 Changes in 2.11:
 245
 246 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 247
 248 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 249
 250 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 251
 252 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 253
 254 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 255
 256 * Support for IA-64.
 257
 258 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 259
 260 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 261
 262 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 263
 264 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 265   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 266   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 267
 268 Changes in 2.10:
 269
 270 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 271   operand when altering the flags field.
 272
 273 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 274
 275 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 276
 277 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 278
 279 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 280
 281 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 282
 283 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 284
 285 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 286
 287 * picoJava architecture support added.
 288
 289 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 290
 291 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 292   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 293
 294 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 295
 296 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 297
 298 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 299
 300 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 301   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 302   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 303   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 304
 305 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 306
 307 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 308
 309 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 310
 311 * i960 ELF support added.
 312
 313 * ARM ELF support added.
 314
 315 Changes in 2.9:
 316
 317 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 318
 319 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 320   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 321
 322 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 323
 324 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 325   listing.
 326
 327 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 328
 329 Changes in 2.8:
 330
 331 * BeOS support added.
 332
 333 * MIPS16 support added.
 334
 335 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 336
 337 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 338
 339 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 340   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 341
 342 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 343   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 344   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 345   all.
 346
 347 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 348
 349 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 350   conditionals in listings.
 351
 352 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 353   the symbol is already defined.
 354
 355 Changes in 2.7:
 356
 357 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 358   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 359   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 360   added.
 361
 362 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 363
 364 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 365
 366 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 367
 368 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 369
 370 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 371
 372 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 373   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 374   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 375   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 376
 377 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 378
 379 Changes in 2.6:
 380
 381 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 382
 383 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 384   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 385   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 386
 387 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 388
 389 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 390
 391 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 392
 393 Changes in 2.4:
 394
 395 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 396
 397 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 398
 399 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 400   debugging support.
 401
 402 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 403
 404 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 405   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 406   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 407   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 408
 409 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 410
 411 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 412   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 413
 414 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 415
 416 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 417   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 418
 419 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 420   Paul Kranenburg.
 421
 422 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 423   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 424
 425 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 426
 427 Changes in 2.3:
 428
 429 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 430
 431 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 432
 433 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 434   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 435   again too.
 436
 437 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 438   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 439   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 440   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 441   in the "dist" directory.
 442
 443 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 444   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 445   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 446
 447 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 448   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 449   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 450   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 451
 452 * Irix 5 support.
 453
 454 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 455   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 456
 457 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 458   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 459   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 460   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 461
 462 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 463   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 464   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 465   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 466
 467 Changes in 2.2:
 468
 469 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 470
 471 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 472   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 473   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 474   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 475   reliable.
 476
 477 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 478   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 479   messages about "internal errors".
 480
 481 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 482   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 483
 484 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 485   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 486   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 487   known.
 488
 489 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 490   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 491   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 492   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 493   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 494   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 495   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 496
 497 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 498   support is in progress.
 499
 500 Changes in 2.1:
 501
 502 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 503   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 504
 505 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 506   with gcc now.
 507
 508 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 509   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 510
 511 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 512   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 513   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 514
 515 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 516
 517 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 518
 519 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 520
 521 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 522
 523 Changes in 2.0:
 524
 525 * Mostly bug fixes.
 526
 527 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 528
 529 Changes in 1.94:
 530
 531 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 532   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 533   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 534   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 535   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 536   fully merged yet.)
 537
 538 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 539   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 540
 541 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 542   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 543
 544 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 545   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 546   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 547   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 548   coming.
 549
 550 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 551
 552 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 553   Youngdale.
 554
 555 Changes in 1.93.01:
 556
 557 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 558
 559 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 560
 561 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 562   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 563   can be distinguished from the register.
 564
 565 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 566   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 567
 568 \f
 569 Local variables:
 570 fill-column: 79
 571 End: