gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.9:
   4
   5 Texas Instruction c30 (tms320c30) support added.
   6
   7 Added --gstabs option to generates stabs debugging information.
   8
   9 The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
  10 listing.
  11
  12 Added -MD option to print dependencies.
  13
  14 Changes in 2.8:
  15
  16 BeOS support added.
  17
  18 MIPS16 support added.
  19
  20 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
  21
  22 Alpha/VMS support added.
  23
  24 m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
  25 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
  26
  27 The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
  28 maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require skipping
  29 more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.
  30
  31 The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
  32
  33 The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
  34 in listings.
  35
  36 Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
  37 symbol is already defined.
  38
  39 Changes in 2.7:
  40
  41 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
  42 if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
  43 used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
  44
  45 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
  46
  47 PowerPC ELF support added.
  48
  49 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
  50
  51 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
  52
  53 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
  54
  55 SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
  56 default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate ELF
  57 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
  58 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
  59
  60 m88k-motorola-sysv* support added.
  61
  62 Changes in 2.6:
  63
  64 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
  65
  66 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select MRI
  67 mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
  68 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
  69
  70 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
  71
  72 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
  73
  74 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
  75
  76 Changes in 2.4:
  77
  78 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
  79
  80 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
  81
  82 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
  83 support.
  84
  85 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
  86
  87 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
  88 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
  89 features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
  90 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
  91
  92 Usage message is available with "--help".
  93
  94 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
  95 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
  96
  97 Weak symbol support for a.out.
  98
  99 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 100 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 101
 102 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
 103 Kranenburg.
 104
 105 Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
 106 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 107
 108 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 109
 110 Changes in 2.3:
 111
 112 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 113
 114 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 115
 116 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 117 based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
 118 too.
 119
 120 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 121 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 122 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 123 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 124 in the "dist" directory.
 125
 126 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
 127 tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 128 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 129
 130 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 131 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
 132 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
 133 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 134
 135 Irix 5 support.
 136
 137 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 138 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 139
 140 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 141 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 142 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
 143 to make the Alpha port easier.
 144
 145 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
 146 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
 147 phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
 148 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 149
 150 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 151
 152 Changes in 2.2:
 153
 154 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 155
 156 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 157 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 158 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 159 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 160 reliable.
 161
 162 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 163 displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 164 messages about "internal errors".
 165
 166 ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 167 Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 168
 169 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
 170 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
 171 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
 172
 173 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 174 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 175 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 176 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 177 its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 178 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 179 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 180
 181 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 182 support is in progress.
 183
 184 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 185
 186 Changes in 2.1:
 187
 188 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 189 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 190
 191 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 192 with gcc now.
 193
 194 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 195 suggested by Ronald Cole.
 196
 197 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 198 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 199 2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 200
 201 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 202
 203 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 204
 205 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 206
 207 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 208
 209 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 210
 211 Changes in 2.0:
 212
 213 Mostly bug fixes.
 214
 215 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 216
 217 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 218
 219 Changes in 1.94:
 220
 221 BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 222 "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
 223 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
 224 "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
 225 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
 226 merged yet.)
 227
 228 The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 229 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 230
 231 A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 232 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 233
 234 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 235 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
 236 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
 237 supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
 238
 239 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 240
 241 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 242 Youngdale.
 243
 244 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 245
 246 Changes in 1.93.01:
 247
 248 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 249
 250 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 251
 252 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 253 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 254 can be distinguished from the register.
 255
 256 Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 257 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 258
 259 \f
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