gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
   4
   5 Changes in 2.24:
   6
   7 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
   8
   9 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
  10   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
  11
  12 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
  13
  14 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
  15
  16 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
  17
  18 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
  19
  20 Changes in 2.23:
  21
  22 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
  23
  24 * Add support for S12X processor.
  25
  26 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
  27
  28 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
  29
  30 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
  31   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
  32
  33 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
  34
  35 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
  36
  37 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
  38
  39 Changes in 2.22:
  40
  41 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
  42
  43 Changes in 2.21:
  44
  45 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
  46
  47 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
  48
  49 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
  50   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
  51   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
  52   2.20.1.
  53
  54 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  55
  56 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  57   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  58   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  59   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  60
  61 Changes in 2.20:
  62
  63 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  64
  65 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  66   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  67   process.
  68
  69 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  70   in binary rather than text.
  71
  72 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  73
  74 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  75   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  76
  77 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  78
  79 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  80   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  81   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  82   the value.
  83
  84 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  85
  86 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  87
  88 Changes in 2.19:
  89
  90 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  91   tables without runtime relocation.
  92
  93 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  94   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  95
  96 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  97   targets.
  98
  99 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 100   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 101   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 102   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 103
 104 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 105   instructions with VEX prefix.
 106
 107 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 108
 109 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 110   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 111   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 112
 113 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 114   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 115
 116 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 117
 118 Changes in 2.18:
 119
 120 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 121
 122 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 123
 124 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 125   relocations.
 126
 127 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 128
 129 * Add support for Score target.
 130
 131 Changes in 2.17:
 132
 133 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 134
 135 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 136
 137 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 138
 139 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 140   switches can be read from <file>.
 141
 142 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 143   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 144   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 145
 146 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 147   documentation for how this works.
 148
 149 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 150   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 151   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 152
 153 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 154   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 155   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 156   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 157   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 158
 159 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 160   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 161   assembler.
 162
 163 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 164
 165 Changes in 2.16:
 166
 167 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 168
 169 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 170
 171 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 172   targets.
 173
 174 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 175   mode.
 176
 177 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 178
 179 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 180
 181 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 182   preferred debug format.
 183
 184 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 185
 186 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 187
 188 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 189   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 190
 191 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 192
 193 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 194   instrucitons.
 195
 196 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 197
 198 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 199   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 200
 201 Changes in 2.15:
 202
 203 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 204   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 205
 206 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 207
 208 * Added support for ARM V6.
 209
 210 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 211
 212 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 213
 214 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 215   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 216
 217 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 218   definitions created by ".req".
 219
 220 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 221
 222 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 223   information with GNU extensions.
 224
 225 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 226
 227 * Added support for v850e1.
 228
 229 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 230   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 231   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 232   switch disables the optimization.
 233
 234 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 235   existing -non_shared option.
 236
 237 Changes in 2.14:
 238
 239 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 240
 241 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 242
 243 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 244
 245 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 246   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 247
 248 * Support for SH2E added.
 249
 250 * GASP has now been removed.
 251
 252 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 253   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 254
 255 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 256
 257 Changes in 2.13:
 258
 259 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 260   and FR500 included.
 261
 262 * Support for DLX processor added.
 263
 264 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 265   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 266
 267 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 268   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 269   the currently specified base.
 270
 271 Changes in 2.12:
 272
 273 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 274
 275 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 276
 277 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 278   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 279   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 280   compatibility.
 281
 282 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 283   the ARM assembler.
 284
 285 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 286   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 287
 288 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 289   but still works for compatability.
 290
 291 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 292   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 293   -n will turn on the warning.
 294
 295 Changes in 2.11:
 296
 297 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 298
 299 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 300
 301 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 302
 303 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 304
 305 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 306
 307 * Support for IA-64.
 308
 309 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 310
 311 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 312
 313 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 314
 315 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 316   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 317   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 318
 319 Changes in 2.10:
 320
 321 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 322   operand when altering the flags field.
 323
 324 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 325
 326 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 327
 328 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 329
 330 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 331
 332 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 333
 334 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 335
 336 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 337
 338 * picoJava architecture support added.
 339
 340 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 341
 342 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 343   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 344
 345 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 346
 347 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 348
 349 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 350
 351 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 352   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 353   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 354   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 355
 356 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 357
 358 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 359
 360 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 361
 362 * i960 ELF support added.
 363
 364 * ARM ELF support added.
 365
 366 Changes in 2.9:
 367
 368 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 369
 370 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 371   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 372
 373 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 374
 375 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 376   listing.
 377
 378 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 379
 380 Changes in 2.8:
 381
 382 * BeOS support added.
 383
 384 * MIPS16 support added.
 385
 386 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 387
 388 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 389
 390 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 391   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 392
 393 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 394   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 395   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 396   all.
 397
 398 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 399
 400 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 401   conditionals in listings.
 402
 403 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 404   the symbol is already defined.
 405
 406 Changes in 2.7:
 407
 408 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 409   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 410   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 411   added.
 412
 413 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 414
 415 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 416
 417 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 418
 419 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 420
 421 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 422
 423 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 424   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 425   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 426   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 427
 428 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 429
 430 Changes in 2.6:
 431
 432 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 433
 434 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 435   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 436   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 437
 438 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 439
 440 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 441
 442 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 443
 444 Changes in 2.4:
 445
 446 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 447
 448 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 449
 450 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 451   debugging support.
 452
 453 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 454
 455 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 456   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 457   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 458   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 459
 460 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 461
 462 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 463   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 464
 465 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 466
 467 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 468   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 469
 470 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 471   Paul Kranenburg.
 472
 473 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 474   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 475
 476 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 477
 478 Changes in 2.3:
 479
 480 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 481
 482 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 483
 484 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 485   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 486   again too.
 487
 488 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 489   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 490   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 491   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 492   in the "dist" directory.
 493
 494 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 495   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 496   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 497
 498 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 499   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 500   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 501   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 502
 503 * Irix 5 support.
 504
 505 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 506   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 507
 508 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 509   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 510   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 511   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 512
 513 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 514   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 515   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 516   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 517
 518 Changes in 2.2:
 519
 520 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 521
 522 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 523   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 524   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 525   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 526   reliable.
 527
 528 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 529   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 530   messages about "internal errors".
 531
 532 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 533   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 534
 535 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 536   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 537   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 538   known.
 539
 540 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 541   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 542   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 543   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 544   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 545   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 546   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 547
 548 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 549   support is in progress.
 550
 551 Changes in 2.1:
 552
 553 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 554   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 555
 556 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 557   with gcc now.
 558
 559 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 560   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 561
 562 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 563   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 564   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 565
 566 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 567
 568 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 569
 570 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 571
 572 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 573
 574 Changes in 2.0:
 575
 576 * Mostly bug fixes.
 577
 578 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 579
 580 Changes in 1.94:
 581
 582 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 583   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 584   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 585   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 586   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 587   fully merged yet.)
 588
 589 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 590   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 591
 592 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 593   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 594
 595 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 596   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 597   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 598   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 599   coming.
 600
 601 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 602
 603 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 604   Youngdale.
 605
 606 Changes in 1.93.01:
 607
 608 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 609
 610 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 611
 612 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 613   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 614   can be distinguished from the register.
 615
 616 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 617   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 618
 619 \f
 620 Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 621
 622 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 623 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 624 notice and this notice are preserved.
 625
 626 Local variables:
 627 fill-column: 79
 628 End: