gas/NEWS

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