gas/NEWS

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