gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.10:
   4
   5 New --fatal-warnings option.
   6
   7 picoJava architecture support added.
   8
   9 Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
  10
  11 A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
  12 assembly programs with intel syntax.
  13
  14 New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
  15
  16 Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
  17
  18 Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
  19
  20 Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
  21 produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions of
  22 gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with older
  23 versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
  24
  25 Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
  26
  27 Mitsubishi D30V support added.
  28
  29 Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
  30
  31 i960 ELF support added.
  32
  33 Changes in 2.9:
  34
  35 Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
  36
  37 The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
  38 and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
  39
  40 Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
  41
  42 The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
  43 listing.
  44
  45 Added -MD option to print dependencies.
  46
  47 Changes in 2.8:
  48
  49 BeOS support added.
  50
  51 MIPS16 support added.
  52
  53 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
  54
  55 Alpha/VMS support added.
  56
  57 m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
  58 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
  59
  60 The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
  61 maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require skipping
  62 more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.
  63
  64 The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
  65
  66 The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
  67 in listings.
  68
  69 Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
  70 symbol is already defined.
  71
  72 Changes in 2.7:
  73
  74 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
  75 if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
  76 used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
  77
  78 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
  79
  80 PowerPC ELF support added.
  81
  82 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
  83
  84 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
  85
  86 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
  87
  88 SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
  89 default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate ELF
  90 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
  91 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
  92
  93 m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
  94
  95 Changes in 2.6:
  96
  97 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
  98
  99 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select MRI
 100 mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
 101 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 102
 103 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 104
 105 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 106
 107 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 108
 109 Changes in 2.4:
 110
 111 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 112
 113 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 114
 115 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
 116 support.
 117
 118 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 119
 120 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 121 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 122 features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 123 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 124
 125 Usage message is available with "--help".
 126
 127 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 128 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 129
 130 Weak symbol support for a.out.
 131
 132 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 133 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 134
 135 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
 136 Kranenburg.
 137
 138 Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
 139 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 140
 141 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 142
 143 Changes in 2.3:
 144
 145 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 146
 147 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 148
 149 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 150 based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
 151 too.
 152
 153 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 154 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 155 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 156 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 157 in the "dist" directory.
 158
 159 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
 160 tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 161 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 162
 163 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 164 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
 165 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
 166 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 167
 168 Irix 5 support.
 169
 170 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 171 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 172
 173 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 174 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 175 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
 176 to make the Alpha port easier.
 177
 178 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
 179 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
 180 phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
 181 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 182
 183 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 184
 185 Changes in 2.2:
 186
 187 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 188
 189 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 190 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 191 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 192 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 193 reliable.
 194
 195 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 196 displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 197 messages about "internal errors".
 198
 199 ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 200 Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 201
 202 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
 203 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
 204 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
 205
 206 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 207 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 208 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 209 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 210 its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 211 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 212 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 213
 214 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 215 support is in progress.
 216
 217 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 218
 219 Changes in 2.1:
 220
 221 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 222 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 223
 224 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 225 with gcc now.
 226
 227 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 228 suggested by Ronald Cole.
 229
 230 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 231 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 232 2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 233
 234 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 235
 236 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 237
 238 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 239
 240 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 241
 242 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 243
 244 Changes in 2.0:
 245
 246 Mostly bug fixes.
 247
 248 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 249
 250 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 251
 252 Changes in 1.94:
 253
 254 BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 255 "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
 256 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
 257 "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
 258 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
 259 merged yet.)
 260
 261 The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 262 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 263
 264 A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 265 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 266
 267 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 268 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
 269 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
 270 supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
 271
 272 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 273
 274 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 275 Youngdale.
 276
 277 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 278
 279 Changes in 1.93.01:
 280
 281 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 282
 283 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 284
 285 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 286 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 287 can be distinguished from the register.
 288
 289 Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 290 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 291
 292 \f
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