gas/NEWS

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