gas/NEWS

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