gas/NEWS

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