gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
   3   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
   4   process.
   5
   6 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
   7   in binary rather than text.
   8
   9 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  10
  11 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  12   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  13
  14 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  15
  16 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  17   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  18   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  19   the value.
  20
  21 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  22
  23 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  24
  25 Changes in 2.19:
  26
  27 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  28   tables without runtime relocation.
  29
  30 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  31   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  32
  33 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  34   targets.
  35
  36 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
  37   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
  38   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
  39   command line options used, and a time stamp.
  40
  41 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
  42   instructions with VEX prefix.
  43
  44 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
  45
  46 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
  47   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
  48   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
  49
  50 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
  51   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
  52
  53 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
  54
  55 Changes in 2.18:
  56
  57 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
  58
  59 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
  60
  61 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
  62   relocations.
  63
  64 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
  65
  66 * Add support for Score target.
  67
  68 Changes in 2.17:
  69
  70 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
  71
  72 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
  73
  74 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
  75
  76 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
  77   switches can be read from <file>.
  78
  79 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
  80   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
  81   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
  82
  83 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
  84   documentation for how this works.
  85
  86 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
  87   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
  88   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
  89
  90 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
  91   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
  92   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
  93   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
  94   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
  95
  96 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
  97   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
  98   assembler.
  99
 100 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 101
 102 Changes in 2.16:
 103
 104 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 105
 106 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 107
 108 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 109   targets.
 110
 111 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 112   mode.
 113
 114 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 115
 116 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 117
 118 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 119   preferred debug format.
 120
 121 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 122
 123 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 124
 125 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 126   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 127
 128 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 129
 130 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 131   instrucitons.
 132
 133 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 134
 135 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 136   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 137
 138 Changes in 2.15:
 139
 140 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 141   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 142
 143 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 144
 145 * Added support for ARM V6.
 146
 147 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 148
 149 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 150
 151 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 152   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 153
 154 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 155   definitions created by ".req".
 156
 157 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 158
 159 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 160   information with GNU extensions.
 161
 162 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 163
 164 * Added support for v850e1.
 165
 166 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 167   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 168   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 169   switch disables the optimization.
 170
 171 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 172   existing -non_shared option.
 173
 174 Changes in 2.14:
 175
 176 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 177
 178 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 179
 180 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 181
 182 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 183   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 184
 185 * Support for SH2E added.
 186
 187 * GASP has now been removed.
 188
 189 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 190   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 191
 192 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 193
 194 Changes in 2.13:
 195
 196 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 197   and FR500 included.
 198
 199 * Support for DLX processor added.
 200
 201 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 202   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 203
 204 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 205   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 206   the currently specified base.
 207
 208 Changes in 2.12:
 209
 210 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 211
 212 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 213
 214 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 215   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 216   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 217   compatibility.
 218
 219 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 220   the ARM assembler.
 221
 222 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 223   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 224
 225 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 226   but still works for compatability.
 227
 228 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 229   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 230   -n will turn on the warning.
 231
 232 Changes in 2.11:
 233
 234 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 235
 236 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 237
 238 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 239
 240 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 241
 242 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 243
 244 * Support for IA-64.
 245
 246 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 247
 248 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 249
 250 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 251
 252 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 253   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 254   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 255
 256 Changes in 2.10:
 257
 258 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 259   operand when altering the flags field.
 260
 261 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 262
 263 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 264
 265 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 266
 267 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 268
 269 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 270
 271 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 272
 273 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 274
 275 * picoJava architecture support added.
 276
 277 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 278
 279 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 280   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 281
 282 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 283
 284 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 285
 286 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 287
 288 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 289   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 290   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 291   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 292
 293 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 294
 295 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 296
 297 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 298
 299 * i960 ELF support added.
 300
 301 * ARM ELF support added.
 302
 303 Changes in 2.9:
 304
 305 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 306
 307 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 308   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 309
 310 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 311
 312 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 313   listing.
 314
 315 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 316
 317 Changes in 2.8:
 318
 319 * BeOS support added.
 320
 321 * MIPS16 support added.
 322
 323 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 324
 325 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 326
 327 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 328   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 329
 330 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 331   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 332   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 333   all.
 334
 335 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 336
 337 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 338   conditionals in listings.
 339
 340 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 341   the symbol is already defined.
 342
 343 Changes in 2.7:
 344
 345 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 346   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 347   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 348   added.
 349
 350 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 351
 352 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 353
 354 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 355
 356 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 357
 358 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 359
 360 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 361   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 362   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 363   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 364
 365 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 366
 367 Changes in 2.6:
 368
 369 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 370
 371 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 372   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 373   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 374
 375 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 376
 377 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 378
 379 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 380
 381 Changes in 2.4:
 382
 383 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 384
 385 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 386
 387 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 388   debugging support.
 389
 390 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 391
 392 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 393   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 394   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 395   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 396
 397 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 398
 399 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 400   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 401
 402 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 403
 404 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 405   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 406
 407 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 408   Paul Kranenburg.
 409
 410 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 411   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 412
 413 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 414
 415 Changes in 2.3:
 416
 417 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 418
 419 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 420
 421 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 422   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 423   again too.
 424
 425 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 426   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 427   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 428   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 429   in the "dist" directory.
 430
 431 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 432   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 433   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 434
 435 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 436   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 437   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 438   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 439
 440 * Irix 5 support.
 441
 442 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 443   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 444
 445 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 446   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 447   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 448   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 449
 450 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 451   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 452   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 453   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 454
 455 Changes in 2.2:
 456
 457 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 458
 459 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 460   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 461   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 462   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 463   reliable.
 464
 465 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 466   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 467   messages about "internal errors".
 468
 469 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 470   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 471
 472 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 473   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 474   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 475   known.
 476
 477 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 478   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 479   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 480   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 481   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 482   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 483   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 484
 485 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 486   support is in progress.
 487
 488 Changes in 2.1:
 489
 490 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 491   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 492
 493 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 494   with gcc now.
 495
 496 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 497   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 498
 499 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 500   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 501   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 502
 503 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 504
 505 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 506
 507 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 508
 509 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 510
 511 Changes in 2.0:
 512
 513 * Mostly bug fixes.
 514
 515 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 516
 517 Changes in 1.94:
 518
 519 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 520   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 521   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 522   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 523   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 524   fully merged yet.)
 525
 526 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 527   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 528
 529 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 530   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 531
 532 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 533   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 534   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 535   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 536   coming.
 537
 538 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 539
 540 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 541   Youngdale.
 542
 543 Changes in 1.93.01:
 544
 545 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 546
 547 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 548
 549 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 550   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 551   can be distinguished from the register.
 552
 553 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 554   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 555
 556 \f
 557 Local variables:
 558 fill-column: 79
 559 End: