gas/NEWS

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