gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.9:
   4
   5 Texas Instruction c30 (tms320c30) support added.
   6
   7 The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
   8 and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format disables this optimization.
   9
  10 Added --gstabs option to generates stabs debugging information.
  11
  12 The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
  13 listing.
  14
  15 Added -MD option to print dependencies.
  16
  17 Changes in 2.8:
  18
  19 BeOS support added.
  20
  21 MIPS16 support added.
  22
  23 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
  24
  25 Alpha/VMS support added.
  26
  27 m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
  28 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
  29
  30 The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
  31 maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require skipping
  32 more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.
  33
  34 The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
  35
  36 The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
  37 in listings.
  38
  39 Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
  40 symbol is already defined.
  41
  42 Changes in 2.7:
  43
  44 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
  45 if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
  46 used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
  47
  48 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
  49
  50 PowerPC ELF support added.
  51
  52 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
  53
  54 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
  55
  56 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
  57
  58 SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
  59 default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate ELF
  60 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
  61 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
  62
  63 m88k-motorola-sysv* support added.
  64
  65 Changes in 2.6:
  66
  67 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
  68
  69 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select MRI
  70 mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
  71 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
  72
  73 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
  74
  75 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
  76
  77 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
  78
  79 Changes in 2.4:
  80
  81 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
  82
  83 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
  84
  85 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
  86 support.
  87
  88 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
  89
  90 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
  91 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
  92 features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
  93 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
  94
  95 Usage message is available with "--help".
  96
  97 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
  98 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
  99
 100 Weak symbol support for a.out.
 101
 102 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 103 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 104
 105 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
 106 Kranenburg.
 107
 108 Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
 109 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 110
 111 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 112
 113 Changes in 2.3:
 114
 115 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 116
 117 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 118
 119 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 120 based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
 121 too.
 122
 123 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 124 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 125 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 126 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 127 in the "dist" directory.
 128
 129 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
 130 tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 131 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 132
 133 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 134 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
 135 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
 136 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 137
 138 Irix 5 support.
 139
 140 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 141 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 142
 143 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 144 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 145 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
 146 to make the Alpha port easier.
 147
 148 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
 149 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
 150 phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
 151 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 152
 153 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 154
 155 Changes in 2.2:
 156
 157 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 158
 159 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 160 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 161 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 162 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 163 reliable.
 164
 165 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 166 displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 167 messages about "internal errors".
 168
 169 ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 170 Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 171
 172 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
 173 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
 174 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
 175
 176 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 177 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 178 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 179 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 180 its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 181 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 182 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 183
 184 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 185 support is in progress.
 186
 187 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 188
 189 Changes in 2.1:
 190
 191 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 192 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 193
 194 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 195 with gcc now.
 196
 197 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 198 suggested by Ronald Cole.
 199
 200 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 201 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 202 2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 203
 204 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 205
 206 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 207
 208 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 209
 210 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 211
 212 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 213
 214 Changes in 2.0:
 215
 216 Mostly bug fixes.
 217
 218 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 219
 220 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 221
 222 Changes in 1.94:
 223
 224 BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 225 "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
 226 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
 227 "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
 228 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
 229 merged yet.)
 230
 231 The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 232 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 233
 234 A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 235 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 236
 237 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 238 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
 239 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
 240 supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
 241
 242 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 243
 244 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 245 Youngdale.
 246
 247 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 248
 249 Changes in 1.93.01:
 250
 251 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 252
 253 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 254
 255 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 256 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 257 can be distinguished from the register.
 258
 259 Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 260 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 261
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