gas/NEWS

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