gas/NEWS

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