gas/NEWS

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