gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.21:
   4
   5
   6 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
   7
   8 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
   9
  10 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
  11   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
  12   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
  13   2.20.1.
  14
  15 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  16
  17 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  18   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  19   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  20   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  21
  22 Changes in 2.20:
  23
  24 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  25
  26 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  27   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  28   process.
  29
  30 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  31   in binary rather than text.
  32
  33 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  34
  35 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  36   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  37
  38 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  39
  40 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  41   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  42   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  43   the value.
  44
  45 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  46
  47 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  48
  49 Changes in 2.19:
  50
  51 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  52   tables without runtime relocation.
  53
  54 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  55   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  56
  57 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  58   targets.
  59
  60 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
  61   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
  62   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
  63   command line options used, and a time stamp.
  64
  65 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
  66   instructions with VEX prefix.
  67
  68 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
  69
  70 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
  71   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
  72   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
  73
  74 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
  75   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
  76
  77 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
  78
  79 Changes in 2.18:
  80
  81 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
  82
  83 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
  84
  85 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
  86   relocations.
  87
  88 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
  89
  90 * Add support for Score target.
  91
  92 Changes in 2.17:
  93
  94 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
  95
  96 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
  97
  98 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
  99
 100 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 101   switches can be read from <file>.
 102
 103 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 104   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 105   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 106
 107 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 108   documentation for how this works.
 109
 110 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 111   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 112   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 113
 114 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 115   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 116   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 117   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 118   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 119
 120 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 121   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 122   assembler.
 123
 124 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 125
 126 Changes in 2.16:
 127
 128 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 129
 130 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 131
 132 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 133   targets.
 134
 135 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 136   mode.
 137
 138 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 139
 140 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 141
 142 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 143   preferred debug format.
 144
 145 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 146
 147 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 148
 149 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 150   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 151
 152 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 153
 154 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 155   instrucitons.
 156
 157 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 158
 159 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 160   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 161
 162 Changes in 2.15:
 163
 164 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 165   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 166
 167 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 168
 169 * Added support for ARM V6.
 170
 171 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 172
 173 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 174
 175 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 176   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 177
 178 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 179   definitions created by ".req".
 180
 181 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 182
 183 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 184   information with GNU extensions.
 185
 186 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 187
 188 * Added support for v850e1.
 189
 190 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 191   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 192   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 193   switch disables the optimization.
 194
 195 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 196   existing -non_shared option.
 197
 198 Changes in 2.14:
 199
 200 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 201
 202 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 203
 204 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 205
 206 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 207   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 208
 209 * Support for SH2E added.
 210
 211 * GASP has now been removed.
 212
 213 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 214   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 215
 216 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 217
 218 Changes in 2.13:
 219
 220 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 221   and FR500 included.
 222
 223 * Support for DLX processor added.
 224
 225 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 226   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 227
 228 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 229   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 230   the currently specified base.
 231
 232 Changes in 2.12:
 233
 234 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 235
 236 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 237
 238 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 239   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 240   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 241   compatibility.
 242
 243 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 244   the ARM assembler.
 245
 246 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 247   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 248
 249 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 250   but still works for compatability.
 251
 252 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 253   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 254   -n will turn on the warning.
 255
 256 Changes in 2.11:
 257
 258 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 259
 260 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 261
 262 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 263
 264 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 265
 266 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 267
 268 * Support for IA-64.
 269
 270 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 271
 272 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 273
 274 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 275
 276 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 277   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 278   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 279
 280 Changes in 2.10:
 281
 282 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 283   operand when altering the flags field.
 284
 285 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 286
 287 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 288
 289 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 290
 291 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 292
 293 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 294
 295 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 296
 297 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 298
 299 * picoJava architecture support added.
 300
 301 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 302
 303 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 304   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 305
 306 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 307
 308 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 309
 310 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 311
 312 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 313   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 314   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 315   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 316
 317 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 318
 319 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 320
 321 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 322
 323 * i960 ELF support added.
 324
 325 * ARM ELF support added.
 326
 327 Changes in 2.9:
 328
 329 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 330
 331 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 332   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 333
 334 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 335
 336 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 337   listing.
 338
 339 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 340
 341 Changes in 2.8:
 342
 343 * BeOS support added.
 344
 345 * MIPS16 support added.
 346
 347 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 348
 349 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 350
 351 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 352   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 353
 354 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 355   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 356   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 357   all.
 358
 359 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 360
 361 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 362   conditionals in listings.
 363
 364 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 365   the symbol is already defined.
 366
 367 Changes in 2.7:
 368
 369 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 370   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 371   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 372   added.
 373
 374 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 375
 376 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 377
 378 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 379
 380 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 381
 382 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 383
 384 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 385   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 386   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 387   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 388
 389 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 390
 391 Changes in 2.6:
 392
 393 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 394
 395 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 396   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 397   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 398
 399 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 400
 401 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 402
 403 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 404
 405 Changes in 2.4:
 406
 407 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 408
 409 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 410
 411 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 412   debugging support.
 413
 414 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 415
 416 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 417   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 418   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 419   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 420
 421 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 422
 423 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 424   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 425
 426 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 427
 428 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 429   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 430
 431 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 432   Paul Kranenburg.
 433
 434 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 435   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 436
 437 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 438
 439 Changes in 2.3:
 440
 441 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 442
 443 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 444
 445 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 446   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 447   again too.
 448
 449 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 450   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 451   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 452   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 453   in the "dist" directory.
 454
 455 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 456   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 457   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 458
 459 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 460   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 461   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 462   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 463
 464 * Irix 5 support.
 465
 466 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 467   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 468
 469 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 470   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 471   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 472   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 473
 474 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 475   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 476   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 477   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 478
 479 Changes in 2.2:
 480
 481 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 482
 483 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 484   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 485   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 486   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 487   reliable.
 488
 489 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 490   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 491   messages about "internal errors".
 492
 493 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 494   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 495
 496 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 497   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 498   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 499   known.
 500
 501 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 502   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 503   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 504   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 505   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 506   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 507   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 508
 509 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 510   support is in progress.
 511
 512 Changes in 2.1:
 513
 514 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 515   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 516
 517 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 518   with gcc now.
 519
 520 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 521   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 522
 523 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 524   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 525   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 526
 527 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 528
 529 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 530
 531 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 532
 533 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 534
 535 Changes in 2.0:
 536
 537 * Mostly bug fixes.
 538
 539 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 540
 541 Changes in 1.94:
 542
 543 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 544   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 545   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 546   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 547   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 548   fully merged yet.)
 549
 550 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 551   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 552
 553 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 554   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 555
 556 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 557   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 558   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 559   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 560   coming.
 561
 562 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 563
 564 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 565   Youngdale.
 566
 567 Changes in 1.93.01:
 568
 569 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 570
 571 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 572
 573 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 574   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 575   can be distinguished from the register.
 576
 577 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 578   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 579
 580 \f
 581 Local variables:
 582 fill-column: 79
 583 End: