gas/NEWS

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