gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes since 2.7:
   4
   5 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
   6
   7 Changes since 2.6:
   8
   9 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
  10 if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
  11 used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
  12
  13 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
  14
  15 PowerPC ELF support added.
  16
  17 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
  18
  19 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
  20
  21 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
  22
  23 SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
  24 default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate ELF
  25 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
  26 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
  27
  28 m88k-motorola-sysv* support added.
  29
  30 Changes since 2.5:
  31
  32 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
  33
  34 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select MRI
  35 mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
  36 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
  37
  38 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
  39
  40 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
  41
  42 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
  43
  44 Changes since 2.3:
  45
  46 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
  47
  48 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
  49
  50 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
  51 support.
  52
  53 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
  54
  55 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
  56 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
  57 features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
  58 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
  59
  60 Usage message is available with "--help".
  61
  62 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
  63 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
  64
  65 Weak symbol support for a.out.
  66
  67 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
  68 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
  69
  70 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
  71 Kranenburg.
  72
  73 Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
  74 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
  75
  76 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
  77
  78 Changes since 2.2:
  79
  80 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
  81
  82 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
  83
  84 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
  85 based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
  86 too.
  87
  88 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
  89 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
  90 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
  91 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
  92 in the "dist" directory.
  93
  94 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
  95 tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
  96 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
  97
  98 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
  99 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
 100 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
 101 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 102
 103 Irix 5 support.
 104
 105 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 106 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 107
 108 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 109 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 110 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
 111 to make the Alpha port easier.
 112
 113 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
 114 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
 115 phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
 116 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 117
 118 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 119
 120 Changes since 2.1:
 121
 122 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 123
 124 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 125 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 126 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 127 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 128 reliable.
 129
 130 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 131 displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 132 messages about "internal errors".
 133
 134 ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 135 Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 136
 137 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
 138 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
 139 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
 140
 141 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 142 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 143 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 144 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 145 its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 146 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 147 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 148
 149 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 150 support is in progress.
 151
 152 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 153
 154 Changes for 2.1:
 155
 156 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 157 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 158
 159 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 160 with gcc now.
 161
 162 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 163 suggested by Ronald Cole.
 164
 165 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 166 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 167 2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 168
 169 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 170
 171 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 172
 173 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 174
 175 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 176
 177 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 178
 179 Changes for 2.0:
 180
 181 Mostly bug fixes.
 182
 183 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 184
 185 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 186
 187 Changes for 1.94:
 188
 189 BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 190 "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
 191 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
 192 "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
 193 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
 194 merged yet.)
 195
 196 The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 197 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 198
 199 A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 200 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 201
 202 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 203 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
 204 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
 205 supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
 206
 207 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 208
 209 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 210 Youngdale.
 211
 212 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 213
 214 Changes for 1.93.01:
 215
 216 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 217
 218 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 219
 220 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 221 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 222 can be distinguished from the register.
 223
 224 Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 225 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 226
 227 \f
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