gas/NEWS

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