gas/NEWS

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