gas/NEWS

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