gas/NEWS

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