gas/NEWS

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