gas/NEWS

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