gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.26:
   4
   5 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
   6
   7 Changes in 2.25:
   8
   9 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
  10
  11 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
  12
  13 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
  14   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
  15
  16 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
  17
  18 Changes in 2.24:
  19
  20 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
  21
  22 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
  23   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
  24
  25 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
  26
  27 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
  28
  29 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
  30
  31 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
  32
  33 Changes in 2.23:
  34
  35 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
  36
  37 * Add support for S12X processor.
  38
  39 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
  40
  41 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
  42
  43 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
  44   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
  45
  46 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
  47
  48 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
  49
  50 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
  51
  52 Changes in 2.22:
  53
  54 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
  55
  56 Changes in 2.21:
  57
  58 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
  59
  60 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
  61
  62 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
  63   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
  64   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
  65   2.20.1.
  66
  67 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  68
  69 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  70   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  71   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  72   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  73
  74 Changes in 2.20:
  75
  76 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  77
  78 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  79   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  80   process.
  81
  82 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  83   in binary rather than text.
  84
  85 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  86
  87 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  88   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  89
  90 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  91
  92 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  93   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  94   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  95   the value.
  96
  97 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  98
  99 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
 100
 101 Changes in 2.19:
 102
 103 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
 104   tables without runtime relocation.
 105
 106 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
 107   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 108
 109 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 110   targets.
 111
 112 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 113   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 114   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 115   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 116
 117 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 118   instructions with VEX prefix.
 119
 120 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 121
 122 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 123   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 124   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 125
 126 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 127   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 128
 129 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 130
 131 Changes in 2.18:
 132
 133 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 134
 135 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 136
 137 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 138   relocations.
 139
 140 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 141
 142 * Add support for Score target.
 143
 144 Changes in 2.17:
 145
 146 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 147
 148 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 149
 150 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 151
 152 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 153   switches can be read from <file>.
 154
 155 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 156   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 157   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 158
 159 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 160   documentation for how this works.
 161
 162 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 163   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 164   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 165
 166 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 167   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 168   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 169   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 170   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 171
 172 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 173   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 174   assembler.
 175
 176 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 177
 178 Changes in 2.16:
 179
 180 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 181
 182 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 183
 184 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 185   targets.
 186
 187 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 188   mode.
 189
 190 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 191
 192 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 193
 194 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 195   preferred debug format.
 196
 197 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 198
 199 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 200
 201 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 202   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 203
 204 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 205
 206 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 207   instrucitons.
 208
 209 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 210
 211 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 212   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 213
 214 Changes in 2.15:
 215
 216 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 217   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 218
 219 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 220
 221 * Added support for ARM V6.
 222
 223 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 224
 225 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 226
 227 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 228   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 229
 230 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 231   definitions created by ".req".
 232
 233 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 234
 235 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 236   information with GNU extensions.
 237
 238 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 239
 240 * Added support for v850e1.
 241
 242 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 243   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 244   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 245   switch disables the optimization.
 246
 247 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 248   existing -non_shared option.
 249
 250 Changes in 2.14:
 251
 252 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 253
 254 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 255
 256 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 257
 258 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 259   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 260
 261 * Support for SH2E added.
 262
 263 * GASP has now been removed.
 264
 265 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 266   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 267
 268 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 269
 270 Changes in 2.13:
 271
 272 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 273   and FR500 included.
 274
 275 * Support for DLX processor added.
 276
 277 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 278   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 279
 280 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 281   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 282   the currently specified base.
 283
 284 Changes in 2.12:
 285
 286 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 287
 288 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 289
 290 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 291   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 292   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 293   compatibility.
 294
 295 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 296   the ARM assembler.
 297
 298 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 299   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 300
 301 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 302   but still works for compatability.
 303
 304 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 305   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 306   -n will turn on the warning.
 307
 308 Changes in 2.11:
 309
 310 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 311
 312 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 313
 314 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 315
 316 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 317
 318 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 319
 320 * Support for IA-64.
 321
 322 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 323
 324 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 325
 326 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 327
 328 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 329   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 330   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 331
 332 Changes in 2.10:
 333
 334 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 335   operand when altering the flags field.
 336
 337 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 338
 339 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 340
 341 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 342
 343 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 344
 345 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 346
 347 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 348
 349 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 350
 351 * picoJava architecture support added.
 352
 353 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 354
 355 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 356   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 357
 358 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 359
 360 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 361
 362 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 363
 364 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 365   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 366   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 367   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 368
 369 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 370
 371 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 372
 373 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 374
 375 * i960 ELF support added.
 376
 377 * ARM ELF support added.
 378
 379 Changes in 2.9:
 380
 381 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 382
 383 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 384   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 385
 386 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 387
 388 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 389   listing.
 390
 391 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 392
 393 Changes in 2.8:
 394
 395 * BeOS support added.
 396
 397 * MIPS16 support added.
 398
 399 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 400
 401 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 402
 403 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 404   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 405
 406 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 407   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 408   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 409   all.
 410
 411 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 412
 413 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 414   conditionals in listings.
 415
 416 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 417   the symbol is already defined.
 418
 419 Changes in 2.7:
 420
 421 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 422   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 423   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 424   added.
 425
 426 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 427
 428 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 429
 430 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 431
 432 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 433
 434 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 435
 436 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 437   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 438   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 439   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 440
 441 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 442
 443 Changes in 2.6:
 444
 445 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 446
 447 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 448   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 449   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 450
 451 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 452
 453 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 454
 455 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 456
 457 Changes in 2.4:
 458
 459 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 460
 461 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 462
 463 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 464   debugging support.
 465
 466 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 467
 468 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 469   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 470   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 471   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 472
 473 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 474
 475 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 476   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 477
 478 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 479
 480 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 481   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 482
 483 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 484   Paul Kranenburg.
 485
 486 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 487   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 488
 489 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 490
 491 Changes in 2.3:
 492
 493 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 494
 495 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 496
 497 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 498   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 499   again too.
 500
 501 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 502   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 503   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 504   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 505   in the "dist" directory.
 506
 507 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 508   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 509   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 510
 511 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 512   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 513   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 514   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 515
 516 * Irix 5 support.
 517
 518 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 519   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 520
 521 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 522   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 523   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 524   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 525
 526 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 527   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 528   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 529   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 530
 531 Changes in 2.2:
 532
 533 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 534
 535 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 536   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 537   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 538   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 539   reliable.
 540
 541 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 542   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 543   messages about "internal errors".
 544
 545 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 546   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 547
 548 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 549   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 550   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 551   known.
 552
 553 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 554   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 555   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 556   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 557   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 558   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 559   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 560
 561 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 562   support is in progress.
 563
 564 Changes in 2.1:
 565
 566 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 567   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 568
 569 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 570   with gcc now.
 571
 572 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 573   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 574
 575 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 576   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 577   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 578
 579 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 580
 581 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 582
 583 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 584
 585 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 586
 587 Changes in 2.0:
 588
 589 * Mostly bug fixes.
 590
 591 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 592
 593 Changes in 1.94:
 594
 595 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 596   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 597   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 598   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 599   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 600   fully merged yet.)
 601
 602 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 603   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 604
 605 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 606   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 607
 608 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 609   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 610   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 611   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 612   coming.
 613
 614 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 615
 616 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 617   Youngdale.
 618
 619 Changes in 1.93.01:
 620
 621 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 622
 623 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 624
 625 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 626   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 627   can be distinguished from the register.
 628
 629 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 630   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 631
 632 \f
 633 Copyright (C) 2012-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 634
 635 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 636 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 637 notice and this notice are preserved.
 638
 639 Local variables:
 640 fill-column: 79
 641 End: