gas/NEWS

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