gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.11:
   4
   5 Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
   6
   7 Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
   8
   9 Support for IA-64.
  10
  11 Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
  12
  13 x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
  14
  15 x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
  16 due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
  17 translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
  18
  19 Changes in 2.10:
  20
  21 Support for ATMEL AVR.
  22
  23 Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
  24
  25 Support for numbers with suffixes.
  26
  27 Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
  28
  29 Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
  30
  31 New .elseif pseudo-op added.
  32
  33 New --fatal-warnings option.
  34
  35 picoJava architecture support added.
  36
  37 Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
  38
  39 A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
  40 assembly programs with intel syntax.
  41
  42 New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
  43
  44 Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
  45
  46 Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
  47
  48 Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
  49 produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions of
  50 gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with older
  51 versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
  52
  53 Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
  54
  55 Mitsubishi D30V support added.
  56
  57 Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
  58
  59 i960 ELF support added.
  60
  61 ARM ELF support added.
  62
  63 Changes in 2.9:
  64
  65 Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
  66
  67 The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
  68 and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
  69
  70 Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
  71
  72 The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
  73 listing.
  74
  75 Added -MD option to print dependencies.
  76
  77 Changes in 2.8:
  78
  79 BeOS support added.
  80
  81 MIPS16 support added.
  82
  83 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
  84
  85 Alpha/VMS support added.
  86
  87 m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
  88 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
  89
  90 The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
  91 maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require skipping
  92 more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.
  93
  94 The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
  95
  96 The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
  97 in listings.
  98
  99 Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
 100 symbol is already defined.
 101
 102 Changes in 2.7:
 103
 104 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
 105 if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
 106 used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
 107
 108 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 109
 110 PowerPC ELF support added.
 111
 112 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 113
 114 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 115
 116 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 117
 118 SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 119 default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate ELF
 120 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 121 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 122
 123 m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 124
 125 Changes in 2.6:
 126
 127 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 128
 129 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select MRI
 130 mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
 131 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 132
 133 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 134
 135 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 136
 137 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 138
 139 Changes in 2.4:
 140
 141 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 142
 143 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 144
 145 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
 146 support.
 147
 148 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 149
 150 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 151 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 152 features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 153 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 154
 155 Usage message is available with "--help".
 156
 157 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 158 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 159
 160 Weak symbol support for a.out.
 161
 162 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 163 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 164
 165 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
 166 Kranenburg.
 167
 168 Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
 169 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 170
 171 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 172
 173 Changes in 2.3:
 174
 175 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 176
 177 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 178
 179 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 180 based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
 181 too.
 182
 183 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 184 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 185 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 186 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 187 in the "dist" directory.
 188
 189 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
 190 tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 191 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 192
 193 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 194 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
 195 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
 196 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 197
 198 Irix 5 support.
 199
 200 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 201 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 202
 203 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 204 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 205 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
 206 to make the Alpha port easier.
 207
 208 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
 209 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
 210 phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
 211 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 212
 213 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 214
 215 Changes in 2.2:
 216
 217 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 218
 219 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 220 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 221 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 222 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 223 reliable.
 224
 225 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 226 displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 227 messages about "internal errors".
 228
 229 ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 230 Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 231
 232 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
 233 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
 234 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
 235
 236 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 237 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 238 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 239 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 240 its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 241 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 242 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 243
 244 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 245 support is in progress.
 246
 247 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 248
 249 Changes in 2.1:
 250
 251 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 252 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 253
 254 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 255 with gcc now.
 256
 257 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 258 suggested by Ronald Cole.
 259
 260 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 261 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 262 2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 263
 264 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 265
 266 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 267
 268 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 269
 270 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 271
 272 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 273
 274 Changes in 2.0:
 275
 276 Mostly bug fixes.
 277
 278 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 279
 280 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 281
 282 Changes in 1.94:
 283
 284 BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 285 "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
 286 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
 287 "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
 288 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
 289 merged yet.)
 290
 291 The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 292 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 293
 294 A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 295 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 296
 297 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 298 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
 299 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
 300 supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
 301
 302 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 303
 304 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 305 Youngdale.
 306
 307 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 308
 309 Changes in 1.93.01:
 310
 311 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 312
 313 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 314
 315 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 316 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 317 can be distinguished from the register.
 318
 319 Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 320 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 321
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