gas/NEWS

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