gas/NEWS

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