New ARC implementation.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gas / NEWS
1 -*- text -*-
2
3 * Add support for the ARC EM/HS, and ARC600/700 architectures. Remove
4 assembler support for Argonaut RISC architectures.
5
6 Changes in 2.26:
7
8 * Symbol and label names can now be enclosed in double quotes (") which allows
9 them to contain characters that are not part of valid symbol names in high
10 level languages.
11
12 * Added the correctly spelled -march=armv6kz, for ARMv6KZ support. The
13 previous spelling, -march=armv6zk, is still accepted.
14
15 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the Aarch64 port.
16 Support for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD, LOR and PAN architecture
17 extensions has also been added to the Aarch64 port.
18
19 * Support for the ARMv8.1 architecture has been added to the ARM port. Support
20 for the individual ARMv8.1 Adv.SIMD and PAN architecture extensions has also
21 been added to the ARM port.
22
23 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
24 --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
25 targets.
26
27 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
28
29 Changes in 2.25:
30
31 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
32
33 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
34
35 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
36 Studio tool. Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
37
38 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
39
40 Changes in 2.24:
41
42 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
43
44 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
45 generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
46
47 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
48
49 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
50
51 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
52
53 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
54
55 Changes in 2.23:
56
57 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
58
59 * Add support for S12X processor.
60
61 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
62
63 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
64
65 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
66 directives. These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
67
68 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
69
70 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
71
72 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
73
74 Changes in 2.22:
75
76 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
77
78 Changes in 2.21:
79
80 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
81
82 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
83
84 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
85 for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified. This
86 feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
87 2.20.1.
88
89 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
90
91 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
92 compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
93 file. Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
94 gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
95
96 Changes in 2.20:
97
98 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
99
100 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
101 pseudo op. It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
102 process.
103
104 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
105 in binary rather than text.
106
107 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
108
109 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
110 with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
111
112 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
113
114 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
115 indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
116 not be use. Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
117 the value.
118
119 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
120
121 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
122
123 Changes in 2.19:
124
125 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
126 tables without runtime relocation.
127
128 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
129 adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
130
131 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
132 targets.
133
134 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
135 generate a listing output. The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
136 various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
137 command line options used, and a time stamp.
138
139 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
140 instructions with VEX prefix.
141
142 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
143
144 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
145 -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
146 -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
147
148 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
149 pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
150
151 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
152
153 Changes in 2.18:
154
155 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
156
157 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
158
159 * Added gas .reloc pseudo. This is a low-level interface for creating
160 relocations.
161
162 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
163
164 * Add support for Score target.
165
166 Changes in 2.17:
167
168 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
169
170 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
171
172 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
173
174 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
175 switches can be read from <file>.
176
177 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
178 if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
179 character. This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
180
181 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
182 documentation for how this works.
183
184 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
185 tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
186 --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
187
188 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
189 also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
190 known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
191 characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
192 be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
193
194 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
195 for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
196 assembler.
197
198 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
199
200 Changes in 2.16:
201
202 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
203
204 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
205
206 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
207 targets.
208
209 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
210 mode.
211
212 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
213
214 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
215
216 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
217 preferred debug format.
218
219 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
220
221 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
222
223 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
224 on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
225
226 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
227
228 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
229 instrucitons.
230
231 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
232
233 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
234 added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
235
236 Changes in 2.15:
237
238 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
239 deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
240
241 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
242
243 * Added support for ARM V6.
244
245 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
246
247 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
248
249 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
250 specification has been added to the arm assembler.
251
252 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
253 definitions created by ".req".
254
255 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
256
257 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
258 information with GNU extensions.
259
260 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
261
262 * Added support for v850e1.
263
264 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler. By default, x86 GAS replaces
265 multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
266 with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi. This
267 switch disables the optimization.
268
269 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler. It was not useful, and confused the
270 existing -non_shared option.
271
272 Changes in 2.14:
273
274 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
275
276 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
277
278 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
279
280 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
281 uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
282
283 * Support for SH2E added.
284
285 * GASP has now been removed.
286
287 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
288 DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
289
290 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
291
292 Changes in 2.13:
293
294 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
295 and FR500 included.
296
297 * Support for DLX processor added.
298
299 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use
300 the macro facilities in GAS instead.
301
302 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
303 explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
304 the currently specified base.
305
306 Changes in 2.12:
307
308 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
309
310 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
311
312 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
313 specifying the target instruction set. The old method of specifying the
314 target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
315 compatibility.
316
317 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
318 the ARM assembler.
319
320 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
321 in the assembly. Contributed by Anders Norlander.
322
323 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
324 but still works for compatability.
325
326 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
327 generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
328 -n will turn on the warning.
329
330 Changes in 2.11:
331
332 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
333
334 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
335
336 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
337
338 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
339
340 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
341
342 * Support for IA-64.
343
344 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
345
346 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
347
348 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
349
350 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
351 due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
352 translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
353
354 Changes in 2.10:
355
356 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
357 operand when altering the flags field.
358
359 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
360
361 * Support for IBM 370 ELF. Somewhat experimental.
362
363 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
364
365 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
366
367 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
368
369 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
370
371 * New --fatal-warnings option.
372
373 * picoJava architecture support added.
374
375 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
376
377 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
378 assembly programs with intel syntax.
379
380 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
381
382 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
383
384 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
385
386 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386. This change will
387 produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
388 of gas accepted. If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
389 older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
390
391 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
392
393 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
394
395 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
396
397 * i960 ELF support added.
398
399 * ARM ELF support added.
400
401 Changes in 2.9:
402
403 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
404
405 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
406 and gcc 2.8. The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
407
408 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
409
410 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
411 listing.
412
413 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
414
415 Changes in 2.8:
416
417 * BeOS support added.
418
419 * MIPS16 support added.
420
421 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
422
423 * Alpha/VMS support added.
424
425 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
426 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
427
428 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
429 maximum number of bytes to skip. If doing the alignment would require
430 skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
431 all.
432
433 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
434
435 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
436 conditionals in listings.
437
438 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
439 the symbol is already defined.
440
441 Changes in 2.7:
442
443 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
444 etc.) if -mregnames is used. Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
445 can be used any time. PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
446 added.
447
448 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
449
450 * PowerPC ELF support added.
451
452 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
453
454 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
455
456 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
457
458 * SCO ELF support added. For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
459 default is to build COFF-only support. To get a set of tools that generate
460 ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
461 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
462
463 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
464
465 Changes in 2.6:
466
467 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
468
469 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode. Use -M or --mri to select
470 MRI mode. The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
471 ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
472
473 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
474
475 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
476
477 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
478
479 Changes in 2.4:
480
481 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
482
483 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
484
485 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
486 debugging support.
487
488 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
489
490 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
491 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
492 features not available in the native assembler. If the native assembler is
493 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
494
495 * Usage message is available with "--help".
496
497 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included. (Actually, it was in 2.3
498 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
499
500 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
501
502 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
503 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
504
505 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
506 Paul Kranenburg.
507
508 * Improved Alpha support. Immediate constants can have a much larger range
509 now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
510
511 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
512
513 Changes in 2.3:
514
515 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
516
517 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
518
519 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
520 based on mail received from various people. The `-h#' option should work
521 again too.
522
523 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law. Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
524 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6. As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
525 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3. You can retrieve
526 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
527 in the "dist" directory.
528
529 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
530 simple tests okay. I haven't put it through extensive testing. (GNU make is
531 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
532
533 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format). The gas support is
534 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format. I'm afraid
535 the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
536 making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
537
538 * Irix 5 support.
539
540 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
541 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
542
543 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
544 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases. Some details of relocation
545 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
546 added, to make the Alpha port easier.
547
548 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times. This is
549 intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
550 various phases of compilation. (You should be able to get all of them
551 printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
552
553 Changes in 2.2:
554
555 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
556
557 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
558 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
559 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
560 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
561 reliable.
562
563 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
564 displayed. This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
565 messages about "internal errors".
566
567 * ELF support is falling into place. Support for the 386 should be working.
568 Support for SPARC Solaris is in. HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
569
570 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
571 boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant. This permits slightly
572 more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
573 known.
574
575 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
576 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
577 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section. The format of the .stab
578 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
579 its string table. For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
580 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
581 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
582
583 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported. SPARC LynxOS
584 support is in progress.
585
586 Changes in 2.1:
587
588 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
589 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
590
591 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
592 with gcc now.
593
594 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
595 suggested by Ronald Cole.
596
597 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah. This
598 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
599 2.x. Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
600
601 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
602
603 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
604
605 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
606
607 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
608
609 Changes in 2.0:
610
611 * Mostly bug fixes.
612
613 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
614
615 Changes in 1.94:
616
617 * BFD merge is partly done. Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
618 "--with-bfd-assembler" option. Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
619 format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it. It's the default only for OS "elf"
620 or "solaris". (ELF isn't really supported yet. It needs work. I've got
621 some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
622 fully merged yet.)
623
624 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half. It should now compile under gcc
625 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
626
627 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size. This should result in
628 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
629
630 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in. The OSF
631 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet. (I can
632 make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.) Ralph's code, for BSD
633 4.4, supports a.out format. We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
634 coming.
635
636 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
637
638 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
639 Youngdale.
640
641 Changes in 1.93.01:
642
643 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
644
645 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
646
647 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names. For COFF format, which
648 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
649 can be distinguished from the register.
650
651 * Last public release was 1.38. Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
652 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
653
654 \f
655 Copyright (C) 2012-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
656
657 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
658 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
659 notice and this notice are preserved.
660
661 Local variables:
662 fill-column: 79
663 End:
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