gas/NEWS

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