gas/NEWS

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