gas/NEWS

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