gas/NEWS

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