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