gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 Changes in 2.26:
   4
   5 * Extend --compress-debug-sections option to support
   6   --compress-debug-sections=[none|zlib|zlib-gnu|zlib-gabi] for ELF
   7   targets.
   8
   9 * --compress-debug-sections is turned on for Linux/x86 by default.
  10
  11 Changes in 2.25:
  12
  13 * Add support for the AVR Tiny microcontrollers.
  14
  15 * Replace support for openrisc and or32 with support for or1k.
  16
  17 * Enhanced the ARM port to accept the assembler output from the CodeComposer
  18   Studio tool.  Support is enabled via the new command line option -mccs.
  19
  20 * Add support for the Andes NDS32.
  21
  22 Changes in 2.24:
  23
  24 * Add support for the Texas Instruments MSP430X processor.
  25
  26 * Add -gdwarf-sections command line option to enable per-code-section
  27   generation of DWARF .debug_line sections.
  28
  29 * Add support for Altera Nios II.
  30
  31 * Add support for the Imagination Technologies Meta processor.
  32
  33 * Add support for the v850e3v5.
  34
  35 * Remove assembler support for MIPS ECOFF targets.
  36
  37 Changes in 2.23:
  38
  39 * Add support for the 64-bit ARM architecture: AArch64.
  40
  41 * Add support for S12X processor.
  42
  43 * Add support for the VLE extension to the PowerPC architecture.
  44
  45 * Add support for the Freescale XGATE architecture.
  46
  47 * Add support for .bundle_align_mode, .bundle_lock, and .bundle_unlock
  48   directives.  These are currently available only for x86 and ARM targets.
  49
  50 * Add support for the Renesas RL78 architecture.
  51
  52 * Add support for the Adapteva EPIPHANY architecture.
  53
  54 * For x86, allow 'rep bsf', 'rep bsr', and 'rep ret' syntax.
  55
  56 Changes in 2.22:
  57
  58 * Add support for the Tilera TILEPro and TILE-Gx architectures.
  59
  60 Changes in 2.21:
  61
  62 * Gas no longer requires doubling of ampersands in macros.
  63
  64 * Add support for the TMS320C6000 (TI C6X) processor family.
  65
  66 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
  67   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
  68   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
  69   2.20.1.
  70
  71 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
  72
  73 * New command line option, --compress-debug-sections, which requests
  74   compression of DWARF debug information sections in the relocatable output
  75   file.  Compressed debug sections are supported by readelf, objdump, and
  76   gold, but not currently by Gnu ld.
  77
  78 Changes in 2.20:
  79
  80 * Added support for v850e2 and v850e2v3.
  81
  82 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  83   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  84   process.
  85
  86 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  87   in binary rather than text.
  88
  89 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  90
  91 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  92   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  93
  94 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  95
  96 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  97   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  98   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  99   the value.
 100
 101 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
 102
 103 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
 104
 105 Changes in 2.19:
 106
 107 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
 108   tables without runtime relocation.
 109
 110 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
 111   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
 112
 113 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
 114   targets.
 115
 116 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
 117   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
 118   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
 119   command line options used, and a time stamp.
 120
 121 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
 122   instructions with VEX prefix.
 123
 124 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
 125
 126 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
 127   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
 128   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
 129
 130 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
 131   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
 132
 133 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
 134
 135 Changes in 2.18:
 136
 137 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
 138
 139 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
 140
 141 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
 142   relocations.
 143
 144 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
 145
 146 * Add support for Score target.
 147
 148 Changes in 2.17:
 149
 150 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
 151
 152 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
 153
 154 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
 155
 156 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
 157   switches can be read from <file>.
 158
 159 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
 160   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
 161   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
 162
 163 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
 164   documentation for how this works.
 165
 166 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
 167   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
 168   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
 169
 170 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 171   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 172   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 173   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 174   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 175
 176 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 177   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 178   assembler.
 179
 180 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 181
 182 Changes in 2.16:
 183
 184 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 185
 186 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 187
 188 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 189   targets.
 190
 191 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 192   mode.
 193
 194 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 195
 196 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 197
 198 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 199   preferred debug format.
 200
 201 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 202
 203 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 204
 205 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 206   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 207
 208 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 209
 210 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 211   instrucitons.
 212
 213 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 214
 215 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 216   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 217
 218 Changes in 2.15:
 219
 220 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 221   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 222
 223 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 224
 225 * Added support for ARM V6.
 226
 227 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 228
 229 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 230
 231 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 232   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 233
 234 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 235   definitions created by ".req".
 236
 237 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 238
 239 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 240   information with GNU extensions.
 241
 242 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 243
 244 * Added support for v850e1.
 245
 246 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 247   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 248   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 249   switch disables the optimization.
 250
 251 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 252   existing -non_shared option.
 253
 254 Changes in 2.14:
 255
 256 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 257
 258 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 259
 260 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 261
 262 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 263   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 264
 265 * Support for SH2E added.
 266
 267 * GASP has now been removed.
 268
 269 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 270   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 271
 272 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 273
 274 Changes in 2.13:
 275
 276 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 277   and FR500 included.
 278
 279 * Support for DLX processor added.
 280
 281 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 282   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 283
 284 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 285   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 286   the currently specified base.
 287
 288 Changes in 2.12:
 289
 290 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 291
 292 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 293
 294 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 295   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 296   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 297   compatibility.
 298
 299 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 300   the ARM assembler.
 301
 302 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 303   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 304
 305 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 306   but still works for compatability.
 307
 308 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 309   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 310   -n will turn on the warning.
 311
 312 Changes in 2.11:
 313
 314 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 315
 316 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 317
 318 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 319
 320 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 321
 322 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 323
 324 * Support for IA-64.
 325
 326 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 327
 328 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 329
 330 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 331
 332 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 333   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 334   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 335
 336 Changes in 2.10:
 337
 338 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 339   operand when altering the flags field.
 340
 341 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 342
 343 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 344
 345 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 346
 347 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 348
 349 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 350
 351 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 352
 353 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 354
 355 * picoJava architecture support added.
 356
 357 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 358
 359 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 360   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 361
 362 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 363
 364 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 365
 366 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 367
 368 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 369   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 370   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 371   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 372
 373 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 374
 375 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 376
 377 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 378
 379 * i960 ELF support added.
 380
 381 * ARM ELF support added.
 382
 383 Changes in 2.9:
 384
 385 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 386
 387 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 388   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 389
 390 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 391
 392 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 393   listing.
 394
 395 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 396
 397 Changes in 2.8:
 398
 399 * BeOS support added.
 400
 401 * MIPS16 support added.
 402
 403 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 404
 405 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 406
 407 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 408   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 409
 410 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 411   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 412   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 413   all.
 414
 415 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 416
 417 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 418   conditionals in listings.
 419
 420 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 421   the symbol is already defined.
 422
 423 Changes in 2.7:
 424
 425 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 426   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 427   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 428   added.
 429
 430 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 431
 432 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 433
 434 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 435
 436 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 437
 438 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 439
 440 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 441   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 442   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 443   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 444
 445 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 446
 447 Changes in 2.6:
 448
 449 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 450
 451 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 452   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 453   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 454
 455 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 456
 457 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 458
 459 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 460
 461 Changes in 2.4:
 462
 463 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 464
 465 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 466
 467 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 468   debugging support.
 469
 470 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 471
 472 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 473   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 474   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 475   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 476
 477 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 478
 479 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 480   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 481
 482 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 483
 484 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 485   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 486
 487 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 488   Paul Kranenburg.
 489
 490 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 491   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 492
 493 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 494
 495 Changes in 2.3:
 496
 497 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 498
 499 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 500
 501 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 502   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 503   again too.
 504
 505 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 506   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 507   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 508   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 509   in the "dist" directory.
 510
 511 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 512   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 513   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 514
 515 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 516   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 517   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 518   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 519
 520 * Irix 5 support.
 521
 522 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 523   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 524
 525 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 526   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 527   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 528   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 529
 530 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 531   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 532   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 533   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 534
 535 Changes in 2.2:
 536
 537 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 538
 539 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 540   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 541   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 542   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 543   reliable.
 544
 545 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 546   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 547   messages about "internal errors".
 548
 549 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 550   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 551
 552 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 553   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 554   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 555   known.
 556
 557 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 558   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 559   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 560   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 561   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 562   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 563   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 564
 565 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 566   support is in progress.
 567
 568 Changes in 2.1:
 569
 570 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 571   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 572
 573 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 574   with gcc now.
 575
 576 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 577   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 578
 579 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 580   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 581   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 582
 583 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 584
 585 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 586
 587 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 588
 589 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 590
 591 Changes in 2.0:
 592
 593 * Mostly bug fixes.
 594
 595 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 596
 597 Changes in 1.94:
 598
 599 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 600   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 601   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 602   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 603   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 604   fully merged yet.)
 605
 606 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 607   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 608
 609 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 610   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 611
 612 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 613   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 614   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 615   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 616   coming.
 617
 618 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 619
 620 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 621   Youngdale.
 622
 623 Changes in 1.93.01:
 624
 625 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 626
 627 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 628
 629 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 630   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 631   can be distinguished from the register.
 632
 633 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 634   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 635
 636 \f
 637 Copyright (C) 2012-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 638
 639 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
 640 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
 641 notice and this notice are preserved.
 642
 643 Local variables:
 644 fill-column: 79
 645 End: