gas/NEWS

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