5 Support for numbers with suffixes.
7 Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
9 Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
11 New .elseif pseudo-op added.
13 New --fatal-warnings option.
15 picoJava architecture support added.
17 Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
19 A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
20 assembly programs with intel syntax.
22 New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
24 Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
26 Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
28 Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386. This change will
29 produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions of
30 gas accepted. If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with older
31 versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
33 Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
35 Mitsubishi D30V support added.
37 Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
39 i960 ELF support added.
43 Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
45 The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
46 and gcc 2.8. The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
48 Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
50 The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
53 Added -MD option to print dependencies.
61 Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
63 Alpha/VMS support added.
65 m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
66 --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
68 The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
69 maximum number of bytes to skip. If doing the alignment would require skipping
70 more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.
72 The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
74 The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
77 Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
78 symbol is already defined.
82 The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0, etc.)
83 if -mregnames is used. Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.) can be
84 used any time. PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been added.
86 Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
88 PowerPC ELF support added.
90 m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
92 i960 Hx/Jx support added.
94 i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
96 SCO ELF support added. For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
97 default is to build COFF-only support. To get a set of tools that generate ELF
98 (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
99 target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
101 m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
105 Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
107 Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode. Use -M or --mri to select MRI
108 mode. The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the ``.mri
109 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
111 Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
113 Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
115 Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
119 Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
121 ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
123 Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
126 Support for the control registers in the 68060.
128 Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
129 provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
130 features not available in the native assembler. If the native assembler is
131 used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
133 Usage message is available with "--help".
135 The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included. (Actually, it was in 2.3
136 also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
138 Weak symbol support for a.out.
140 A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
141 Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
143 Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
146 Improved Alpha support. Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
147 Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
149 Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
153 Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
155 RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
157 VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
158 based on mail received from various people. The `-h#' option should work again
161 HP-PA work, by Jeff Law. Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
162 with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6. As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
163 version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3. You can retrieve
164 this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
165 in the "dist" directory.
167 Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
168 tests okay. I haven't put it through extensive testing. (GNU make is
169 currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
171 Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format). The gas support is
172 based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format. I'm afraid the
173 alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
174 work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
178 The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
179 couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
181 Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
182 flexibility in evaluating them in some cases. Some details of relocation
183 handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
184 to make the Alpha port easier.
186 New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times. This is intended
187 to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
188 phases of compilation. (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
189 "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
191 ----------------------------------------------------------------
195 RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
197 Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
198 have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
199 gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
200 impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
203 The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
204 displayed. This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
205 messages about "internal errors".
207 ELF support is falling into place. Support for the 386 should be working.
208 Support for SPARC Solaris is in. HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
210 Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
211 down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant. This permits slightly more
212 complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
214 DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
215 If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
216 sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section. The format of the .stab
217 section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
218 its string table. For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
219 to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
220 that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
222 LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported. SPARC LynxOS
223 support is in progress.
225 ----------------------------------------------------------------
229 Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
230 incorporated, but not well tested yet.
232 Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
235 Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
236 suggested by Ronald Cole.
238 HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah. This
239 includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
240 2.x. Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
242 HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
244 Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
246 Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
248 Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
250 ----------------------------------------------------------------
256 Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
258 ----------------------------------------------------------------
262 BFD merge is partly done. Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
263 "--with-bfd-assembler" option. Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
264 accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it. It's the default only for OS "elf" or
265 "solaris". (ELF isn't really supported yet. It needs work. I've got some
266 code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
269 The 68K opcode table has been split in half. It should now compile under gcc
270 without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
272 A couple data structures have been reduced in size. This should result in
273 saving a little bit of space at runtime.
275 Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in. The OSF
276 code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet. (I can make
277 it available, if anyone wants to try it out.) Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
278 supports a.out format. We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
280 Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
282 VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
285 ----------------------------------------------------------------
289 For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
291 For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
293 For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names. For COFF format, which
294 doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
295 can be distinguished from the register.
297 Last public release was 1.38. Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
298 of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.