NEWS: Document the major changes in 5.00

Signed-off-by: Matt Fleming <matt.fleming@intel.com>

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index c8022c6..65e403f 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -2,6 +2,30 @@ Starting with 1.47, changes marked with SYSLINUX, PXELINUX, ISOLINUX
 or EXTLINUX apply to that specific program only; other changes apply
 to all derivatives.
 
+Changes in 5.00:
+       * com32: Switched from the COM32 object format to ELF as it is
+         a much more powerful format that allows undefined symbols to
+         be resolved at runtime and dynamic loading of module
+         dependencies, which means modules now become shared object
+         files instead of statically linked binaries - reducing both
+         disk space and runtime memory consumption.
+       * core: Split non-core functionality into ldlinux.c32, which
+         is an ELF module loaded by the core that contains everything
+         the core doesn't require to boot the system, e.g. config
+         parser, command-line interface, etc.
+       * Replaced __intcall() calls with direct function calls now
+         that we can resolve undefined symbols at runtime, thanks to
+         the ELF object support. Now that we no longer need to go
+         through the 16-bit interrupt mechanism we can make full use
+         of the 32-bit execution environment. This change required
+         reimplementing lots of the 16-bit assembly code from core/
+         in C.
+       * com32: __com32.cs_bounce is gone now we always run in a
+         32-bit environment once we execute ldlinux.c32.
+       * ldlinux: A new "PATH" directive was added to the ldlinux.c32
+         config parser that specifies a colon-separated list of
+         directories to search when attempting to load modules.
+
 Changes in 4.06:
        * Support for NTFS, by Paulo Alcantara.
        * EXTLINUX: more robust device detection, allow user to override.