some news

gas/NEWS

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+-*- text -*-
+
+Changes since 2.3:
+
+Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
+
+ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
+
+Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved debugging
+support.
+
+Support for the control registers in the 68060.
+
+Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
+provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
+features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
+used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
+
+Usage message is available with "--help".
+
+Weak symbol support for a.out.
+
+A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
+Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
+
+Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by Paul
+Kranenburg.  This code was oriented towards gas version 1.xx; in updating some
+aspects of it for version 2, I broke it.
+
+Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range now.
+Support for the 21164 has been added.
+
+Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
+
+Changes since 2.2:
+
+Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
+
+RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
+
+VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
+based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work again
+too.
+
+HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
+with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
+version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
+this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
+in the "dist" directory.
+
+Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple simple
+tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
+currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
+
+Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
+based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid the
+alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed; making it
+work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
+
+Irix 5 support.
+
+The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
+couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
+
+Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
+flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
+handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been added,
+to make the Alpha port easier.
+
+New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is intended
+to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in various
+phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them printed out with
+"gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Changes since 2.1:
+
+RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
+
+Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
+have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
+gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
+impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
+reliable.
+
+The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
+displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
+messages about "internal errors".
+
+ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
+Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
+
+Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately boiled
+down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly more
+complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey known.
+
+DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
+If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
+sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
+section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
+its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
+to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
+that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
+
+LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
+support is in progress.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Changes for 2.1:
+
+Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
+incorporated, but not well tested yet.
+
+Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
+with gcc now.
+
+Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
+suggested by Ronald Cole.
+
+HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
+includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
+2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
+
+HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
+
+Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
+
+Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
+
+Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Changes for 2.0:
+
+Mostly bug fixes.
+
+Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Changes for 1.94:
+
+BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
+"--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out format
+accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf" or
+"solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got some
+code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not fully
+merged yet.)
+
+The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
+without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
+
+A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
+saving a little bit of space at runtime.
+
+Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
+code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can make
+it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD 4.4,
+supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's coming.
+
+Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
+
+VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
+Youngdale.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Changes for 1.93.01:
+
+For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
+
+For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
+
+For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
+doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
+can be distinguished from the register.
+
+Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
+of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
+
+
+Local variables:
+fill-column: 79
+End: