Binutils NEWS entries

Here are the additions to the NEWS files for the binutils releases. These releases can be downloaded via ftp from sourceware or from one of the many helpful mirror sites. Sourceware is often maxed out for ftp - the mirror sites are all good bets if you're having trouble getting access.

release 2.11

binutils/NEWS

• Support for OpenRISC.
• New command line switch to objcopy -B (or --binary-architecture) which sets the archiceture of the output file to the given argument. This option only makes sense, if the input target is binary. Otherwise it is ignored.
• Support for PDP-11.
• Add support for ARM v5t and v5te architectures and Intel's XScale ARM extenstions.
• Add --srec-len and --srec-forceS3 command line switch to objcopy.
• Support for the MIPS32.
• Support for the i860.
• Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).

gas/NEWS

• x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
• Support for AMD x86-64 architecture.
• Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
• Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
• Support for IA-64.
• Support for i860.
• Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
• x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
• x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and translating various deprecated floating point instructions.

ld/NEWS

• Support for AMD x86-64 architecture.
• Support added for eliminating duplicate DWARF2 debug information by having the compiler generate the information in sections called .gnu.linkonce.wi.XXXX where XXXX is a checksum for the contents. The linker then merges these sections together into the normal .debug_info section.
• The native ELF linker now searches the directories in DT_RUNPATH or DT_RPATH of a shared library for shared libraries needed by it.
• TI C54x support.
• Added command line switch --section-start to set the start address of any specified section.
• Added ability to emit full relocation information in linked executables, enabled by --emit-relocs. Some post-linkage optimization tools need this information in order to be able to correctly identify and perform symbol relative addressing in the event of changes in section contents (instructions being added or deleted, extending data sections, etc.)
• Support for i860, (preliminary, alpha quality).
• Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).

release 2.10

binutils/NEWS

• New command line switch to objdump, --file-start-context which shows the entire file contents up to the source line first encountered for a given file.
• New command line switch to objdump, -M (or --disassembler-options) which takes a parameter which can then be interpreted on a per-target basis by the disassembler. Used by ARM targets to select register name sets, ISA, APCS or raw verions.
• objdump support for -mi386:intel which causes disassembly to be displayed with intel syntax.
• New program: readelf. This displays the contents of ELF format files, regardless of target machine.
• objcopy now takes --change-section-lma, --change-section-vma, and --change-section-address options. The old --adjust-section-vma option is equivalent to --change-section-address. The other --adjust-* options are now renamed to --change-*, although --adjust-* continues to work.
• objcopy has a --redefine-sym option that lets you rename symbols.
• objcopy now takes a -j/--only-section option to copy only the specified sections.
• dlltool now supports the IMPORTS command.
• dlltool now takes --export-all-symbols, --no-export-all-symbols, --exclude-symbols, and --no-default-excludes options.

gas/NEWS

• Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate operand when altering the flags field.
• Support for ATMEL AVR.
• Support for IBM 370 ELF. Somewhat experimental.
• Support for numbers with suffixes.
• Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
• Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
• New .elseif pseudo-op added.
• New --fatal-warnings option.
• picoJava architecture support added.
• Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
• A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386 assembly programs with intel syntax.
• New pseudo-ops .func, .endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
• Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
• Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
• Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386. This change will produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions of gas accepted. If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
• Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
• Mitsubishi D30V support added.
• Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
• i960 ELF support added.
• ARM ELF support added.

ld/NEWS

• Added garbage collection of unused sections, enabled by --gc-sections. It does require a bit of backend support; currently implemented are ppc-elf, mips-elf, and mn10300-elf. Others will ignore the option.
• Added SORT to the linker script language to permit sorting sections by file name or section name.
• Added EXTERN to the linker script language as an equivalent to the -u command-line option.
• Added ASSERT to the linker script language.
• Added EXCLUDE_FILE to the linker script language for further control over wildcard file names.
• Added -O option to optimize linker output (as of this writing, this only affects ELF shared library generation).
• The -e option now accepts a number as well as a symbol name.
• Added --no-undefined option to disallow undefined symbols when creating a shared library.
• The linker now issues a warning, not an error, for an undefined symbol when using -Bsymbolic; use the new --no-undefined option to get the old behaviour.
• Added --demangle and --no-demangle options.

Return to the binutils home page.