| -*- text -*- | |
| * Added support for Xtensa architecture. | |
| * Added --with-sysroot configure switch to specify a target system root, for | |
| linking against a target filesystem image. | |
| * Added --accept-unknown-linker-format to restore old linker behaviour (pre | |
| 2.14) of silently accepting and linking in any files in an unknown binary | |
| file format. | |
| * Added --no-omagic to undo the effects of the -N option. | |
| * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of | |
| DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal. | |
| * Added --with-lib-path configure switch to specify default value for | |
| LIB_PATH. | |
| * ARM port to QNX operating system added by Graeme Peterson. | |
| * IP2K support added by Denis Chertykov. | |
| Changes in 2.13: | |
| * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400 | |
| and FR500 included. | |
| Changes in version 2.13: | |
| * DEC VAX ELF support, by Matt Thomas. | |
| Changes in version 2.12: | |
| * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson. | |
| * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores. | |
| * Support for -z nocopyreloc in the x86 ELF linker, which disables | |
| production of copy relocs. Warning: using this option may result in | |
| non-sharable applications. | |
| * Support for -z combreloc in the ELF linker, which puts dynamic | |
| relocations against the same symbol together, so that dynamic linker | |
| can use an one-entry symbol lookup cache. | |
| * Support for ELF SHF_MERGE section merging, by Jakub Jelinek. | |
| Changes in version 2.11: | |
| * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs. | |
| * 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, by Timothy Wall. | |
| * 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, by Jason Eckhardt (preliminary, alpha quality). | |
| * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series). | |
| * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff. | |
| Changes in version 2.10: | |
| * Added AT> to the linker script language to allow load-time allocation of | |
| sections into regions. | |
| * Added garbage collection of unused sections, enabled by --gc-sections. | |
| It does require a bit of backend support; currently implemented are | |
| arm-elf, avr-elf, d10v-elf, fr30-elf, i386-elf, m32r-elf, m68k-elf, | |
| mcore-elf, mips-elf, mn10300-elf, ppc-elf, sh-elf, sparc-elf, and v850-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. | |
| Changes in version 2.9: | |
| * Added SQUAD to the linker script language. | |
| * New option --no-warn-mismatch. | |
| * The MEMORY command now parses the attributes to determine where sections that | |
| are not placed in a specific memory region are placed. | |
| Changes in version 2.8: | |
| * Linker scripts may now contain shell wildcard characters for file and section | |
| names. | |
| * The linker now supports symbol versions in ELF. | |
| * The NOCROSSREFS command was added to the linker script language. | |
| * The LOADADDR expression was added to the linker script language. | |
| * MAX and MIN functions were added to the linker script language. | |
| * The OVERLAY construct was added to the linker script language. | |
| * New option --warn-section-align to warn when the address of an output section | |
| changes due to alignment of an input section. | |
| * New options --filter/-F and --auxiliary/-f. | |
| Changes in version 2.7: | |
| * New option --cref to print out a cross reference table. | |
| * New option --wrap SYMBOL. | |
| * New option --no-whole-archive, to turn off the effect of --whole-archive. | |
| * Input sections assigned to the output section /DISCARD/ in the linker script | |
| are not included in the output file. | |
| * The SunOS and ELF linkers now merge stabs debugging information which uses | |
| the N_BINCL and N_EINCL stab types. This reduces the amount of debugging | |
| information generated. | |
| Changes in version 2.6: | |
| * When an ELF section name is representable as a C identifier (this is not true | |
| of most ELF section names), the linker will automatically define symbols | |
| __start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the section name, at the | |
| beginning and the end of the section. This is used by glibc. | |
| * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning is encountered in an input file, the | |
| contents of the section are displayed as an error message, and the section is | |
| not copied into the output file. This is used by glibc. | |
| * When an ELF section named .gnu.warning.SYMBOL is encountered in an input | |
| file, and the symbol SYMBOL is referenced by some object file, the contents of | |
| the section are displayed as an error message. The section is not copied into | |
| the output file, unless doing a relocateable or shared link. This is used by | |
| glibc. | |
| * New options -split-by-reloc and -split-by-file. | |
| * The linker now supports linking PIC compiled code on SPARC SunOS. It can | |
| also create SPARC SunOS shared libraries, and, like the native SunOS linker, | |
| will do so whenever there is an undefined symbol in the link and neither the -e | |
| nor the -r option was used. | |
| * The -rpath option may be used on SunOS to set the list of directories to be | |
| searched at run time. This overrides the default of building the list from the | |
| -L options. | |
| * The COFF linker now combines debugging information for structs, unions, and | |
| enums, so that even if the same type is defined in multiple input files it will | |
| only be defined once in the output file. The --traditional-format switch will | |
| prevent this optimization. | |
| Changes in version 2.5: | |
| * The linker now supports linking against SunOS shared libraries. It still can | |
| not link SunOS PIC (Position Independent Code) files, so it can not be used to | |
| generate shared libaries. | |
| * The linker now supports linking against ELF shared libraries for the i386 | |
| (UnixWare) and SPARC (Solaris). It can also link ELF PIC files, and can be | |
| used to generate shared libraries. Shared library generation is not well | |
| tested; please report any problems encountered. The linker is now enabled for | |
| Solaris again. | |
| * Eric Youngdale has contributed Linux support code, including linking against | |
| Linux a.out shared libraries. The linker produces Linux QMAGIC binaries. | |
| * The ELF backend has been converted to the new linker code. To use the new | |
| ELF linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So far, | |
| this function has been written for i386 (UnixWare), SPARC (Solaris) MIPS (Irix | |
| 5), and HPPA ELF targets. | |
| * The -( (--start-group) and -) (--end-group) options have been added to | |
| support searching a group of archives as though they were a single archive. | |
| This can also be used in a linker script, as GROUP ( files ). | |
| * When a file is named on the command line, and the linker does not recognize | |
| it as an object file, the linker will now treat the file as a linker script | |
| file. A linker script named in this way augments, but does not replace, the | |
| default linker script. | |
| * The -warn-once option was added. It causes the linker to only warn once per | |
| undefined symbol, rather than once per reference. | |
| * The COFF backend has been converted to the new linker code. As with ELF, to | |
| use the new linker, each particular target requires a relocation function. So | |
| far, this function has been written for the i386, m68k, a29k and SH targets. | |
| * The -V flag was made a synonym for -v, for SVR4 compatibility. The old -V | |
| behaviour is available via --verbose. | |
| Changes in version 2.4: | |
| * New linker code, by Steve Chamberlain and Ian Taylor. For a.out and ecoff | |
| formats (so far), this should result in considerable savings in time | |
| and memory used while linking; slightly poorer performance than | |
| before for formats not converted yet. | |
| * Command-line parsing is no longer done with flex. This means | |
| oddball characters in filenames won't get treated as argument | |
| separators. | |
| * HP-PA ELF support, by Jeff Law. (No SOM support yet.) | |
| * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie. | |
| * Irix 4 shared libraries are now supported (Irix 5 uses ELF, and ELF shared | |
| libraries are not yet supported). | |
| * COFF shared libraries (as on SCO) should work as well. | |
| * The linker is disabled for Solaris. (Actually, it was in 2.3 also, I just | |
| forgot to note it.) Some of their C library routines don't work when | |
| statically linked, and the GNU linker doesn't support dynamic linking yet. | |
| Changes in version 2.3: | |
| * Weak symbols are now supported. | |
| * ELF support has been added. The linker has been bootstrapped on | |
| UnixWare and Solaris. | |
| * Alpha OSF/1 support has been added (non dynamic linking only). | |
| Changes in version 2.2: | |
| * The `bfd' library has been updated to reduce a.out-format string | |
| table size. The effect of this is that files linked from many input | |
| files with duplicate symbols (`-g' debugging records, or identical | |
| static symbols) should be much smaller. | |
| Changes in version 2.1: | |
| * The ld -ySYMBOL flag (to trace references to SYMBOL) is now implemented. | |
| * There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the | |
| other utilities should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix. | |
| Local variables: | |
| fill-column: 79 | |
| End: |