binutils 2.8 now available

[Ian Lance Taylor]

GNU binutils 2.8 is now available.

The GNU binutils include the GNU assembler (gas), the GNU linker,
gprof, and various binary utilities.

==================================================

This release includes many bug fixes since the last release. It also
includes the following new features (from the NEWS files):

GNU assembler (gas):
--------------------

BeOS support added.

MIPS16 support added.

Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).

Alpha/VMS support added.

m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
--disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.

The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
maximum number of bytes to skip. If doing the alignment would require skipping
more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at all.

The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.

The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false conditionals
in listings.

Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if the
symbol is already defined.

GNU linker:
-----------

* 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.

GNU binutils:
-------------

* The objdump disassembly format has been changed, and hopefully improved. Use
the new --prefix-addresses option to get the old format. There are also new
--disassemble-zeroes and --no-show-raw-insn options which affect disassembler
output.

* Formats may now be specified as configuration triplets. For example,
objdump -b i386-pc-linux. The triplets are not passed through config.sub,
so they must be in canonical form.

* Added new addr2line program. This uses the debugging information to convert
an address into a file name and line number within a program.

* Added --change-leading-char argument to objcopy.

* Added --weaken argument to objcopy.

* objdump --dynamic-reloc now works on ELF executables and shared libraries.

* Added --adjust-vma option to objdump.

* Added -C/--demangle option to objdump.

* Added -p/--preserve-dates option to strip and objcopy.

==================================================

Many people have contributed to this release with bug reports and
patches. This release would not be as good as it is without their
generous work.

People who deserve particular mention for contributions to this
release include J.T. Conklin, Doug Evans, Fred Fish, Ronald
F. Guilmette, Niklas Hallqvist, Richard Henderson, Manfred Hollstein,
Martin M. Hunt, Klaus Kaempf, Ulrich Lauther, Jeffrey A Law, Robert
Lipe, Jamie Lokier, H.J. Lu, Mike Meissner, Alan Modra, David
Mosberger-Tang, Philippe De Muyter, Dawn Perchik, Ken Raeburn, Andreas
Schwab, Stan Shebs, Joel Sherrill, James G. Smith, Jim Wilson, and
Eric Youngdale. Many other people at Cygnus Solutions were involved
with testing the code and providing development platforms.

I'm sure I've accidentally omitted many people who deserve mention: my
apologies.

==================================================

The binutils-2.8.tar.gz file is 5133892 bytes long.

sum:
33045 5014

md5sum:
f22b8038264b81d408ddcf1ed5ebdedf binutils-2.8.tar.gz

The tar file is available from any GNU archive site.

==================================================

Bug reports, complaints and compliments about the binutils release
should be sent to bug-gn...@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Ian Lance Taylor
i...@cygnus.com

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