19990502 sourceware importbinu_ss_19990502

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+-*- text -*-
+
+Changes in version 2.10:
+
+* 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 -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 --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: