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-*- text -*-
* readelf can now display address ranges from .debug_range sections. This
happens automatically when a DW_AT_range attribute is encountered. The
command line switch --debug-dump=Ranges (or -wR) can also be used to display
the contents of the .debug_range section.
* nm and objdump now have a switch "--special-syms" to enable the displaying of
symbols which the target considers to be special. By default these symbols
are no longer displayed. Currently the only special symbols are the Mapping
symbols used by the ARM port to mark transitions between text and data and
between ARM and THUMB code.
* dlltool has a switch "--ext-prefix-alias <prefix>" to generate additional
import and export symbols with <preifx> prepended to them.
Changes in 2.15:
* objcopy and strip can now take wildcard patterns in symbol names specified on
the command line provided that the --wildcard switch is used to enable them.
* readelf can now parse archives.
* objdump now accepts --debugging-tags to print the debug information in a
format compatible with ctags tool.
* objcopy and strip now accept --only-keep-debug to create a file containing
those sections that would be stripped out by --strip-debug. The idea is that
this can be used in conjunction with the --add-gnu-debuglink switch to create
a two part program distribution - one a stripped executable and the other the
debugging info.
* objcopy now accepts --add-gnu-debuglink=<file> to insert a .gnu_debuglink
section into a (presumably stripped) executable. This allows the debug
information for the file to be held in a separate file.
* BFD marks the sections .comment and .note as 'n' in the BSD/POSIX
single-character representation. This can be checked by running nm
with the -a switch.
Changes in 2.14:
* Added --info switch to objcopy and strip.
* Support for Vitesse IQ2000 added by Red Hat.
* Added 'S' encoding to strings to allow the display of 8-bit characters.
* Added --prefix-symbols=<text>, --prefix-sections=<text> and
--prefix-alloc-sections=<text> to objcopy.
* readelf can handle the extensions to the DWARF2 spec used by the Unified
Parallel C compiler.
* BFD no longer declares a "boolean" type, to avoid clashes with other
headers that declare the same. Users of BFD should replace boolean,
false and true, with int, 0 and 1, or define their own boolean type.
* Support for IP2K 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 2.12:
* Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
* size: Add --totals to display summary of sizes (Berkeley format only).
* readelf: Add --wide option to not break section header or segment listing
lines to fit into 80 columns.
* strings: Add --encoding to display wide character strings. By Markus Kuhn.
* objcopy: Add --rename-section to change section names.
* readelf: Support added for DWARF 2.1 extensions. Support added for
displaying the contents of .debug.macinfo sections.
* New command line switches added to objcopy to allow symbols to be kept as
global symbols, and also to specify files containing lists of such symbols.
by Honda Hiroki.
* Support for OpenRISC by Johan Rydberg.
* New command line switch to objcopy --alt-machine-code which creates a binary
with an alternate machine code if one is defined in the architecture
description. Only supported for ELF targets. By Alexandre Oliva.
* New command line switch to objcopy -B (or --binary-architecture) which sets
the architecture of the output file to the given argument. This option only
makes sense, if the input target is binary. Otherwise it is ignored.
By Stefan Geuken.
* Support for PDP-11 by Lars Brinkhoff.
Changes in binutils 2.11:
* 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.
By Luciano Gemme.
* Support for the MIPS32, by Anders Norlander.
* Support for the i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
* Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
Changes in binutils 2.10:
* Support for 64-bit ELF on HPPA.
* 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.
Changes in binutils 2.9:
* Added windres program, which can be used to manipulate resources in WIN32
files as used on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
* The objcopy --gap-fill and --pad-to options operate on the LMA rather than
the VMA of the sections.
* Added S modifier to ar to not build a symbol table.
Changes in binutils 2.8:
* 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.
Changes in binutils 2.7:
* Added --enable-shared and --enable-commonbfdlib options to configure.
* Added --debugging argument to objdump and objcopy.
* Added --defined-only argument to nm.
* Added --remove-leading-char argument to objcopy.
* The objdump --line-numbers option is now meaningful with --reloc.
* Added --line-numbers option to nm.
* Added --endian/-EB/-EL option to objdump.
* Added support for Alpha OpenVMS/AXP.
Changes in binutils 2.6:
* Added -N/--strip-symbol and -K/--keep-symbol arguments to strip and objcopy.
* Added several arguments to objcopy to provide some control over how the new
file is laid out in memory. Also added binary output format to BFD to permit
generating plain binary files.
* Added --start-address and --stop-address options to objdump.
* ar and ranlib now work on AIX. The tools are now built by default on AIX.
Changes in binutils 2.5:
* Changed objdump -dr to dump the relocs interspersed with the assembly
listing, for a more useful listing of relocatable files.
* Changed objdump -d/--disassemble to only disassemble SEC_CODE sections.
Added -D/--disassemble-all option to disassemble all sections.
* Added --size-sort option to nm.
* strip and objcopy should now be able to handle dynamically linked ELF
executables.
Changes in binutils 2.4:
* Support for HP-PA (by Jeff Law), i386 Mach (by David Mackenzie), RS/6000 and
PowerPC (except ar and ranlib; by Ian Taylor).
* Support for Irix 5.
* Programs `strip' and `objcopy' will not attempt to write dynamically linked
ELF output files, since BFD currently can't create them properly.
Changes in binutils 2.3:
* A new --stabs argument has been added to objdump to dump stabs sections in
ELF and COFF files.
* A new program, nlmconv, has been added. It can convert object files into
Novell NetWare Loadable Modules.
* The strings program has been added.
Changes in binutils 2.2:
* The 'copy' program has been renamed to 'objcopy', for consistency with
'objdump', and because 'copy' might more plausibly be used as a synonym for
'cp'.
* The new stand-alone program c++filt is a filter that converts encoded
(mangled) C++ assembly-level identifiers to user-level names. (Note: This
may get moved to the gcc distribution.)
* nm -o on an archive now prefixes each line with the archive name, matching
the output from BSD nm.
* ar (and ld) can now read (but not write) BSD4.4-style archives.
* New support for H8500, Z8000, and the Hitach SH.
* Dis-assembler interface changed to allow sharing with gdb.
* There is new Elf code, but it is not yet ready for general use.
* There is the beginnings of a test suite.
Changes in binutils 2.1:
* There is now support for writing ECOFF files, so ld and the other utilities
should work on Risc/Ultrix and Irix. Please let us know how well this works.
* ar now automatically creates a symbol table (a __.SYMDEF member, in the BSD
version), if there are any object files in the archive. So running ranlib is
now redundant (unless the non-standard q command is used). This is required
for Posix.2 conformance.
* The archive-reading code now reads both BSD-style and SYSV-style archives
independently of the selected target format. This is to encourage people to
switch to SYSV-format, which has a number of advantages.
* The strip and copy programs now have options to remove debug-symbols only
and/or local symbols only. They now also support long options.
Local variables:
fill-column: 79
End:
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