README revision 77298
1 README for GAS 2 3A number of things have changed since version 1 and the wonderful world of gas 4looks very different. There's still a lot of irrelevant garbage lying around 5that will be cleaned up in time. Documentation is scarce, as are logs of the 6changes made since the last gas release. My apologies, and I'll try to get 7something useful. 8 9Unpacking and Installation - Summary 10==================================== 11 12See ../binutils/README. 13 14To build just the assembler, make the target all-gas. 15 16Documentation 17============= 18 19The GAS release includes texinfo source for its manual, which can be processed 20into `info' or `dvi' forms. 21 22The DVI form is suitable for printing or displaying; the commands for doing 23this vary from system to system. On many systems, `lpr -d' will print a DVI 24file. On others, you may need to run a program such as `dvips' to convert the 25DVI file into a form your system can print. 26 27If you wish to build the DVI file, you will need to have TeX installed on your 28system. You can rebuild it by typing: 29 30 cd gas/doc 31 make as.dvi 32 33The Info form is viewable with the GNU Emacs `info' subsystem, or the 34standalone `info' program, available as part of the GNU Texinfo distribution. 35To build the info files, you will need the `makeinfo' program. Type: 36 37 cd gas/doc 38 make info 39 40Specifying names for hosts and targets 41====================================== 42 43 The specifications used for hosts and targets in the `configure' 44script are based on a three-part naming scheme, but some short 45predefined aliases are also supported. The full naming scheme encodes 46three pieces of information in the following pattern: 47 48 ARCHITECTURE-VENDOR-OS 49 50 For example, you can use the alias `sun4' as a HOST argument or in a 51`--target=TARGET' option. The equivalent full name is 52`sparc-sun-sunos4'. 53 54 The `configure' script accompanying GAS does not provide any query 55facility to list all supported host and target names or aliases. 56`configure' calls the Bourne shell script `config.sub' to map 57abbreviations to full names; you can read the script, if you wish, or 58you can use it to test your guesses on abbreviations--for example: 59 60 % sh config.sub sun4 61 sparc-sun-sunos411 62 % sh config.sub sun3 63 m68k-sun-sunos411 64 % sh config.sub decstation 65 mips-dec-ultrix42 66 % sh config.sub hp300bsd 67 m68k-hp-bsd 68 % sh config.sub i386v 69 i386-unknown-sysv 70 % sh config.sub i786v 71 Invalid configuration `i786v': machine `i786v' not recognized 72 73 74`configure' options 75=================== 76 77 Here is a summary of the `configure' options and arguments that are 78most often useful for building GAS. `configure' also has several other 79options not listed here. 80 81 configure [--help] 82 [--prefix=DIR] 83 [--srcdir=PATH] 84 [--host=HOST] 85 [--target=TARGET] 86 [--with-OPTION] 87 [--enable-OPTION] 88 89You may introduce options with a single `-' rather than `--' if you 90prefer; but you may abbreviate option names if you use `--'. 91 92`--help' 93 Print a summary of the options to `configure', and exit. 94 95`-prefix=DIR' 96 Configure the source to install programs and files under directory 97 `DIR'. 98 99`--srcdir=PATH' 100 Look for the package's source code in directory DIR. Usually 101 `configure' can determine that directory automatically. 102 103`--host=HOST' 104 Configure GAS to run on the specified HOST. Normally the 105 configure script can figure this out automatically. 106 107 There is no convenient way to generate a list of all available 108 hosts. 109 110`--target=TARGET' 111 Configure GAS for cross-assembling programs for the specified 112 TARGET. Without this option, GAS is configured to assemble .o files 113 that run on the same machine (HOST) as GAS itself. 114 115 There is no convenient way to generate a list of all available 116 targets. 117 118`--enable-OPTION' 119 These flags tell the program or library being configured to 120 configure itself differently from the default for the specified 121 host/target combination. See below for a list of `--enable' 122 options recognized in the gas distribution. 123 124`configure' accepts other options, for compatibility with configuring 125other GNU tools recursively; but these are the only options that affect 126GAS or its supporting libraries. 127 128The `--enable' options recognized by software in the gas distribution are: 129 130`--enable-targets=...' 131 This causes one or more specified configurations to be added to those for 132 which BFD support is compiled. Currently gas cannot use any format other 133 than its compiled-in default, so this option is not very useful. 134 135`--enable-bfd-assembler' 136 This causes the assembler to use the new code being merged into it to use 137 BFD data structures internally, and use BFD for writing object files. 138 For most targets, this isn't supported yet. For most targets where it has 139 been done, it's already the default. So generally you won't need to use 140 this option. 141 142Supported platforms 143=================== 144 145At this point I believe gas to be ansi only code for most target cpu's. That 146is, there should be relatively few, if any host system dependencies. So 147porting (as a cross-assembler) to hosts not yet supported should be fairly 148easy. Porting to a new target shouldn't be too tough if it's a variant of one 149already supported. 150 151Native assembling should work on: 152 153 sun3 154 sun4 155 386bsd 156 bsd/386 157 delta (m68k-sysv from Motorola) 158 delta88 (m88k-sysv from Motorola) 159 GNU/linux 160 m68k hpux 8.0 (hpux 7.0 may be a problem) 161 vax bsd, ultrix, vms 162 hp9000s300 163 decstation 164 irix 4 165 irix 5 166 miniframe (m68k-sysv from Convergent Technologies) 167 i386-aix (ps/2) 168 hppa (hpux 4.3bsd, osf1) 169 AIX 170 unixware 171 sco 3.2v4.2 172 sco openserver 5.0 (a.k.a. 3.2v5.0 ) 173 sparc solaris 174 ns32k (netbsd, lites) 175 176I believe that gas as a cross-assembler can currently be targetted for 177most of the above hosts, plus 178 179 decstation-bsd (a.out format, to be used in BSD 4.4) 180 ebmon29k 181 go32 (DOS on i386, with DJGPP -- old a.out version) 182 h8/300, h8/500 (Hitachi) 183 i386-aix (ps/2) 184 i960-coff 185 mips ecoff (decstation-ultrix, iris, mips magnum, mips-idt-ecoff) 186 Mitsubishi d10v and d30v 187 nindy960 188 powerpc EABI 189 SH (Hitachi) 190 sco386 191 TI tic30 and tic80 192 vax bsd or ultrix? 193 vms 194 vxworks68k 195 vxworks960 196 z8000 (Zilog) 197 198MIPS ECOFF support has been added, but GAS will not run a C-style 199preprocessor. If you want that, rename your file to have a ".S" suffix, and 200run gcc on it. Or run "gcc -xassembler-with-cpp foo.s". 201 202Support for ELF should work now for sparc, hppa, i386, alpha, m68k, 203MIPS, powerpc. 204 205Support for sequent (ns32k), tahoe, i860, m88k may be suffering from bitrot. 206 207If you try out gas on some host or target not listed above, please let me know 208the results, so I can update the list. 209 210Compiler Support Hacks 211====================== 212 213On a few targets, the assembler has been modified to support a feature 214that is potentially useful when assembling compiler output, but which 215may confuse assembly language programmers. If assembler encounters a 216.word pseudo-op of the form symbol1-symbol2 (the difference of two 217symbols), and the difference of those two symbols will not fit in 16 218bits, the assembler will create a branch around a long jump to 219symbol1, and insert this into the output directly before the next 220label: The .word will (instead of containing garbage, or giving an 221error message) contain (the address of the long jump)-symbol2. This 222allows the assembler to assemble jump tables that jump to locations 223very far away into code that works properly. If the next label is 224more than 32K away from the .word, you lose (silently); RMS claims 225this will never happen. If the -K option is given, you will get a 226warning message when this happens. 227 228 229REPORTING BUGS IN GAS 230===================== 231 232Bugs in gas should be reported to bug-binutils@gnu.org. They may be 233cross-posted to bug-gcc if they affect the use of gas with gcc. They 234should not be reported just to bug-gcc, since I don't read that list, 235and therefore wouldn't see them. 236 237If you report a bug in GAS, please remember to include: 238 239A description of exactly what went wrong, and exactly what should have 240happened instead. 241 242The type of machine (VAX, 68020, etc) and operating system (BSD, SunOS, DYNIX, 243VMS, etc) GAS was running on. 244 245The configuration name(s) given to the "configure" script. The 246"config.status" file should have this information. 247 248The options given to GAS at run time. 249 250The actual input file that caused the problem. 251 252It is silly to report a bug in GAS without including an input file for GAS. 253Don't ask us to generate the file just because you made it from files you 254think we have access to. 255 2561. You might be mistaken. 2572. It might take us a lot of time to install things to regenerate that file. 2583. We might get a different file from the one you got, and might not see any 259 bug. 260 261To save us these delays and uncertainties, always send the input file for the 262program that failed. A smaller test case that demonstrates the problem is of 263course preferable, but be sure it is a complete input file, and that it really 264does demonstrate the problem; but if paring it down would cause large delays 265in filing the bug report, don't bother. 266 267If the input file is very large, and you are on the internet, you may want to 268make it avaliable for anonymous FTP instead of mailing it. If you do, include 269instructions for FTP'ing it in your bug report. 270 271If you expect to be contributing a large number of test cases, it would be 272helpful if you would look at the test suite included in the release (based on 273the Deja Gnu testing framework, available from the usual ftp sites) and write 274test cases to fit into that framework. This is certainly not required. 275