binutils 2.8.1.0.27 is released.

[hjl at lucon dot org (H.J. Lu)]

A few x86 gas bugs are fixed. Please give it another try.

Thanks.


-- 
H.J. Lu (hjl@gnu.org)
--
This is the beta release of binutils 2.8.1.0.27 for Linux, which is
based on the binutils 980327 snapshot plus Linux/ARM support.

There was some problem on Linux/alpha. It turned out it was a bug
in the alpha dynamic linker in glibc 2.0.6. The current glibc 2.1
and glibc 2.0.7 should be ok.

This release should work on linux/x86. There are some ELF bug fixes.
But I don't know if it fixes all the bugs reported on linux/sparc,
Linux/MIPS and linux/PPC. I'd like to hear reports on them.

Please report any bugs related to binutils 2.8.1.0.27 to hjl@gnu.org.

Changes from binutils 2.8.1.0.26:

1. For x86, don't emit operand size prefix if there is no ambiguity.
2. Add "xlatb" for x86.

Changes from binutils 2.8.1.0.25:

1. Update from the binutils gas-980327.
2. There are some major x86 assembler changes with operand size suffix.
   Some x86 assembler performence bugs are fixed. The Linux kernel and
   applications may run faster when assembled the new x86 assembler on
   x86. Please double check them on x86. gcc/egcs should be fine. But
   the Linux kernel does have some invalid x86 assembly code. In
   arch/i386/lib/locks.S, there was

	btl     %dl, SYMBOL_NAME(smp_invalidate_needed)

   It is not valid. The register should be either 16-bit or 32-bit.
   8-bit is not allowed. If you have any x86 assembler problem, please
   let me know.

Changes from binutils 2.8.1.0.24:

1. Update from the binutils gas-980325.
2. Change the x86 assembler error from as_bad to as_warn.
3. Fix the address for x86's lgdt/lidt.
4. Add 'S' to ar to disable symbol-table generation. Maybe used by
   glibc build to speed up archive update.

Changes from binutils 2.8.1.0.23:

1. Update from the binutils gas-980320.
2. Fix an x86 assembler bug.
3. Fix a Sparc/ELF bfd bug.

IMPORTANT:
The .plt format that the Alpha was using was not thread safe.  So I 
changed it.  The new format is *not* binary compatible with the old,
thus you must use glibc 2.0.4 to get an ld.so that can understand it.

Note that the new ld.so knows how to deal with the old .plt format, so
old libraries will still work, but they should be relinked eventually
for performance reasons.

The file list:

1. binutils-2.8.1.0.27.tar.gz. Source code.
2. binutils-2.8.1.0.26-2.8.1.0.27.diff.gz. Patch against the previous
   beta source code.
3. binutils-2.8.1.0.27.bin.tar.gz. Precompiled Linux/x86 binaries for
   libc 5.
4. binutils-2.8.1.0.27-glibc.bin.tar.gz. Precompiled Linux/x86 binaries
   for libc 6 (glibc 2.0.5c or above).

The primary ftp sites for the compiler/C library are tsx-11.mit.edu
under pub/linux/packages/GCC and sunsite.unc.edu under pub/Linux/GCC.
The beta directory is in private/tofu under the GCC directory.
 
Most of my stuff can also be found at


   ftp://ftp.yggdrasil.com/private/hjl

To install the binary package, please follow the procedure very closely.
Please backup/save all the files you are instructed to delete and you
should do
 
	gzip -dc binutils-2.8.1.0.27.bin.tar.gz | tar tvvf -
 
or
	gzip -dc binutils-2.8.1.0.27-glibc.bin.tar.gz | tar tvvf -
 
to see what is in there.
 
Please do back up before you remove things.

To install for libc 5, PLEASE DO
 
1. su root
2. cd /
3. rm -f /usr/bin/encaps /usr/bin/nm
4. gzip -dc binutils-2.8.1.0.27.bin.tar.gz | tar xvvf -
5. ldconfig
 
To install for libc 6 (glibc 2.0.5c or above), PLEASE DO
 
1. su root
2. cd /
3. rm -f /usr/bin/encaps /usr/bin/nm
4. gzip -dc binutils-2.8.1.0.27-glibc.bin.tar.gz | tar xvvf -
5. ldconfig
 
Now you have the new gas/binutils under /usr/bin and
/usr/ix86-linuxaout/bin. You have to use
 
/usr/ix86-linuxaout/bin/as
 
and
 
/usr/ix86-linuxaout/bin/ld -m i386linux
 
if you want to use a.out as and ld directly.
 
I have changed the target names for Linux/x86 and Linux/x86 (a.out)
to ix86-linux and ix86-linuxaout respectively. The precompiled
binaries are installed under /usr/ix86-linux and /usr/ix86-linuxaout.
You should make appropriate symbolic links if you have a different
name for the Linux/x86 target, like i586-unknown-linux.

If you have an old linux library in the a.out format and you cannot
obtain the newer version in the ELF format for whatever reason, you
can try "objcopy --remove-leading-char" on the a.out library and see
if it can link with your code in ELF. For Sybase client libraries,
I did

# cd sybase/lib
# for f in *.a
do
  objcopy --remove-leading-char $f
done

It seems to compile/link fine with libc 5.4.2x. But I don't know
if it really works or not. The resulting binaries should work
if the libc ABI used by the old library is unchanged in the new
libc.

According to Bruce Milner <Bruce.Milner@genetics.utah.edu>:

Just a quick note about your example using objcopy for
sybase. The sybase a.out libraries "are" dependent on a changed
feature of the libc ABI.
 
The ctype macros changed to a byte order independent format
(little endian). In order to use the sybase libraries, one needs to
rename the the ctype table variables in the sybase library files
and link in an old version of the libc's "C-ctype.o ctype-info.o"
files.

thain@sunquest.sunquest.com put a ELF'ized version of these
libraries on 

ftp://mudshark.sunquest.com/pub/ctlib-linux-elf


Thanks.


H.J. Lu
hjl@gnu.org
03/29/98