Binutils README
Collated by Chris Faylor

New in binutils-2.19.51-1
Refresh from CVS.  Many PE fixes, most notably, --auto-import is now the
default.

New in binutils-20080624-2
Refresh from CVS.  Add a bugfix patch from Alan Modra for a problem
discovered by Yaakov Selkowitz. This corrects a problem with
"nm -C" not removing leading underscores.

The cygwin mailing list discussion is here:
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2008-06/threads.html#00505

New in 20060709-1
Refresh from CVS.

New in 20050813-1:
Refresh from CVS to pick up a fix for ld which caused a section in the Cygwin
DLL to be incorrectly sized.

New in 20050610-1:
Refresh from CVS to pick up a fix for ld which
caused it to keep too many file descriptors open.

Also includes a minor patch to make sure that dlls which use auto-image
base do not tromp on the cygwin DLL.

New in 20050608-1:
Fix problem with noload (usually debug) sections which are actually
loaded into memory by Windows.

New in 20050520-1:
Standard refresh.  Seems to fix a strip SEGV caused by trying to strip
an archive file which contains an archive file.  Also contains a
dlltool patch from Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes to fix problems with
dlltool and CRs in input files.

New in 20041229-1:
Refreshed to grab Danny Smith's change which allows specifying console
mode when building dlls.

New in 20041228-1
Standard refresh.

A notable patch:
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2004-09/msg00232.html

New in 20040725-2
Make --enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc the default again.

New in 20040725-1
Standard refresh.

Adds weak symbols for dlls, courtesy of Aaron W. LaFramboise.
Dwarf2 support is now possible for binutils.  gdb and gcc should
follow soon.

New in 20040302-1
Just a refresh.

Fixes for dllwrap and autoimport.
dlltool now creates temporary files which will not collide with
other simultaneous uses.

New in 20030901-1
Just a refresh.

Notable changes:

Adds the ability to use exports from an executable and the ability to
create a separate file holding debug info.

Fixed dlltool so that the tmp files it creates are unique, allowing
"make -jN" to operate successfully when building import libraries.

libcygwin.a is treated as a "special" library so that globals from this
library are not reexported.

New in 20030307-1:
Just a refresh from sources.redhat.com with one minor change from Chuck Wilson
to make the --enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc the default.

New in 20021117-1:

A refresh from sources.redhat.com.
A notable change is the addition of Egor Duda's --enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc
option which allows almost transparent linking of dll's without the need
of an import file.

New in 20021107-1:

A refresh from sources.redhat.com.

Also, uses 128 bit alignment which is apparently required for Java.

New in 20020826-1:

Just a refresh from sources.redhat.com.

New in 20020706-2:

Fastcall support from Eric Kohl.

New in 20020706-1:

Removed experimental increased default alignment from coff-i386.c.
This caused strange problems running constructors.

New in 20020630-2:

This document is just a place to keep track of various issues
related to the '--enable-auto-import' feature of recent
(20010802 and newer) binutils on cygwin.

Quoting from various mail messages:

From: Charles Wilson
To: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: binutils request
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2002 11:09:20 -0400

Default handling of --enable-auto-import has changed slightly.  In the
earlier cygwin release of binutils, --enable-auto-import was the
default, and ld would issue warnings whenever variables from DLLs were
auto-imported.  Also, in the past if you explicitly specified
"--enable-auto-import", the behavior was the same: auto-import was
activated, and warnings were generated.

In this new release, auto-import is still enabled by default.  Whenever
variables from DLLs are auto-imported, ld issues an info_msg (not a
warning).  However, if you explicitly specify "--enable-auto-import",
then those info_msgs are suppressed.

--Chuck

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From: Ralf Habacker
To: <cygwin-apps@cygwin.com>
Subject: RE: binutils request
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 18:44:25 +0200

   * pe-dll.cc (autofilter_symbolprefixlist): don't export
      reimported functions.
     (make_one): let create only _nm_.. for data symbols


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From: Danny Smith
To: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: binutils request
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 07:02:37 +1000 (EST)

from ld.texinfo

@kindex --exclude-libs
@item --exclude-libs @var{lib},@var{lib},...
Specifies a list of archive libraries from which symbols should not be
automatically
exported. The library names may be delimited by commas or colons.  Specifying
@code{--exclude-libs ALL} excludes symbols in all archive libraries from
automatic export. Symbols explicitly listed in a .def file are still exported,
regardless of this option.

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From: Danny Smith
To: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: binutils request
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 09:06:56 +1000 (EST)

Two other fixes in official sources, from ReactOs group:

Many fixes to windres, specifically to dialog boxes and menus.

The addition of checksums to pe headers.

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Plus, of course various and sundry binutils changes from Nick Clifton and
other binutils maintainers.
