| History of A68k

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Note: This section has been added to the documentation by the TIGCC Team. It was in history.txt before.
Version 2.71.F3w (Kevin Kofler, July 27, 2006)

- Bugfix: Fixed compilation on *BSD and recent versions of OS X.

Version 2.71.F3v (Kevin Kofler, July 31, 2005)

- Bugfix: Don't crash on EQUs doing arithmetic with other EQUs which do arithmetic with undefined symbols, print an error instead.

Version 2.71.F3u (Kevin Kofler, February 2, 2005)

- Bugfix: Fixed compilation with GCC 3.4.

Version 2.71.F3t (Kevin Kofler, January 31, 2005)

- Added: NO_UNOPTIMIZABLE_RELOCS compile-time define (disabled by default) to allow generating AmigaOS-compatible object files again.
- Improved: Branches explicitly coded as .w are now marked unoptimizable.
- Improved: Label references explicitly coded as .l are now marked unoptimizable.
- Bugfix: Emitting relocations for undefined symbols which are already in the symbol table due to the forward branch optimization code now works properly.

Version 2.71.F3s (Kevin Kofler, September 21, 2004)

- Added: Support for the "unoptimizable reloc" flag, keeping the linker from corrupting some instructions when optimizing.
- Improved: All platforms now use the same maximum line length and chunk sizes.
- Improved: The line count limit has been raised from 32767 to INT_MAX.

Version 2.71.F3r (Kevin Kofler, July 19, 2004)

- Bugfix: Fixed label(PC,Rn) addressing when "label" was in a different section (again) (reported by Julien Moutinho).

Version 2.71.F3q (Kevin Kofler, December 30, 2003)

- Bugfix: Fixed label1-label2(an) in all-relocs mode (reported by hwti).
- Added: (In all-relocs mode,) don't emit an address difference when the 2 labels are actually at the same address (or simply the same). This allows to keep optimizing label1-label1(an) into (an).
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug when range-checking branches in all-relocs mode (reported by hwti).
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug when range-checking short branches in all-relocs mode or to a different section (reported by hwti).

Version 2.71.F3p (Kevin Kofler, December 1, 2003)

- Bugfix: Fixed label(PC,Rn) addressing in all-relocs mode or when "label" was in a different section (reported by Matthieu Gallet).

Version 2.71.F3o (Kevin Kofler, October 5, 2003)

- Bugfix: Range checking now works correctly in all-relocs mode. (No more spurious out-of-range errors.)

Version 2.71.F3n (Kevin Kofler, September 28, 2003)

- Bugfix: Local labels now work in all-relocs mode.

Version 2.71.F3m (Kevin Kofler, September 2, 2003)

- Bugfix: PC-relative or indexed references to other sections didn't work.
- Bugfix: x(PC,Dn) or x(PC,An) didn't work in all-relocs mode.

Version 2.71.F3l (Kevin Kofler, July 15, 2003)

- Added: The -u switch now also allows unaligned code, which can be useful when the code will be copied somewhere else anyway.
- Added: Short branches across hunks or object files are now allowed.
- Added: -a (All relocs) switch, which tells A68k to emit all relocs, even PC-relative relocs within a section. It also emits address differences in a special TIGCC-specific format. This will allow more aggressive linker-side optimization.

Version 2.71.F3k (Kevin Kofler, May 17, 2003)

- Bugfix: Increased the forward reference buffer in order to allow multiple labels at the same location, as used in PedroM.
- Added: -u (Unaligned) switch, which disables automatic alignment of DC.W, DC.L, DCB.W, DCB.L, DS.W and DS.L.

Version 2.71.F3i (Kevin Kofler, February 1, 2002)

- Bugfix: Local labels caused a "Pass 1 / Pass 2 phase error" when preceded by an include file which contained labels, but was skipped in pass 2 (such as OS.h).

Version 2.71.F3h (Kevin Kofler, January 23, 2002)

- Bugfix: The TITLE (or TTL) directive did not work at all. It now works as it is supposed to.
- Bugfix: No longer crashes when trying to generate a listing file with cross-references (using the -x switch).

Version 2.71.F3g (Kevin Kofler, January 22, 2002)

- Bugfix: The RORG and PUBLIC directives are now recognized correctly even if the first letter is not capitalized. Thanks to Brandon Sterner for reporting the problem with the RORG directive.

Version 2.71.F3f (Kevin Kofler, January 8, 2002)

- Now also accepts ";", and for the -v switch also "=", as separator in command line arguments (wherever "," is allowed), for compatibility with the "-WA," switch in `tigcc`.

Version 2.71.F3e (Kevin Kofler, August 3, 2001)

- Bugfix: The SUB->LEA optimisation did not change the sign of the immediate value.

Version 2.71.F3d (Kevin Kofler, July 28, 2001)

- Bugfix: The ADD(A)/SUB(A)->LEA and LEA->ADDQ/SUBQ optimizations caused "Pass 1 / Pass 2 phase errors" if an optimization was known to be possible only in pass 2 (i.e. if using forward references to labels in the instruction). A68k will not try to optimize those anymore. Maybe a future version will provide support for this kind of optimization, but it is very difficult to implement.
- Bugfix: A68k did not compile correctly on Visual C++ because I had done a define in an incorrect way.

Version 2.71.F3c (Kevin Kofler, July 20, 2001)

- Applied a few patches submitted by Paul Froissart:
  - A few more adaptations for compiling with Microsoft Visual C++. (Note that I still recommend using GCC for Mingw32.)
  - A new command line switch:
    -v
      Allows to set a variable in the command line (like -d with GCC). The variable will be a SET, not EQU variable. Syntax: "-v<name>[,<value>]" (without spaces, and without the quotes). Note that <value> can only be a NUMBER at the moment. (We might support symbols as values in a future version.) The default value of <value> is 1.
  - Improved the optimization:
    - made optional the optimization which changes MOVEM with a single register to MOVE
    - added an optional optimization which changes ADD(A) and SUB(A) to LEA when applicable
    - added an optional optimization which changes LEA to ADDQ or SUBQ when applicable
    - added a command line switch which allows you to selectively disable some optimizations:
      -r
        Allows to disable specific optimizations:

        -rm | Disable the MOVEM -> MOVE optimization
        -ra | Disable the ADD(A)/SUB(A) -> LEA optimization
        -rl | Disable the LEA -> ADDQ/SUBQ optimization

        You may use more than one -r switch (as in "-rm -ra") or combine them into a single switch (as in "-rma"). You can still use -n to disable ALL optimizations (even those not covered by -r).
  - Added 2 more synonyms:
    - SLO = SCS
    - SHS = SCC
  - The END directive is now optional. If you do not use it, the assembly will automatically end at the end of your source file.
- Also fixed a bug found by Paul Froissart involving the reporting of invalid flags with the SECTION directive. (Not that anyone would use those flags anyway.)
- Adapted and applied a very old patch by John Antonishek, which allows you to define a symbol as XDEF even if it has been declared as XREF before. This is especially useful when using a common include file for globals.
- Moreover, END is not allowed in macros or include files anymore since that was causing a few bugs because A68k simply did not expect anyone to use it there. The quickest remedy is to simply remove the END instruction, since it is now optional anyway.

Version 2.71.F3b (Kevin Kofler, July 12, 2001)

- Bugfix: Now raises an error if an undefined local label is used.
- Bugfix: Branches coded with an explicit length (.W or .L) are not optimized (or flagged as optimizable) anymore.
  (In previous versions, .B or .S was not optimized, but .W or .L could be optimized to a short branch. Now, only branches without an explicit length will be optimized.)
- Bugfix: Quoted strings can now be passed as macro arguments without the need for '<' and '>', even if they contain spaces or separators (',' or ';'). You can still use '<' and '>', for example in order to pass strings like <129,' version'> (which will appear as "ß version" on a TI-89/92/92+).

Version 2.71.F3a (Kevin Kofler, July 9, 2001)

- Win32 port for the TIGCC project, compiled with GCC for Mingw32.
  Even though we recommend Mingw32, A68k should also compile with Microsoft Visual C++, thanks to Paul Froissart. (Please do NOT ask me questions about compiling with Visual C++. I have just put in Paul Froissart's ifdefs.) It also compiles with Cygwin, but since the result is larger than the Mingw32 version, I do not see any benefit in using it.
- Bugfix: My Win32 port of v.2.71.F3 did not support labels or variable names which contain accented characters.
- Bugfix: Now detects all errors in include files. All include files will be treated in pass 2 if an error is detected.
- Bugfix by Paul Froissart: fixed a random crash bug due to a missing initialization
- Bugfix by Julien Muchembled: allow odd displacements for words and longwords if the resulting address might be even
- The Win32 version is now less greedy with the memory, so its limitations are less annoying:
  - lines can now be 256 bytes long (Paul Froissart)
  - filenames (with path) can now be 259 bytes long (the Win32 maximum)
  - the default heap sizes have also been increased (Paul Froissart)
- Added the following synonyms:
  - BLO = BCS
  - BHS = BCC
  - DBLO = DBCS
  - DBHS = DBCC
  - ROLX = ROXL
  - RORX = ROXR

Version 2.71.F3 (David Ellsworth, July 11, 2000)

- Fixed a bug introduced by my modifications that prevented branches from being optimized in Global XRef mode.

Version 2.71.F2 (David Ellsworth, January 22, 1998)

- Made A68k properly differentiate between PC-relative and absolute references to external symbols. Allowed branches to reference external labels in Global XRef (-g parameter) mode.

Version 2.71.F1 (David Ellsworth, January 7, 1998)

- Made changes so that combinations of EQU, XREF, and XDEF directives work better together. These changes were made in order for Fargo II library linking to be easier to do.
- The F1 stands for Fargo patchlevel 1.

Version 2.71 (Charlie Gibbs, April 16, 1991)
The following bugs in version 2.62 have been corrected:

- Enforcer checks were being generated if command-line parameters that took a numeric value had no value or the value was invalid. CalcValue was attempting to look up a label in the symbol table, which having not been allocated yet was causing a null pointer to be dereferenced. (Patrick Quaid)

The following enhancements have been added:

- Function prototyping has been added. All function prototypes are in a new include file, protos.h, which is included by A68kdef.h. Prototyping can be disabled (for compilers which do not support it) by defining the symbol __NOPROTO; in this case old-style function declarations are generated instead.

Version 2.70 (Charlie Gibbs, February 25, 1991)
The following bugs in version 2.62 have been corrected:

- The definition of tempstr in WriteSymTab (24 bytes) was being overrun in some cases, causing A68k to hang. Its length has been increased to MAXLINE. (Paul Gittings, John Antonishek)
- If A7 was in a list of registers in the source operand of a MOVEM instruction, all registers would be moved (i.e. the mask was set to 0xFFFF). (Risto Kaivola)
- Octal or binary values that set bit 31 were being flagged as overflow errors. (Harvey Taylor)
- ORGs were unnecessarily restricted when the -s flag was specified. Everything should be absolute when S-records are generated, and any absolute ORG should be allowed.

The following enhancements have been added:

- A new INCBIN directive has been added. It takes a single operand, a file name whose contents are included as is at the current position in the object code file. (Julian Gold, Colin Fox)
- The opcode TTL is now accepted as a synonym for TITLE.
- The file mode in the creat() call in xopen() has been changed from 1 to 0644; this provides a reasonable file mode when compiled on a Unix system. (Paul Gittings)
- A new command-line keyword (-g) has been added. It causes all undefined symbols to be treated as XREF. (Paul Gittings, Steve Hawtin (who provided the code))
- All initialized fields in opcodes.c have been made global for compatibilty with more compilers. (Steve Hawtin)
- The register list in a MOVEM instruction can now be an immediate operand which specifies the actual mask bits. (Paul Gittings, who provided the code)
- The default value for the -q option has been changed from 10 to 100.

Version 2.62 (Charlie Gibbs, March 19, 1990)
The following enhancements have been added:

- A new command-line keyword (-m) has been added. It must be immediately followed by a number which specifies the offset from the beginning of a small data section to the base register specified in the NEAR directive (defaulting to A4). If this parameter is omitted, the offset defaults to 32768 bytes. This parameter is meaningful only if the NEAR directive is used. (Colin Fox)

Version 2.61 (Charlie Gibbs, January 11, 1990)
The following bugs in version 2.6 have been corrected:

- ORG and RORG at the beginning of the program were being processed incorrectly. (Jukka Jarvinen)
- A branch instruction to its own label, e.g.

      lab	bra	lab

  would cause phase errors; the instruction was being shortened on pass 2 but not on pass 1. (Kevin Hoare)

The following enhancements have been added:

- Labels may begin with '@' if the next character is not numeric (to avoid confusion with octal constants). (Colin Fox)
- Write errors now cause A68k to terminate gracefully with an appropriate error message.

Version 2.6 (Charlie Gibbs, November 2, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.5 have been corrected:

- If a space is left between a file keyword and the file name (e.g. A68k -l foo.lst foo.asm) the source file was scratched. (E. Lenz)
- All code using post-increment addressing in references to toupper() has been reworked to avoid post-increment. Such code does not work correctly if toupper() is a macro. (John K. Antonishek)
- The spelling of the include files A68kdef.h and A68kglb.h has been made correct as to case. This simplifies porting to case-sensitive file systems. (John K. Antonishek)
- If comments immediately follow the operands of an XDEF, XREF, or PUBLIC statement with no intervening white space (as in any of the following statements), A68k would hang:

      	XDEF	foo;comments
      	XREF	bar;comments
      	PUBLIC	blah;comments

  (Bruce Dawson)
- Numeric values (any radix) which do not fit into 32 bits were not being flagged. (E. Lenz)
- DC statements with no operands were not being flagged. (E. Lenz)
- The -f option was suggesting short branches where the displacement would be zero, which is illegal. (E. Lenz)
- Branches outside the current section had the offset set to zero. (Matt Dillon, who provided a fix)
- ADDI, ANDI, CMPI, EORI, ORI, and SUBI instructions whose source operand was not immediate were not being flagged. (E. Lenz)
- Unary NOT of a byte or word immediate operand whose value was negative was being flagged as a size error. (John Aycock)
- All forward branches were rejected when the NEAR directive was active. (Colin Fox)

The following enhancements have been added:

- Single-byte immediate operands (e.g. MOVE.B #-1,(a0)) are now padded with a high-order byte of zero, rather than being sign-extended. (E. Lenz)
- The message "Error in operand format." has been changed to "Addressing mode not allowed here." in places where the latter message is more appropriate.
- If the -q option species a value of zero (or no value is given, defaulting to zero), all console output will be suppressed except for error messages, if any. (Matt Dillon)
- The 128-byte restriction on constant length no longer applies to the entire code generated by a single DCB statement; statements such as

      	DCB.L	64,0

  can now be handled. (Colin Fox)
- Forward branches are now optimized. The occasional instruction may be missed due to ripple effects, but this shouldn't happen frequently. The -f switch will flag any such instructions.
- The -d switch can now be followed by an optional prefix string (with or without a leading !) which specifies which symbols should or should not be included in the symbol table dump. (Lionel Hummel)

Version 2.5 (Charlie Gibbs, June 18, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.42 have been corrected:

- Upon normal termination, A68k occasionally crashed in quit_cleanup by trying to free the relocation table twice. (Jeff Lydiatt and D. McClelland, who worked out a fix)
- MEMF_CHIP and MEMF_FAST bits were being set in the hunk length, rather than in the hunk type. (Richard Man)
- BCHG.L, BCLR.L, BSET.L, and BTST.L were causing phase errors. The test to ignore the .L specification (added in version 1.21) was being skipped in pass 1 by an optimization added in version 2.4. (David Hankins)
- PC-relative offset to a label was calculated as two bytes too great for MOVEM instructions. (Tony Parkhurst)

The following enhancements have been added:

- If the length code on an opcode is not .B, .W, .L, .S, or omitted, it will be flagged as an error.
- JMP.S and JSR.S are flagged as errors. (Jim Butterfield)
- Operands of the form (xxxx).W and (xxxx).L are now supported. This enables absolute short or absolute long addressing to be explicitly specified.
- All optimization can be disabled by the new -n switch. (David Hankins)
- The NEAR directive can now take a single operand, which can be any address register (or equated symbol) except A7. If omitted, the register defaults to A4.
- Instructions of the form BTST Dn,#nn are no longer flagged. This obscure variant is nonetheless legal.

Version 2.42 (Charlie Gibbs, January 10, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.41 have been corrected:

- Small code/data conversion was sometimes taking place when no NEAR directive was active. (Jeff Lydiatt)

Version 2.41 (Charlie Gibbs, January 6, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.4 have been corrected:

- The second operand of LINK instructions was being erroneously flagged.
- If a macro was used before it was defined, it was being expanded during pass 2 but not during pass 1, causing severe phase errors. Attempts to use a macro before it is defined will now be flagged as invalid opcodes. (Colin Fox)

Version 2.4 (Charlie Gibbs, January 4, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.31 have been corrected:

- If comments immediately followed the operands of a DC statement with no intervening white space, A68k would hang. (Ulf Nordquist)
- In the following command:

      a68k -w 15000 myprog.asm

  the space between the -w and 15000 would cause A68k to look for a source file called "15000", and to think that the object file is to be called "myprog.asm". When it can't find "15000" it would display an error message and scratch "myprog.asm". (Jeff Lydiatt)
- If an INCLUDE file that is skipped on pass 2 contains a macro call, subsequent uses of \@ (macro sequence number are subsequently flagged. The macro counter must be bumped along with the line number when skipping an INCLUDE. (Colin Fox, Harvey Taylor)

The following enhancements have been added:

- ORG and RORG are now fully implemented.
- The SET symbols A68k, a68K, and a68k are defined in the same way as A68K, making it effectively case-insensitive. (Colin Fox)
- MOVEM and REG now accept equated register names (EQUR) in register lists. (Bruce Dawson)
- INCLUDE files will now be skipped on pass 2 even when a listing file is requested, if the listing has been turned off by a NOLIST directive before the INCLUDE, and is not turned on until after the end of the INCLUDE file has been reached. (Colin Fox)
- A new switch (-f) causes forward branches (Bcc, BRA, BSR) that could be coded as short branches (Bcc.S etc.) to be flagged. This flag is not considered to be an error.
- A limited small code / small data model has been provided. It is activated by a NEAR directive in the source code, and is de-activated by a FAR directive. External variables must be declared at the beginning of the program, which must consist of only two sections (CODE and DATA or BSS). All forward data references are assumed to be PC-relative if in the CODE section, A4-relative if in the DATA/BSS section, and absolute word if absolute values. Any forward references which cannot be resolved to one of these three in pass 2 will be flagged as errors, as will any attempt to define more than two sections. A4 is assumed to point to the start of the DATA/BSS section plus 32768 bytes, and must be loaded by a MOVE.L instruction using immediate mode unless this instruction is not enclosed within NEAR and FAR directives.
- Miscellaneous optimizations, for speed, including: Most of the object code generator in pass 1 is bypassed. If GetValue gets a single term it takes a short cut. IsOperator now uses a table look-up. Instructions now only searches that portion of the opcode table whose opcodes start with the same letter as the OpCode being searched for.

Version 2.31 (Charlie Gibbs, November 30, 1988)
The following bugs in version 2.3 have been corrected:

- Even though a macro definition was being skipped by IFxx/ENDC, its ENDM directive was still being detected, causing spurious diagnostics. (Harvey Taylor)
- NOP was not being recognized. When moving all directives into the opcode table, NOL and NOLIST were placed after NOP, rather than before. (Colin Fox)
- Symbols defined in the current module and declared as PUBLIC were not being written to the object code file when -d was specified. (Colin Fox)
- Conversion of 0(An) to (An) (implemented in version 1.2) was causing errors in the MOVEP instruction, which requires a displacement even if it is zero. This conversion is now disabled for MOVEP instructions.
- User macros containing invalid opcodes caused A68k to get lost when returning to the outer source file. (Colin Fox)
- Large values of -w (over 6000 or so) would cause a visit from the Guru. The work field in HashIt was overflowing and going negative. Changing it to unsigned corrected the problem. (Colin Fox)
- Although user macros are no longer displayed when -q is a negative number, the calling file's name was still being displayed at the end of the macro.

Version 2.3 (Charlie Gibbs, November 21, 1988)
The following enhancements have been added:

- All file I/O has been rewritten to use level 1 I/O (open, creat, close, read, write, and lseek) instead of level 2 I/O. A68k now does its own buffering and unbuffering to reduce system overhead and increase speed. (Bruce Dawson)
- All assembler directives have been incorporated into the opcode table. Since the opcode search now looks up directives as well, speed is increased.
- Miscellaneous code optimization for additional speed.

Version 2.2 (Charlie Gibbs, November 4, 1988)
The following bugs in version 2.1 have been corrected:

- Macro definitions within an INCLUDE file were disabling the test for skipping the file on pass 2.
- Errors encountered in an INCLUDE file on pass 1 were not disabling the skip of the file on pass 2 - the pertinent error messages could not appear.
- XDEF information and optional symbol table dumps were not being written to the object code file for any hunks that did not contain relocatable code or data. (Colin Fox)

The following enhancements have been added:

- If the -q option is specified as a negative value, user macros are no longer included in line number displays, reducing clutter.
- Some source code has been re-arranged to reduce size.

Version 2.1 (Charlie Gibbs, November 1, 1988)
The following bugs in version 2.00 have been corrected:

- Macro definitions that span two chunks of memory were causing garbage and probably a crash when the macro was being expanded. Pointers were not being handled properly when linking the two chunks.
- Statements such as EQU and SET were not being flagged as illegal forward references if referencing a label defined on the same line, e.g.

      LABEL	SET	LABEL+1

- The position within macros and INCLUDE files was sometimes out by one line when reported in error messages (and the new feature of the -q switch).

The following enhancements have been added:

- If the -q option is specified as a negative value, line numbers will be displayed as positions within the current module (whose name is also displayed), rather than a total statement count. (Bruce Dawson)
- INCLUDE files can be skipped on pass 2 even if they contain SET statements - the values of all symbols SET in the INCLUDE file are stored (as at the end of the file) in a separate table and are patched when the INCLUDE file is skipped. (Bruce Dawson)

Version 2.00 (Charlie Gibbs, October 26, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.24 have been corrected:

- The last digit of the statement number display (lengthened in version 1.24) was not being erased before displaying error messages.
- A68k would go into a loop if a user macro was missing an ENDC directive. This error is now flagged (see below).

The following enhancements have been added:

- The highest statement number displayed at the end of each pass is now left on the screen. This means that, at the end of pass 1, you can always see how many lines A68k will have to process in pass 2, giving an idea of how how much longer you have to wait. (Colin Fox)
- The symbol table is now built using a hashing algorithm. This eliminates the slowdown that occurs in pass 1 as the symbol table grows, due to the old insertion process. (Bruce Dawson)
- If A68k terminates abnormally for any reason (such as insufficient memory) the object file is scratched (unless the -k option is set). (Bruce Dawson)
- Any INCLUDE files which cannot be found are flagged as errors in pass 1, and the assembly is aborted at the end of pass 1. (Bruce Dawson)
- Missing ENDC directives are flagged in macro expansions. Also, missing or unpaired ENDC directives in user macros are flagged.
- If an INCLUDE file doesn't generate any code and no listing file is required, it won't be read again in pass 2. The statement numbers will be bumped to keep in proper alignment. This can really speed up assemblies that INCLUDE lots of equates. (Colin Fox)

Version 1.24 (Charlie Gibbs, October 11, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.23 have been corrected:

- MOVEA to a data register was not being flagged, even though all other invalid addressing modes were.
- Attempts to ORG out of the current hunk (including to an absolute address) were not being flagged. (E. Lenz)
- If the size of the bottom of the primary heap (symbols and macro text) exceeded 32K, any further macro definitions would expand as endless garbage. (Colin Fox)
- If the size of the bottom of the primary heap (symbols and macro text) exceeded 64K, any further external symbols (XDEF) would be flagged as relocatability errors upon each reference. (Colin Fox)

The following enhancements have been added:

- Where statement numbers are displayed as fixed-length fields, their maximum length has been increased from 4 digits to 5. (Colin Fox)
- The PUBLIC directive has been implemented. As with the Aztec assembler, any labels defined as PUBLIC will be treated as XDEF if defined within the current module, and XREF otherwise. (Jeff Lydiatt)

Version 1.23 (Charlie Gibbs, September 20, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.22 have been corrected:

- The test for a third operand was producing erroneous error messages on instructions whose second operand was in immediate mode. The '#' was not being taken into account, since it is not copied to DestOp.

Version 1.22 (Charlie Gibbs, August 31, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.21 have been corrected:

- Expressions of the form R-A, where R is a relocatable term or expression and A is an absolute term or expression, were being flagged as relocation errors. This was due to a bug in the routine which should (but did not) flag expressions of the form A-R. (David Ashley)
- Instructions with three operands were not being flagged as errors. This can be caused by an extra comma being typed in the instruction, as in:

      	BTST #0,state+3,(a5)

  The second comma should not be present. (David Ashley)

The following enhancements have been added:

- Excess spacing has been removed from the listing file. These changes are similar to those already made to the console output (probably at about version 1.05).
- If the first statement in the source file is TTL or PAGE, an empty page is no longer produced at the start of the listing.

Version 1.21 (Charlie Gibbs, July 29, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.2 have been corrected:

- The instruction

      	BTST.L	#8,D0

  had a long-word value generated for the bit number. This bug also applies to BSET, BCLR, and BCHG. The .L specification is now ignored. (Ulf Nordquist)

Version 1.2 (Charlie Gibbs, July 19, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.12 have been corrected:

- A reference to the label of the current instruction was being converted to PC-relative on pass 2 but not on pass 1. This was causing phase errors. The label hasn't been added to the symbol table at the time the instruction is processed. Conversion to PC-relative addressing will now not be attempted in this case, although references to * can and will be converted.
- All string-type DC statements, regardless of length, were being treated as DC.B. For example, DC.L 'A' would generate only one byte of object code. (Gerald Hull)
- DC.W and DC.B statements were not being checked to ensure that their values would fit into a word or a byte respectively.
- If a comment line had white space preceding the asterisk, A68k would hang. Actually, it was interpreting the asterisk as an opcode and trying to open a macro file called "*". Since under AmigaDOS such a file is the console, A68k was actually waiting for console input.
- If an instruction with no operands (such as RTS or NOP) followed MOVE.L #rel,D0 where "rel" was a relocatable symbol, the RTS (etc.) would have its nonexistent operands flagged as invalid.
- SECTION names enclosed in quotes were not being handled correctly.
- Source modules that did not generate any code, data, or BSS areas, but only defined symbols, such as

      label	equ	4
      	xdef	label
      	end

  were generating incomplete object modules.

The following enhancements have been added:

- Jeff's experimental hunk code (prefixing hunk names with a sequence number before adding to the symbol table) has been permanently incorporated. It seems to work better with BLink on programs that have hunks continued farther on in the source code. (Jeff Lydiatt)
- The macro parameter \0, which is replaced by the size specification in the macro call (B, W, or L, defaulting to W) is now supported. (Gerald Hull)
- Operands of the form 0(An) will be treated as (An). (Bruce Dawson)

Version 1.12 (Charlie Gibbs, May 25, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.11 have been corrected:

- If an instruction with no operands (e.g. RTS) followed a MOVE.L #label,D0 the RTS would be flagged with a relocatability error. Src.Mode and Dest.Mode were not being cleared. (Colin Fox)

Version 1.11 (Charlie Gibbs, April 6, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.10 have been corrected:

- A68k would go into a loop while processing the arguments of a macro call, if these arguments are followed by comments separated from the arguments by one or more tab characters, and the -t switch is specified on the command line. All tests for blanks have been replaced by calls to isspace().
- The operand alignment checks added in version 1.06 were erroneously testing the following instructions:
  - BCHG
  - BCLR
  - BSET
  - BTST
  - NBCD
  - Scc
  - TAS
  These instructions are now exempt from alignment checking.

The following enhancements have been added:

- A listing file name can now be specified with the -x switch; it is no longer necessary to specify both the -l and -x switches to produce a cross- reference listing with a name other than the default.
- DS statements with more than one operand are flagged and ignored (in case they should be DC).
- A character string used as a numeric value is flagged and set to zero if it is more than four characters long.

Version 1.10 (Charlie Gibbs, March 20, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.07 have been corrected:

- BSS sections were not being written to the object code file except for a BSS section at the end of a program. This is due to a bug in the code added in version 1.05 to overwrite null sections.
- If a source module contained a mixture of lengths (8, 16, or 32 bits) in external references (XREF) to the same label, all references were being treated as if they has the length of the first reference.

The following enhancements have been added:

- DS operands that are either a forward references or relocatable are now flagged.
- Short branches (Bcc.S, including BRA and BSR) to the next instruction (i.e. a displacement of zero) are illegal - the processor takes the displacement from the next word. Attempts to generate a short displacement of zero are now flagged.

Version 1.07 (Charlie Gibbs, March 11, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.06 have been corrected:

- Instructions that take no operands (such as RTS) were being flagged if they had comments that were not preceded by a semicolon.

The following enhancements have been added:

- The following synonyms have been added:

      CSEG  for CODE (Aztec compatibility)
      DSEG  for DATA    "          "
      ENDIF for ENDC (Assempro compatibility)
      =     for EQU      "           "
      |     for !        "           "

- Strings and character values may be delimited by either apostrophes (') or quotation marks ("). The character not used as a delimiter can be used within the string without doubling it. For example,

        DC.B	"This is Charlie's assembler"

  produces the same code as

        DC.B	'This is Charlie''s assembler';

- The object code file will be scratched if any errors were found, unless the -k (keep) flag is set. (Bruce Dawson)
- The symbol .A68K is automatically defined at the beginning of each assembly as a SET symbol with an absolute value of 1. This enables programs to check whether they're being assembled by this assembler. (Jeff Lydiatt)
- The symbol table insertion routine has been greatly speeded up.

Version 1.06 (Charlie Gibbs, March 6, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.05 have been corrected:

- Lines skipped by IFxx/ENDC were not being counted in the line number given in error messages.
- DATA and BSS sections may be unnamed, or have names the same as CODE sections. Honest, I thought section names had to be unique even across types.
- CHIP and FAST options on the CODE, DATA, and BSS synonyms for the SECTION directive were not being handled correctly.
- XDEF records and symbol table records (if desired) were not being produced for symbols defined ahead of the first object-code producing instruction.

The following enhancements have been added:

- The CNOP instruction can now force alignment relative to any boundary up to 128 bytes. The second operand must still be a power of 2.
- The -q switch has been added to change the frequency with which progress reports (current line number) are displayed on the console. The default remains at every 10 lines (-q10). If you specify -q (no interval) or -q0 the line number displays will be suppressed. This will make assemblies run slightly faster due to reduced console I/O. (Bill Henning)
- The -t switch has been added to keep any tabs in the source file when producing the listing file, as well as generating tabs elsewhere whenever possible. This speeds up assemblies and gives smaller listing files, but such listing files cannot be displayed on devices that do not assume a tab stop in every 8th position. (Bruce Dawson)
- Any single-operand instruction with two operands, and any no-operand instruction with any operands, will be flagged.
- Relocatable 8- or 16-bit immediate operands will be flagged. They blow up BLink.
- Named local labels are now supported. Their names are formed in the same way as normal labels, but are then preceded by a backslash. Their scope is the same as normal local labels (nnn$). (Colin Fox)
- An alignment error will be flagged in the following cases:
  - Odd displacement on a LINK instruction
  - Bcc or DBcc to an odd address
  - In any word or long-word instruction, any operand using the following addressing modes:
    - Address register indirect with displacement
    - Address register indirect with index and displacement
    - Absolute short
    - Absolute long
    - Program counter indirect with displacement
    - Program counter indirect with index and displacement
  - LEA and PEA instructions are exempt from these tests.
- If a section is found to contain no data, A68k will back up to its beginning and overwrite it with the next section. The result is that null sections will no longer appear in the object file.

Version 1.05 (Charlie Gibbs, October 30, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.04 have been corrected:

- If a section was continued later in the program, e.g.

      	SECTION	prog,CODE
      	  <code>
      	SECTION	variables,BSS
      	  <DS statements>
      	SECTION	prog,CODE
      	  <more code>

  bad relocation information was being generated for the continuation of the SECTION. This bug was left over from version 1.03.

The following enhancements have been added:

- All console output except for error messages is now sent to stderr - this enables stdout to be redirected, producing an error file.
- Console (stderr) output has been modified to require fewer lines on the screen.
- If an error occurs while expanding a macro or INCLUDE file, the position of the call in each outer file is given along with the position in the current (innermost) file. Tracing continues until the outermost file (i.e. the original source file) is reached.

Version 1.04 (Charlie Gibbs, October 21, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.03 have been corrected:

- MOVE was being converted to MOVEQ regardless of operand size - this conversion is legal only for longword MOVEs.
- Modifications to version 1.03 caused bad relocatable entries to be generated.

Version 1.03 (Charlie Gibbs, October 14, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.02 have been corrected:

- The following situation was causing phase errors:

      	xdef	label
      	bra	label
      	 .
          <at least 128 bytes of object code>
      	 .
      label:

  (The XDEF was fooling A68k into thinking that "label" was defined within 128 bytes of the BRA instruction on pass 1, although on pass 2 it knew better.
- If the first operand of an two-operand executable instruction contained a character term containing a left or right parenthesis, it would generate error messages and be incorrectly evaluated.
- Labels that don't begin in column 1 (denoted by a trailing colon) caused a Guru Meditation.
- Certain ADD and SUB instructions using PC-relative addressing may cause phase errors. If the displacement is in the range 1 to 8 inclusive, the instruction was erroneously converted to ADDQ or SUBQ during pass 2.

The following enhancements have been added:

- The -z option has been added to display the current source program line on stdout as it is read, optionally over a given range. This feature is provided for debugging purposes.
- Bcc, BSR, and DBcc to labels in other than the current section is now supported. A 16-bit relocation entry will be generated for each such reference.
- PC relative mode will be generated for backward references to labels within the current CODE section if legal for the current instruction. Forward references will not be converted, since there is no way of telling which section the label is in during pass 1.
- The cumulative sizes of all sections by type (i.e. CODE, DATA, and BSS) will be displayed at the end of the listing file and the console display. (Bruce Dawson)
- In the symbol table dump, section names will no longer be indicated just as SECTION, but rather as CODE, DATA, or BSS, depending on type.

Version 1.02 (Charlie Gibbs, September 9, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.01 have been corrected:

- Duplicate labels were not being flagged.
- XDEF symbols were not being dumped to the object code file when the -d option was set.

The following enhancements have been added:

- A header file is now supported. If the parameter -h<filespec> is included on the command line, the specified file will be included as if the source file's first line was " include <filespec>". The file specification may include a path name, although the include path names given by the -i parameter (if any) will also be searched.
- An equate file can now be produced. If the parameter -e<filespec> is included on the command line, a file will be written containing EQU statements for any symbol whose value is absolute. If -e is specified without <filespec>, the name of the file will be formed in the same way as the list file, except with an extension of ".equ". (Bruce Dawson)

The following changes have been made to existing logic:

- No symbol table dump will be produced unless the -x (cross-reference) switch is set. Formerly a symbol table dump was always produced, with only the cross-reference portion optional.

Version 1.01 (Charlie Gibbs, August 20, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.00 have been corrected:

- Long-word constants and storage areas were being aligned on a double-word boundary. The only place where double-word alignment is now forced is at a break between SECTIONs, since the length of an AmigaDOS hunk must be a multiple of 4 bytes. (CNOP 0,4 can still be used if double-word alignment is desired by the programmer.)
- If a label on an END statement or the first statement of a SECTION was named in an XDEF statement, it would not be written to the object code file. The latter case includes both the label of a SECTION directive and the label of the first executable instruction in the absence of any SECTION directives (defaulting to an unnamed CODE section). In the final case (default unnamed CODE section), references to XREF symbols in the first statement would also not be written to the object code file.
- If the last statement in the source file was not terminated with a newline character (premature EOF), it was being ignored altogether.
- A register list as the source operand of a MOVE instruction was not being flagged as an error. (MOVE to a register list was being flagged, however.)
- MOVE from USP was generating incorrect code. Also, MOVE from SR or CCR to an address register was generating incorrect code rather than being flagged.

Version 1.00 (Charlie Gibbs, June 18, 1987) - initial release