Binutils 2.31 Offers Faster DLL Linking For Cygwin/Mingw, Freescale S12Z Support

A new release of the Binutils collection of important tools is now available with a number of new features and improvements.

Binutils 2.31 contains work like direct linking with DLLs for Cygwin/Mingw targets now being faster, AArch64 disassembler improvements, MIPS GINV and CRC extension support, Freescale S12Z architecture support, the x86 assembler now supports new command line options to enable alternative shorter instruction encodings, and the Gold linker now supports Intel Indirect Branch Tracking and Shadow Stack instructions.

* Direct linking with DLLs for Cygwin and Mingw targets is now faster.

* The linker now defaults to enabling -z separate-code for Linux targets, although a configure time option can change this. This option can increase disk and memory size of executables, but it does help to improve security.

* The disassembler supports Netronome Flow Processor (NFP) firmware files.

* The AArch64 disassembler supports showing disassembly notes which are emitted when inconsistencies are found with the instruction that may result in the instruction being invalid. It also emits warnings when a combination of an instruction and a named register could be invalid.

* The AR archive manager now supports an "O" modifier to display member offsets inside an archive.

* The ADR and ADRL pseudo-instructions supported by the ARM assembler now only set the bottom bit of the address of thumb function symbols if the -mthumb-interwork command line option is active.

* The MIPS assembler supports the Global INValidate (GINV) and Cyclic Redudancy Check (CRC) architecture extensions.

* Support has been added for the Freescale S12Z architecture.

* The assembler has a new --generate-missing-build-notes=[yes|no] option to create (or not) GNU Build Attribute notes if none are present in the input sources.

* The -mold-gcc command-line option has been removed for x86 targets.

* The x86 assembler now supports a -O[2|s] command-line options to enable alternate shorter instruction encodings.

* The gold linker has a new --debug=plugin option for easier debugging of plugin-related problems.

* The gold linker now supports the -z keep_text_section_prefix option.

* The gold linker now has support for .note.gnu.property sections (from Linux ABI extensions).

* Add gold linker now has support for Intel's Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) and Shadow Stack instructions.

Binutils 2.31 is available from its GNU.org project site.