FSF Binutils release 2.31 is now available

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Everyone,

We are pleased to announce that version 2.31 of the Binutils project
sources have been released and are now available for download at:

    https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils
    https://sourceware.org/pub/binutils/releases/

  checksums:
    50a489aa6d4b8630b7b89b2de6b185be  binutils-2.31.tar.bz2
    2a14187976aa0c39ad92363cfbc06505  binutils-2.31.tar.gz
    1ea8ddd13bd6fdcab1fe6cf377894476  binutils-2.31.tar.lz
    ddbb923470fcf59c8c4d08a9e9a79cf9  binutils-2.31.tar.xz

This release contains numerous bug fixes, and also the
following new features:

  * 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.


Our thanks go out to all of the binutils contributors, past and
present, for helping to make this release possible.

Cheers
  Nick Clifton