GNU Binutils 2.38 has been released

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Everyone,

We are pleased to announce that version 2.38 of the GNU 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/

The SHA256 checksums are as follows:

  070ec71cf077a6a58e0b959f05a09a35015378c2d8a51e90f3aeabfe30590ef8  binutils-2.38.tar.bz2
  6e54170356709d401f1cb781f86bb59656b99b398412047f5c44f0fbc633fa4d  binutils-2.38.tar.bz2.sig
  b3f1dc5b17e75328f19bd88250bee2ef9f91fc8cbb7bd48bdb31390338636052  binutils-2.38.tar.gz
  864d330b71f2b40120d96e68ebed43a07c5286d9c28f3a3893ae4ae7ec25ede9  binutils-2.38.tar.gz.sig
  807ccfa77ccfc3e09b1f760cd73e13839180c6950a37843df1c1e7a58c777dc9  binutils-2.38.tar.lz
  49ee3c3b5803dea2acb15a3fa4c8ad0daebf142ba284a8b3d3524a52823a0ceb  binutils-2.38.tar.lz.sig
  e316477a914f567eccc34d5d29785b8b0f5a10208d36bbacedcc39048ecfe024  binutils-2.38.tar.xz
  41301d67da78df1ad6df04aefe9e7bea8235484b0323cee52caa8f7435385014  binutils-2.38.tar.xz.sig

This release contains numerous bug fixes and improvements, along with
the following new features:

  Assembler:
    General:
      * Add support for the LoongArch architecture.

      * Add an option to control how multibyte characters are handled in
        the assembler.  Using the option warnings can be generated when
        such characters are encountered in symbol names, or anywhere in
        the input source file(s).

    AArch64 and ARM:
      * Add support for more system registers.
      * Add support for Scalable Matrix Extension.
      * Add support for Cortex-R52+, Cortex-A510, Cortex-A710,
        Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710 cores.
      * Add support for 'v8.7-a', 'v8.8-a', 'v9-a', 'v9.1-a',
        'armv9.2-a' and 'armv9.3-a' architecture extensions.

    X86:
      * Add a command-line option to encode aligned vector move as
        unaligned vector move. 
      * Add support for Intel AVX512_FP16 instructions.
      * The outputs of .ds.x directive and .tfloat directive with hex
        input have been reduced from 12 bytes to 10 bytes to match the
        output of .tfloat directive.

  Linker:
    * Add support for the LoongArch architecture.

    * Add -z pack-relative-relocs/-z no pack-relative-relocs to x86 ELF
     linker to pack relative relocations in the DT_RELR section.

    * Add -z indirect-extern-access/-z noindirect-extern-access to x86
      ELF linker to control canonical function pointers and copy
      relocation.

  Other Binary Tools:

    * elfedit: Add --output-abiversion option to update ABIVERSION.

    * Tools which display symbols or strings (readelf, strings, nm,
      objdump) have a new command line option which controls how unicode
      characters are handled.  By default they are treated as normal for
      the tool.  Using --unicode=locale will display them according to
      the current locale.  Using --unicode=hex will display them as hex
      byte values, whilst --unicode=escape will display them as escape
      sequences.  In addition using --unicode=highlight will display
      them as unicode escape sequences highlighted in red (if supported
      by the output device).

    * readelf -r dumps RELR relative relocations now.

    * Support for efi-app-aarch64, efi-rtdrv-aarch64 and
      efi-bsdrv-aarch64 has been added to objcopy in order to enable
      UEFI development using binutils. 

    * ar: Add --thin for creating thin archives. -T is a deprecated
      alias without diagnostics. In many ar implementations -T has a
      different meaning, as specified by X/Open System Interface.

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

Cheers
  Nick Clifton
  GNU Binutils Chief Maintainer