GNU Binutils 2.44 Released

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Everyone,

  We are pleased to announce that version 2.44 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/

  In a change to our previous practice, in this release the
  binutils-2.44.tar tarball does not contain the sources for the gold
  linker.  This is because the gold linker is now deprecated and will
  eventually be removed unless volunteers step forward and offer to
  continue development and maintenance.

  The gold sources can be found in the binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar
  tarballs.  Going forward, odd numbered releases of the binutils (2.45,
  2.47, etc) will just have the binutils.2.xx.tar tarballs, whilst even
  numbered releases will have both the binutils-2.xx.tar and the
  binutils-with-gold-2.xx.tar tarballs.  Eventually this will stop and
  gold will be dropped altogether.

  Checksums for the release tarballs:
  
f66390a661faa117d00fab2e79cf2dc9d097b42cc296bf3f8677d1e7b452dc3a  
binutils-2.44.tar.bz2
0cdd76777a0dfd3dd3a63f215f030208ddb91c2361d2bcc02acec0f1c16b6a2e  
binutils-2.44.tar.gz
250e11049b129c6b2d53f93f7500c2a4d6818f17c3fc611d9a3226e60e43958c  
binutils-2.44.tar.lz
ce2017e059d63e67ddb9240e9d4ec49c2893605035cd60e92ad53177f4377237  
binutils-2.44.tar.xz
79cb120b39a195ad588cd354aed886249bfab36c808e746b30208d15271cc95c  
binutils-2.44.tar.zst
34733ea495cc0e50e70db4e5890dec28ac41f0e14c4a165e69cf27fb99a8c4c8  
binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar.bz2
d47b08458df45ec2da3ff116e80c72d2fcb7eb582039464608f00e63ff403d36  
binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar.gz
d6f36423d29bc301da6a4f60eea0947c908d6786457dd49c5fcc1a9263a41b20  
binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar.lz
67be9198476cc37436e2801de649f4ad80bf0d02430d86aff63c6b59b6e23987  
binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar.xz
85696cb6fb8cb3e82330068737f76786462a85801fbec94e64e142436c281735  
binutils-with-gold-2.44.tar.zst

  These tarballs were made with the "-r <date>" option supported by
  the src-release.sh script.  This attempts to make reproducible
  tarballs by sorting the files and passing the "--mtime=<date>" option
  to tar.  The date used for these tarballs was obtained by running:

     git log -1 --format=%cd --date=format:%F bfd/version.m4

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

    Assembler:
      Support for new architecture extensions for AArch64, Risc-V and
      x86.
      
    Linker:
      The default maximum page size was changed from 16KiB to 64KiB for
      LoongArch.

      This now supports mixed LTO and non-LTO object files in
      relocatable output.

      The ELF forms of the linker support a --image-base=<ADDR> option
      for compatibility with LLD.

      The --build-id= option now accepts an argument of "xx" which
      enables the use of the xxhash library.  This produces a 128-bit
      hash and is 2-4x faster than md5 or sha1. 

      The ELF linker option --package-metadata supports percent-encoded
      and %[string] encoded JSON payloads.

    Disassembler:
      The RISC-V disassembler now supports -M,max option like QEMU to
      dump instruction without checking architecture support as usual.

    GprofNG:
      Support added for hardware event counters for Neoverse-N1,
      Ampere-1, and Appliedmicro processors.

    Support for the Nios II target has been removed.

  For more information please see:
   
    
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=blob_plain;f=gas/NEWS;;hb=refs/tags/binutils-2_44
    
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=blob_plain;f=ld/NEWS;hb=refs/tags/binutils-2_44
    
https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=blob_plain;f=binutils/NEWS;hb=refs/tags/binutils-2_44

  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