Re: binutils development (was Re: Problems building binutils-000220snapshot)

[Alan Modra <alan at SPRI dot Levels dot UniSA dot Edu dot Au>]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Graham Stoney wrote:

> H . J . Lu writes:
> > Just a note. You may have better luck with my linux binutils. Unless
> > you want to work on binutils, I don't see any reason to use binutils
> > in CVS on Linux. It doesn't have all the new features and bug fixes
> > which are in my version. My binutils is pretty much in sync with
> > sourceware.
> 
> Is there any chance that you and the sourceware guys could get together and
> work on a single, unified binutils (which just happens to support Linux)?.
> 
> The current situation seems to involve duplication of effort and causes
> confusion. It sounds a little like the split in gcc/egcs development, which
> thankfully is now resolved. Could we do the same for binutils?

There is no split.  As H.J. says, his binutils and sourceware are now
very close to being in sync, with the exception of IBM370 support.  Due to
a copyright assignment issue, the IBM370 port isn't in sourceware yet.
(I'm surprised that this hasn't been resolved yet.  Anyone know why?)

In other words, you can treat H.J's releases as a sourceware snapshot,
with maybe one or two fixes, that has been checked to work on Linux.  I
try to ensure that H.J's patches find their way into sourceware, and also
notify H.J. if I find and fix a flaw that warrants a new release from him.
This hasn't always been so.  Earlier on, H.J's releases diverged rather
more, often containing a large number of fixes and new features.