Re: next Binutils release (really: IA-64)

[Jim Wilson <wilson at cygnus dot com>]

>What is the state of the IA-64 bits?  Are there still large portions of
>them in an internal Cygnus tree?  Or is the FSF/GNU Binutils ready to
>become the official IA-64 Binutils?

I think you are confusing the unofficial stable snapshots I've been making with
the official but unstable development snapshots that the FSF makes.  The
FSF binutils tree has been the official IA-64 binutils tree since mid-April
when we contributed the code.  I haven't been recommending the FSF tree, but
that is only because stable snapshots were more useful to OS developers than
official snapshots while we were still doing binutils development work.

The FSF has had all generic IA-64 and ia64-linux specific binutils code since
mid-April, when the port was contributed.  I don't understand why you would
even ask this question.  We are not withholding any necessary IA-64 code from
the FSF.  We do have ia64-aix (aka monterey) code that has not been contributed
yet, but there is no reason why anyone who isn't using AIX would need it.

As for the state of the IA-64 port, we fixed the last known ABI problem 10
days ago, and do not expect that we will need any more significant ABI changes.
I can't vouch for the stability of any development snapshot though.

I've stated publicly on the linux-ia64 list that I want my next stable
snapshot to come from FSF trees instead of Cygnus internal trees.  I expect
that I will be able to use a gcc 3.0 release or pre-release.  If there is
a binutils release or pre-release available also, then I will certainly use
that.

Jim