Re: Binutils status on Linux/MIPS?

["Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro at ds2 dot pg dot gda dot pl>]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Alan Modra wrote:

> Of these patches, only 3 have not already been applied, or in one case,
> a slightly different patch applied.  The three are:
> 
> binutils-2.9.5-configure.patch, which I think doesn't actually do anything.

 It changes the style of variable references, which helps to avoid
problems when expanded under a shell.  The patch was discussed with GCC
people once and they stated everything should be properly quoted already
and no expansion should happen.  Unfortunately, if quotes are present in a
string, e.g. passed as an argument to "--libdir", an expansion may still
happen.  I wasn't sure how to avoid it at that time and haven't looked at
the issue again since then.  The conclusion was to leave the script as is
not to cover the bug.

 Still I need the workaround for my packages and I will submit a better
patch once (if?) I develop it.

> binutils-2.10.91-20010116-libtool.patch, again doesn't do much but may
> be necessary for you, I'm not sure

 It's a workaround for the inability to regenerate configure scripts with
the released version of autoconf and libtool 1.3.5 needed a fix for
cross-compilation.  Otherwise one could just invoke `aclocal; autoconf' in
the affected dirs, as usual. 

> binutils-2.10.91-20010116-ulfc-mips.patch, which is an ABI change.
> It's likely that if your existing shared libs or dynamic linker were
> built using this patch, then every binary from that point would need
> to be built by a binutils with the patch.  I suspect this is the
> reason you've been having problems.

 Hmm, the patch is mostly for mips64*-linux -- it shouldn't affect the
mips*-linux target much, i.e. mips*-linux should be interchangeable.  For
mips*-linux it isn't really needed, I suspect, but I'm unsure as for
certain reasons I haven't tested post-2.10.91 binutils, yet.  I don't want
to drop the patch as I don't want to risk losing it -- someone might do
unnecessary duplicate work one day, then. 

 The patch is by Ulf Carlsson -- I contacted him with respect to it, but
he doesn't seem to be reachable these days.

  Maciej

-- 
+  Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland   +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+        e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available        +