GAS copyright update

David O'Brien obrien@FreeBSD.org
Thu May 4 11:36:00 GMT 2000


On Thu, May 04, 2000 at 07:16:30PM +0100, Philip Blundell wrote:
> 
> Not really.  IA-64 wasn't added until after the 2.10 branch was forked.  I 
> haven't actually looked into how intrusive the changes would be if we wanted 
> to add it, but at this stage in the release cycle I really don't want to do 
> that anyway.

When is the next release to happen?  Can we discuss this more as this
position puts me/FreeBSD in a large bind.
 
> >Since those using the IA-64 bits understand their beta/alpha status, I
> >would not think people would expect as solid of bits as other
> >architecures.
> 
> Then those using IA-64 can work from a snapshot of the trunk.

Yes and then the i386 bits and Alpha bits suffer needlessly.  FreeBSD
uses 2.9.1 which is bug ridden.  Linux doesn't suffer this because it
uses H.J. Lu's version.  However, Linux's Binutils changes too often for
FreeBSD (since the Linux Binutils tracks CVS).  However, the world is now
judged on how Linux handles things.  For instance, FreeBSD has taken
mucho flack for lack of MMX instruction support (since 2.9.1 doesn't),
yet "Linux can assemble it".

Thus I need a stable, dependable Binutils to upgrade the FreeBSD one to.
And FreeBSD now has IA-64 hardware and thus need IA-64 bits.  Trying to
pick a date that the CVS trunk is suffient for my needs scares me.
Especially if it is anything like the GCC CVS tree which is often not
buildable (even many snapshots are).

The way FreeBSD handle contributed software is to do vendor imports and
try like hell to make as little changes to it as possible.  Me taking the
2.10 release and adding some IA-64 bits from the trunk branch will really
mess this up.  Especially when I later need to vendor import the 2.10.1
release.
 
-- 
-- David    (obrien@NUXI.com)


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