Binutils backwards incompatibilities?

[Jeff Baker]

I am aware of a couple of incompatibilities with SH4 support.  For one a 
subset of the relocations were renumbered; the second involves the 
treatment of relocation addends.  We ship our kernel in such a manner 
that it needs to be relocated as it's being added to a boot image.  The 
relocation addend change means that you can't relocate a kernel built 
with an older toolchain with the newer toolchain or vice versa.

Is this the kind of stuff I'd find in the NEWS files?

Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
> 
> 
>>Is there any way to easily get a list of any potential backwards 
>>incompatibilities between binutils versions?  We're finally looking to
> 
> 
>>move forward to a newer version (from 2.12.1 to 2.15, at least) but 
>>management needs to know about any gotchas before they'll sign off.
> 
> 
> Have a look at the NEWS files in the ld/ binutils/ and gas/
> subdirectories.
> 
> In general there should not be any backwards incompatibilities from a 
> user's perspective, with the possible exception of toolchains that have 
> been rendered obsolete and are no longer supported.
> 
>  From an application point view, (ie an application that uses the BFD 
> library) there have been quite a few changes in the API, especially 
> between 2.14 and 2.15.  These are not normally documented, but will 
> become obvious as soon as the application is rebuilt.
> 
> Cheers
>    Nick