Binutils backwards incompatibilities?

[Jeff Baker]

I was afraid you'd say that :)

Thanks.

Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
> 
> 
>>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?
> 
> 
> Not really no.  The gas/NEWS file does mention that SH4A support was 
> added for 2.15 but nothing is mentioned about reloc renumbering.
> 
> The long answer to your original question is that there is no formal 
> system for collecting potential incompatibilities between different 
> binutils releases and documenting them.  Thus if you need to find out if
> 
> a newer release will still work with binaries created with an older 
> release the only way to be sure is to try it and see.
> 
> Cheers
>    Nick