Questions about upstreaming a new port [MRISC32]

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Marcus,

> What are the requirements for getting a port upstreamed? (I can understand that a CPU architecture may be out of scope for mainline binutils if it's not a "popular CPU", but I'm still interested in knowing what you think)

I guess the most important requirement is probable longevity.
If the port is for a hobby CPU that only a few people are ever
going to use, then it is not suitable to upstreaming to the
binutils.

The issue really is maintainership.  Who is going to look after the 
port and make sure that it continues to work as time goes by ?  If 
no one maintains it then the port will bit rot and eventually become 
deprecated, and I would rather avoid having such ports in the binutils
in the first place.

Another requirement, as already mentioned, is the need for any contributions
to be covered by a copyright assignment to the FSF.  This allows us to 
distribute the port, and patch it as needed.

Also all contributions should conform to the GNU Coding standards, as this
helps to maintain the uniformity of the code, and make it easier to read
and understand.

I hope that this answers your question.  I do not wish to discourage you
from contributing to the GNU binutils, but I also do not want to give you
false expectations for having contributions accepted.

Cheers
  Nick