[PATCH 3/4] zlib: Remove files that should certainly not be checked in

[Luke T. Shumaker]

On Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:24:53 -0600,
Jan Beulich wrote:
> 
> On 06.06.2024 22:11, Luke T. Shumaker wrote:
> > The *.obj files are compiled binaries that should have been
> > .gitignore'd
> 
> Are you sure about this? readme.txt in each of the directories
> suggests otherwise to me. More precisely, while removing them
> from the .git tree might be okay, provisions would then first
> need taking for them to be re-generated properly when
> releases / tarballs are made. Since that requires some form
> of Windows to run MASM, doing so likely wouldn't nicely
> integrate into the overall process.

Good question.  Here's my reasoning about how sure I am:

 - The readme.txt's read to me as telling the user to use MASM, not
   that they are included.

 - AFAICT, these files are not used by binutils-gdb.

 - As shown in the final commit of this patch series, the zlib
   directory is perfectly re-created *except for these files* by
   extracting zlib-1.2.12.tar over zlib-1.2.10.tar.  Neither of those
   tarballs include any .obj files.

 - These files were first added to binutils-gdb.git from gcc.git in
   5ca28f79288 (Import zlib from GCC, H.J. Lu, 2015-03-13), which is
   is a faithful (except for some $Id$ mangling) of zlib-1.2.7.tar.
   That tarball does not include any .obj files either.

 - However, zlib tarballs did include some .obj files in the
   v1.2.[0-3] range.

 - And whadayaknow, the .obj files were first added to gcc.git in
   303ae446cf2a (Initial revision, Tom Tromey, 2005-09-12), which
   bundled zlib-1.2.1.tar (which as I just said is indeed one of the
   archives that includes .obj files).

 - Ever since being first checked in to gcc.git/binutils-gdb.git, the
   .obj files have never once been updated, even though the associated
   assembly source code has had substantial revisions.

> Further, if these really were to be .gitignore-d, wouldn't the
> patch sensibly be adding them (perhaps as *.obj pattern) to
> .gitignore?

Yes, that would be a good thing to do.  This patch series IMO
highlights a lot of good things to do.

-- 
Happy hacking,
~ Luke T. Shumaker