[PATCH v1 1/1] bfd: add a mean to programatically detect a release version

[Matthieu Longo]

On 2025-08-21 17:00, Jan Beulich wrote:
> On 14.08.2025 17:16, Matthieu Longo wrote:
>> In a recent discussion around Object Attributes v2, it appeared that we
>> needed a way to detect whether a tool was built as a release version,
>> or development version.
>>
>> A previous patch (7b40f4c6587c) introduced this detection in gas.
>> This patch reuses the same principle but moved the code into a utility
>> function in bsd, so that gas, ld, and others can rely on it. It also
>> adds a Tcl function 'is_release' that can be used with a '#target: '
>> directive to disable some tests relying on development-only features.
> 
> The C side is pretty much okay with me, but ...
> 
>> --- a/binutils/testsuite/lib/binutils-common.exp
>> +++ b/binutils/testsuite/lib/binutils-common.exp
>> @@ -17,6 +17,19 @@
>>   # Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street - Fifth Floor, Boston,
>>   # MA 02110-1301, USA.
>>   
>> +# True if the current tool is a release version.
>> +#
>> +proc is_release {} {
>> +  global AS
>> +  catch "exec $AS --version | head -1" exec_output
> 
> ... already here implementation and comment ("current tool") don't match.
> For some targets gas isn't even being built. If you only need this for
> gas, maybe limit it to just that?
> 

This test is used in both ld and gas tests. The code that has a 
different behavior at runtime is located in bfd, and is used by both gas 
and ld.

If ld is built for all targets, I can replace $AS by $LD. Or might ld 
not be present in some cases ?

Indeed "current tool" is ambiguous. I meant the current tool under test, 
so gas in the case of gas tests, and gas+ld in the case of the linker 
tests. What about the below ?
   # True if the binutils tools under test were built in release mode.
>> +  if [regexp {\d+\.\d+\.\d+(\.\d+)} $exec_output matched sub1] then {
> 
> I have no idea whether this may get in conflict with some distro's versioning.
> 
> Jan

How could the pattern be changed to remove this risk ? Since I don't 
have BFD_VERSION_DATE like in bfd_is_release_version(), I don't see 
anything obvious. Any suggestion ?

FYI, in the specific case I would like to use it (see your comment on 
OAv2 patch series), if the distribution were to use a conflicting 
version scheme, it would at worst cause some tests to be executed 
whereas they should be skipped, and thus they would appear as test 
failures. Do the distributions execute the binutils tests every time 
they generate a new artifact ?

Matthieu