[PATCH v3] binutils: testsuite: convert binary symbol tests to run_dump_test

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2025, Alan Modra wrote:

> > Sadly it only now occurred to me what the comment means (last time round iirc I
> > simply didn't know how to parse the first part, as I took the initial "as" for
> > a normal word, not a reference to gas). Problem being - "always runs" isn't true.
> > There are very few targets (amdgcn being one of them iirc) where no gas is being
> > built, and hence an attempt to use it will cause testcases to fail. IOW you're
> > effectively introducing two testcase regressions here for every one such target.
> > Whether we could consider this acceptable (given that for such targets various
> > other tests also fail) I don't know. Nick, Alan - opinions?
> 
> I think we should drop the idea of using run_dump_test here.  I'll
> give the following a try.

 I wasn't aware of the situation with the `amdgcn' target.

 I tried to run regression testing with it and the target is broken in
that it fails to build in the default configuration.  You do have to say 
`--disable-gas --disable-ld' explicitly for a build to complete, which I 
find suboptimal; clearly the top level wasn't correctly updated as the 
target was added.  We have other targets that do not support various 
subdirectories and they build just fine with no need to disable things.

 Then the binutils results look as follows:

		=== binutils Summary ===

# of expected passes		14
# of unexpected failures	10
# of unresolved testcases	1
# of untested testcases		12
# of unsupported tests		20

so not exciting at all.  There are tests that run `run_dump_test' and 
fail, and I think we ought to detect the absence of GAS (and LD where 
applicable), and mark any such tests unsupported.  That's an unrelated 
task of course to this effort.

 What `run_dump_test' does provide is decent reporting and I think we 
should replicate it here if we have concluded it makes no sense to use 
`run_dump_test' for this test.  Updating `run_dump_test' to bypass the 
assembly step if requested could be another option long-term.

  Maciej