Synchronizing Binutils and GDB releases
Joel Sherrill
joel.sherrill@oarcorp.com
Mon Aug 18 15:42:00 GMT 2014
On 8/18/2014 10:31 AM, Nicholas Clifton wrote:
> Hi Tristan, Hi Joel,
>
> What do you think to the idea of synchronizing GDB and BINUTILS
> releases ?
>
> The idea was raised at this year's GNU Tool's Cauldron. It would
> help users who manage combined toolchain sources. Currently if they
> want to create a combined tree of specific releases of the gcc, gdb and
> binutils they have to choose which version of the BFD library to use.
> But if they find a bug and want to check in a fix, they have to remember
> that there are actually two versions of the BFD sources to patch.
> Multiply this by a number of different GDB/BINUTILS release
> combintations and this becomes a maintenance headache.
>
>
> If we had a combined release there would be only one branch in the
> git repository and things would be a lot simpler. We could even extend
> this idea by arranging for the release to happen slightly before each
> GCC release. Then GCC version X could could say that it works best with
> GDB/BINUTILS version Y.
I can't speak for the entire world but I know that since the move to
git, I have
been building binutils+gdb as one unit and gcc+newilb as another. It has
simplified
my testing of the RTEMS targets and appears to shave a little time off
the builds.
OTOH we have sometimes managed to upgrade a gdb on an old
binutils/gcc/newlib.
It is usually low risk because we don't try to share the BFD library. We
have treated
gdb and binutils as separate entities. Updating binutils would force us
to rebuild
gcc+newlib. If a BFD patch were needed, we would evaluate what to do. It
might be
a patch to binutils and a gdb upgrade.
But we are a unique project in that we prefer end users to build from
source. Linux
distros would be in a different position.
> Cheers
> Nick
>
--
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D. Director of Research & Development
joel.sherrill@OARcorp.com On-Line Applications Research
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