Re: [PATCH] Partially revert patch that encloses asm-offset.h numbersin brackets

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Tue Oct 26 2010 - 12:35:31 EST


On 10/26/2010 03:53 AM, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
>
> Also note that *.*.9x versions are snapshots from the FSF repository (so
> there's no fixed date associated with them), which also delegates
> maintenance responsibility to whoever packages them and makes available to
> people. In the state as imported from the repository they may have odd
> problems or grave bugs, as exhaustive regression testing is generally only
> made after a release branch has been created and otherwise changes to the
> head of the tree are only tested for a limited subset of targets before
> they are applied. Therefore local fixes are inevitable for them anyway.
>

Well, sort of... the x.x.9x releases used in production -- specifically
the ones with a numbering scheme like x.x.9x.0.x -- in the Linux world
tend to be the ones maintained and released by H.J. Lu:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/devel/binutils/

> And last but not least binutils are one of the easier tools to build from
> sources, so installing a newer version, especially when it comes to native
> tools (hardly anyone uses cross-compilation targeting x86, I believe),
> somewhere under $HOME to use for kernel builds is a trivial effort:
>
> $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/somewhere && make && make install
> $ PATH=$HOME/somewhere/bin:$PATH
>
> Certainly much easier than building the kernel, especially when it comes
> to selecting the right configuration options.

Yes, although there is also a version dependency between binutils and
gcc, as I unhappily found out trying to run an upversion gcc on an old
distro at one point.

-hpa

--
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.

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