Re: [PATCH v2] build: specify minimum versions of make and binutils

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>]

On Thu, 2016-01-28 at 05:49 -0700, Jan Beulich wrote:
> > > > On 28.01.16 at 00:12, <cardoe@cardoe.com> wrote:
> > To help people avoid having to figure out what versions of make and
> > binutils need to be supported document them explicitly. The version of
> > binutils that had to be supported was mentioned in
> > http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2016-01/msg00609.ht
> > ml 
> > as 2.17 recently. It was decided that the versions should instead be
> > GNU binutils 2.16.1 and GNU Make 3.80 in
> > http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2016-01/msg02134.ht
> > ml 
> 
> "decided" is a bit strong. I suggested these values. And while I'm
> pretty certain that even plain make 3.80 will work, I'm in no way
> sure plain 2.16.1 will (what I'm building with once in a while is some
> 2.16.9x, and I can't say how many backports it has). So the
> question really is - did you test that things build with these?

Why would he have done, you suggested 2.16.1 with no hint that you thought
it might not be a reasonable version to use.

TBH having rejected Doug's original proposal I would have said it was up to
you to specify the actual precise versions you think should be used, rather
than making Doug guess and leading him down blind allies by making
apparently authoritative suggestions which you secretly aren't actually
sure about yourself.

Anyway we could go round and round like this forever. What's wrong with
starting with this as a baseline and bumping it if it turns out to be a
problem in practice?

> Also I'm not sure 2.16.1 is going to be sufficient for ARM (it's
> most definitely too old for ARM64).

I suppose there is an implicit max(version, first version supporting arch).
I don't think we can really go into the level of detail needed for per arch
toolchain requirements.

I certainly don't know which version of either gcc or binutils is needed to
build either ARM variant.

Ian.