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

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

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.