From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: [PATCH] Partially revert patch that encloses asm-offset.h numbers in brackets Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:33:47 -0700 Message-ID: <4CC702EB.1000301@zytor.com> References: <4CC5B1A1020000780001EF7C@vpn.id2.novell.com> <20101025140218.5092.74117.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <28707.1288018465@redhat.com> <4CC5B8D3020000780001EFB4@vpn.id2.novell.com> <4CC5A748.6050903@zytor.com> <4CC5B246.5070909@zytor.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:37489 "EHLO mail.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752204Ab0JZQfE (ORCPT ); Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:35:04 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-arch-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: "Maciej W. Rozycki" Cc: Linus Torvalds , Jan Beulich , Alexander van Heukelum , Ingo Molnar , akpm@linux-foundation.org, "H. Peter Anvin" , David Howells , linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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.