Re: [PATCH v3] sim: bfin: new port

Joel Brobecker
2011-02-22T08:20:25Z

> > I'm not a sim expert, so I can only provide cosmetic review.
> > However, I did notice a couple of important things: The copyright
> > headers should mention 2011, and the license should be GPL version 3.
>
> all the files do say 2011 that i can see ... were there ones missing that you
> saw ?

The ones I saw were at the beginning of the patch. For instance:

+++ b/include/gdb/sim-bfin.h
+ Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

+++ b/sim/bfin/Makefile.in
+# Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

A quick grep only gives a few hits, and several of them are false
positives (either a generated file, or a regexp that's too simple):

% grep Copyright 0001-sim-bfin-new-port.patch| grep -v 2011
+ Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+# Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+# Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004,
+# Copyright Ã‚Â© 2004 Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>.
+# Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,
+Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

> much of the sim project seems to still be GPL v2, so i didnt want to
> try and figure out what's going on. if this code should be GPL v3,
> that's fine, i can relicense it.

IIRC, there are many files in the sim/ area that are actually not
copyright the FSF - so we couldn't change the license. So we only
changed the files that were marked copyright the FSF. I was told
that the reason for allowing code that hasn't been assigned to
the FSF in the sim area is historical and had to do with being
desperate to have a ppc sim. I think that was a mistake - we'll
live with it, but it certainly is causing trouble as you can see.

For new contributions, I don't see a reason for licensing it GPL v2,
so let's go with v3.

> it's meant to convey that the header isnt meant to be generally
> included by random files. they can only be included in specific
> instances since they're simple lists which need certain preprocessor
> directives in place before they can be included. i'm trying to avoid
> bit rot related to copying & pasting the same list of numbers over and
> over in multiple places.

OK. Thanks for the explanation.

> it is supposed to be the GNU coding style. if it isnt, then it's just an
> oversight. i'll go through and try to fix up missing pieces including the
> ones you highlighted.

Thanks - I know what you are dealing with. I have the same issue with
our VxWorks that I've been trying to contribute. It's also a lot of
code, some of it written years away, and it's plain impossible to make
sure that it perfectly adheres to all the rules. So we just do our best
by doing a couple of passes and fix the obvious errors.

--
Joel