Re: Problem building today's snapshot with MinGW

Joel Brobecker
2020-09-17T13:57:17Z

> > At Joel's request, I've built today's snapshot of the GDB master
> > branch using mingw.org's MinGW, and found a problem when running the
> > produced gdb.exe on versions of Windows older than 8.0 (in my case it
> > was XP). The details are described in my report to the Gnulib folks:
> >
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2020-09/index.html
>
> The Gnulib folks confirmed my report and provided a patch, see
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2020-09/msg00075.html
>
> How should we proceed? Do we import the updated Gnulib, or do we
> patch our copy?

I think we should take different approaches for master and branch.

- On master, we should attempt a gnulib update, so as to keep
out list of patches down to the absolute bare minimum.

Alternatively, if there is an unforseen complication with doing
that, we could include those two changes as local patches
specifically, but this would only create more work for the next
person who wants to do an update. That's why I think we should
first try the regular update.

- On the branch, I think we should go with Bruno's patches,
after review and testing. gnulib updates are always tricky,
so outside of some particular circumstances, I think they are
in general too risky to do on a release branch.

--
Joel