Re: Update autotools version for gdb and binutils

[Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>]

On 2018-05-09 11:08 PM, Alan Modra wrote:
> On Wed, May 09, 2018 at 11:46:26AM -0400, Simon Marchi wrote:
>> On 2018-05-08 18:12, Joseph Myers wrote:
>>> On Tue, 8 May 2018, Alan Modra wrote:
>>>
>>>> I wasn't saying you must change all of binutils-gdb, let alone gcc,
>>>> just that it would be nice.  binutils-gdb config/* is copied from gcc
>>>
>>> And as it's the start of development for GCC 9, it's essentially the
>>> optimal time for such a risky change in GCC.
>>>
>>> It's libtool for which an update may be the riskiest (necessary to
>>> revert
>>> libtool commit 3334f7ed5851ef1e96b052f2984c4acdbf39e20c, see
>>> <https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2011-01/msg00520.html>, and need to
>>> check for any local changes relative to the last libtool version merged
>>> from that aren't in the new libtool version used).  I don't know whether
>>> updating other tools in GCC would require updating libtool or whether
>>> the
>>> updates can be independent.
>>
>> I attempted to convert binutils-gdb to autoconf 2.69 / automake 1.15.1 and
>> it went reasonably well.  I don't know very much about gcc, so I could try
>> to do the same in the gcc tree blindly, but I don't feel confident enough to
>> test and validate the changes.  So I would avoid it if I can, somebody more
>> used to building gcc could do that part.
>>
>> Could we first rule whether we still need to support combined tree builds?
>> I don't have the necessary background to judge the importance of that
>> feature, but it would basically decide whether I can update the tools used
>> in binutils-gdb in isolation from gcc.
> 
> The only combined tree issue I can think of when _GCC_AUTOCONF_VERSION
> differs between gcc and binutils-gdb, is that --enable-maintainer-mode
> might attempt to run the "wrong" autoconf on one of the trees.  That
> shouldn't be a show-stopper.
> 
> Let's see the patches.
> 

There you go.

https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2018-06/msg00166.html

Simon