Re: Synchronizing Binutils and GDB releases

[Joel Sherrill <joel.sherrill@oarcorp.com>]

On 8/18/2014 10:31 AM, Nicholas Clifton wrote:
> Hi Tristan, Hi Joel,
>
>    What do you think to the idea of synchronizing GDB and BINUTILS 
> releases ?
>
>    The idea was raised at this year's GNU Tool's Cauldron.  It would 
> help users who manage combined toolchain sources.  Currently if they 
> want to create a combined tree of specific releases of the gcc, gdb and 
> binutils they have to choose which version of the BFD library to use. 
> But if they find a bug and want to check in a fix, they have to remember 
> that there are actually two versions of the BFD sources to patch. 
> Multiply this by a number of different GDB/BINUTILS release 
> combintations and this becomes a maintenance headache.
>
>
>    If we had a combined release there would be only one branch in the 
> git repository and things would be a lot simpler.  We could even extend 
> this idea by arranging for the release to happen slightly before each 
> GCC release.  Then GCC version X could could say that it works best with 
> GDB/BINUTILS version Y.
I can't speak for the entire world but I know that since the move to
git, I have
been building binutils+gdb as one unit and gcc+newilb as another. It has
simplified
my testing of the RTEMS targets and appears to shave a little time off
the builds.

OTOH we have sometimes managed to upgrade a gdb on an old
binutils/gcc/newlib.
It is usually low risk because we don't try to share the BFD library. We
have treated
gdb and binutils as separate entities.  Updating binutils would force us
to rebuild
gcc+newlib. If a BFD patch were needed, we would evaluate what to do. It
might be
a patch to binutils and a gdb upgrade.

But we are a unique project in that we prefer end users to build from
source. Linux
distros would be in a different position.
> Cheers
>    Nick
>

-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel.sherrill@OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35805
Support Available                (256) 722-9985