Re: 68hc11/12/s12x/xgate patch

[James Murray <jsm@jsm-net.demon.co.uk>]

On Mon, 2012-03-12 at 16:26 +0100, Fred Cooke wrote:
> Two things, for now:
> 
> 1) Am I correct in saying that this is still one monolithic patch that
> makes multiple changes to the port?

Yes it is. Go ahead and take a look.

> 2) Am I correct in saying that this is still comprised mostly of a
> two-architectures-in-one-port code change?
> 

Most of the patch is actually testsuite changes, due in part to revised
objdump output but also bringing m68hc11 up to date so that "make check"
works correctly. There are additional testcases for the newly added S12X
and XGATE functions.

Between the lines, it looks like you are referring to your earlier
binutils question "Supporting more than one CPU with the same gas
port." 

There are surely pros and cons to either method.

With the approach I took, only a single toolchain is required and there
is one linker. There are no devices currently that contain XGATE and any
other architecture other than hcs12 in production, nor are there any
currently mooted developments that the public are aware of.  

With the approach that you appear to be advocating, two sets of tools
need to be built and installed. However, the XGATE target (as presented
by Sean) is not self-sufficient and relies on changes to the linker in
the m68hc11 target to support linking symbols within XGATE. Overall that
seems to complicate matters without offering any real advantage.

regards

James Murray