Re: your patches enabling Arm64's SVE 2.1 extension

[Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com>]

Hi Jan, Hi Srinath,
> In which case - what is the gas/NEWS entry about? Just in case there would
> be a 2.42.1, may I ask that it be purged at least there, and perhaps also
> from the main branch, until support is actually complete?

I would agree with this.

> Alternatively,
> Nick, once support is complete maybe that's then really a(nother) reason
> to cut a 2.42.1?

Hmmm... this is a hard decision.  Normally I would only consider a point release
if we needed to fix an important bug - one which could result in incorrect code
generation or total failure of a tool like the linker or assembler.  But a release
just to add some missing instructions which were supposed to be supported but were
actually not ... well that does not seem to me to be a good enough reason.

Unless - how significant are these instructions ?  I have not actually looked
into their semantics.  Are there needed in order for a kernel to be able to
access specific features of the AArch64 architecture ?  Are they essential for
atomic operations ?  Are they even likely to be produced by a compiler ?

Basically if they are not critical to the infrastructure of an operating system,
then I do not think that they justify a point release.

Cheers
   Nick