Re: merging gas into binutils?

Re: merging gas into binutils?

[bgb]

> A suggestion has been made to merge gas into the binutils package,
> meaning there'd be only one distribution.  It's an idea that's
> occurred to me before.

I doesn't really bother me to pick up two packages instead of
one.

What has been bothering me are the (configuration) inconsistencies
between the gas, binutils, and gdb packages.  At least the last time
I tried, the three packages seemed to not be very harmonious in how
they were configured.

BTW, This is not complaining.  You guys do a great job.

Brian Beuning

merging gas into binutils?

[tower]

   From: Michael Meissner <meissner@osf.org>
   Date: Fri, 17 Jun 94 10:36:06 -0400

   | 
   | A suggestion has been made to merge gas into the binutils package,
   | meaning there'd be only one distribution.  It's an idea that's
   | occurred to me before.  And of course it's what I'm already doing for
   | the nightly snapshots, though they're going under the name `gas' at
   | the moment rather than `binutils'.
   | 
   | That would make it about 2/3 the size of the current two packages,
   | with bfd &c duplicated.  On the other hand, it means someone wanting
   | to pick up gas alone would have to download a bit more.
   | 
   | The linker has got SunOS shared library support added (linking against
   | them, not creating them), and other nifty new features.  So that at
   | least is no longer an argument for using gas but not the rest of
   | binutils (specifically the linker).  Offhand I don't know of a
   | situation where you'd want binutils but not gas, though there may be
   | one or two targets supported by binutils but not gas.  And of course
   | people would still have the option of only installing some of the
   | programs distributed as `binutils'.
   | 
   | Does anyone see a good reason why I shouldn't just combine them, and
   | release `binutils 2.5, including assembler and linker' sometime?

   I would say that ok, provided either the old gas tar files get removed
   from prep, or a symlink is created from binutils-2.5.tar.gz to
   gas-2.5.tar.gz is made.

We'll remove the old files when they are no longer useful to people or
we need the space.  And add a gas.README that explains the merge.

best -len

merging gas into binutils?

[Michael Meissner]

| 
| A suggestion has been made to merge gas into the binutils package,
| meaning there'd be only one distribution.  It's an idea that's
| occurred to me before.  And of course it's what I'm already doing for
| the nightly snapshots, though they're going under the name `gas' at
| the moment rather than `binutils'.
| 
| That would make it about 2/3 the size of the current two packages,
| with bfd &c duplicated.  On the other hand, it means someone wanting
| to pick up gas alone would have to download a bit more.
| 
| The linker has got SunOS shared library support added (linking against
| them, not creating them), and other nifty new features.  So that at
| least is no longer an argument for using gas but not the rest of
| binutils (specifically the linker).  Offhand I don't know of a
| situation where you'd want binutils but not gas, though there may be
| one or two targets supported by binutils but not gas.  And of course
| people would still have the option of only installing some of the
| programs distributed as `binutils'.
| 
| Does anyone see a good reason why I shouldn't just combine them, and
| release `binutils 2.5, including assembler and linker' sometime?

I would say that ok, provided either the old gas tar files get removed
from prep, or a symlink is created from binutils-2.5.tar.gz to
gas-2.5.tar.gz is made.

merging gas into binutils?

[Ken Raeburn]

A suggestion has been made to merge gas into the binutils package,
meaning there'd be only one distribution.  It's an idea that's
occurred to me before.  And of course it's what I'm already doing for
the nightly snapshots, though they're going under the name `gas' at
the moment rather than `binutils'.

That would make it about 2/3 the size of the current two packages,
with bfd &c duplicated.  On the other hand, it means someone wanting
to pick up gas alone would have to download a bit more.

The linker has got SunOS shared library support added (linking against
them, not creating them), and other nifty new features.  So that at
least is no longer an argument for using gas but not the rest of
binutils (specifically the linker).  Offhand I don't know of a
situation where you'd want binutils but not gas, though there may be
one or two targets supported by binutils but not gas.  And of course
people would still have the option of only installing some of the
programs distributed as `binutils'.

Does anyone see a good reason why I shouldn't just combine them, and
release `binutils 2.5, including assembler and linker' sometime?

Ken