From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ken Raeburn To: "David Edelsohn" Cc: gas2@cygnus.com, configure@cygnus.com Subject: Re: binutils snapshots no longer build gas Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 12:36:00 -0000 Message-id: <9504271936.AA00439@cujo.cygnus.com> References: <9504250637.AA35181@sandcastle.watson.ibm.com> X-SW-Source: 1995/msg00079.html The current state implies that GAS does not build or function at all. It should only imply that we don't currently recommend using it. I agree that making GAS the default system assembler may cause some problems for users, but not building GAS at all seems to be an incorrect solution at the opposite extreme. At IBM Watson, I have gas from binutils-2.5.2 installed as "gas" not "as". I think the biggest problem with the current distribution is that this debugging problem is hidden in a FIXME comment instead of in the GAS documentation for the AIX XCOFF configuration. I would let the user/installer decide whether s/he wants a partially functional GAS instead of implying that no functionality exists. Makes sense. But I still think the default for the relatively clueless user should be the safer path. In this case, not using gas. Perhaps we could change the top-level configure.in to include gas if "--with-gnu-as" is supplied. Also, AIX XAS has a bug not present in GAS which prevents it from assembling certain GCC output for the POWER/2 architecture. XAS incorrectly exits with an error when it see certain POWER/2 and POWER instructions utilized in the same assembler source file believing that it is an invalid combination. Hm.. This changes things. The user's going to lose either way. Perhaps it's worth re-evaluating whether the gas bug can be fixed. Mike Meissner is doing powerpc gas work at Cygnus right now; I've asked him to take a look. Is there a fixed assembler available from IBM? It would be worth mentioning in the gcc documentation whether or not gas would work. And it would make having gas available less critical.