Re: [PATCH 4/4] Add a ./bootstrap script to automate bundling and generating files

[Joseph Myers <josmyers@redhat.com>]

On Thu, 6 Jun 2024, Luke T. Shumaker wrote:

>    * config/patches/
>    * libdecnumber/patches/
>    * libiberty/patches/

In my view, rather than maintaining binutils-local patches to these 
directories, we should treat GCC and binutils as equally canonical for 
them; any change approved and applied in one tree but not the other should 
be treated as thereby approved for the other tree as well, and get 
committed there (post to the relevant patches list and commit, without 
seeking separate approval).  That way, the only differences between the 
two trees should be in the ChangeLog files (reflecting when changes were 
applied to the two trees).

The same applies to files at top-level present in both trees, except for 
ChangeLogs, README, MAINTAINERS and SECURITY.txt which are genuinely meant 
to be different: any difference between other top-level files in the two 
trees is a bug that should be reconciled by ensuring all patches have been 
applied to both places.  Also to files (other than ChangeLogs) in include/ 
that are present in both trees (but some files in include/ are 
legitimately present only in one of the two trees).

Effectively, rather than treating GCC as the upstream for any files, treat 
it as indicating a bug if GCC and binutils-gdb differ for various files - 
including toplevel ones that actually come from other sources such as 
libtool - but with neither tree as upstream of the other.

(Special-case exception: if one of binutils-gdb and GCC has updated 
autoconf/automake/libtool and the other one hasn't updated yet, there may 
temporarily be differences in such files - though if a change to work with 
newer versions of autoconf/automake doesn't break older versions, it 
should be applied to both trees.  This exception is because such updates 
can be complicated, so are more likely to happen if only one tree needs 
updating at a time.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
josmyers@redhat.com