Re: Backporting minor fix to older gdb releases

[Luis Machado <luis.machado@arm.com>]

On 3/20/23 04:18, Joel Brobecker wrote:
>>> FWIW, there is no real policy that I know of.
>>>
>>> We have been known to accept patches on release branches past the .2
>>> release. It's been very rare, though. In all cases, the push was done
>>> with the understanding that there would likely not be another official
>>> release off that branch, so that was purely for the benefit of people
>>> who wanted to build from the HEAD of a release branch rather than from
>>> an official release.
>>>
>>> Whether we should be doing it in this case, I don't have a strong
>>> opinion. I think Andrew is making good points, and I'm wondering
>>> whether it will actually serve anyone if we backport the patches.
>>> On the other hand, are the patches extra safe? If they are, perhaps
>>> in the spirit of not standing in the way of someone willing to make
>>> it better for others...
>>>
>>
>> All reasonable points, I agree.
>>
>> The patch (a single one) is mostly trivial reordering of code to fix a
>> pseudo-register number that we get wrong for the pauth feature. It
>> helps in that it allows people to use gdb 9/10/11/12 with a new qemu.
>> Otherwise those gdb's will just crash on connection, with no way
>> around it.
> 
> This part I understood. The part I wasn't sure about is whether
> there was any known entity that would pick the branch update up,
> and rebuild with it.

I was thinking the main distros would pick it up (but can't be sure they will).

> 
> Nevertheless, this is not critical at all. As long as the patch
> is extra safe (which it looks like it can't possibly cause things
> to be worse, except in the pauth case which is already crashing),
> I don't see a reason why we should block the patch's inclusion
> in our older branches. You can go right ahead.
> 

Thanks Joel. I'll do this over the course of the week/next week.