I am willing to upgrade, but I just want to make sure why
I am doing it.
I assume it's in everyones best interest to avoid the older
as86 and ld86 and this is the 'price' we pay. Thanks for
the work you've done to achieve this.
On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Chris Noe wrote:
> Yes, there was also supposed to be a hunk in the patch that removed all
> references of binutils 2.8 from the Changes and made 2.9.1.0.7 the
> absolute minimum. Of course I managed to get more caught up in the code
> and let the documentation slip. :)
> Yes the upping of the version is inconvenient, but really for a good
> reason -- 2.9.1 is still not the most optimal (2.9.5 would be), but 2.9.1
> is present and in (almost?) every modern distribution; the time has come
> to up the minimum, and it has (expectedly) caused some problems. I
> wouldn't have done it except for the fact that any binutils earlier than
> that have trouble compiling the most basic 16 bit code. I'd love to make
> it a more recent version, but as we've seen, the lowest version
> recommended is often the version most often used :)
I try to follow the minimum recomendations in the Changes file, and
use it to keep my system up to data. The system I am running is
derived from a 1995 slackware distribution, and have upgraded it through
3 computers. (I have another system running from a 1993 install)
I believe that there are many others that do not wish to
install whole fresh 'modern' distributions when what we have has been working
for many years.
> > Chris Noe says that "This thing has been tested by many people"
> > but if this is what made it into linux-2.3.21 then none
> > of those people were running binutils 2.8.1.0.23.
>
> Right, because 2.9.1.0.7 is the absolute minimum; anything below that is
> *KNOWN TO MISCOMPILE* this code.
So you are saying, before this patch 2.8.1.0.23 was the minimum, but
now that THIS code is added that 2.9.1.0.7 is the minimum.
Was there anything wrong with 2.8.1.0.23 except for the boot code?
> I wouldn't be surprised if other asms
> around the kernel were compiled wrong (or at least sub-optimally) with
> older binutils.
Could you explain what you mean here a bit more please?
What are some examples of sub-optimally assembled code that
will be more optimally assembled when using 2.9.1.0.7?
Are you refering to relative branch optimizations.
I'm not really a fan of 'optimizing' assemblers :-)
> > I didn't here back from an Chris Ricker
> > Re: bbootsect.s Error: base/index register must be 32 bit register
> > on updating Documentation/Changes to reflect this new requirements for
> > binutils clearly.
>
> It's in the works, and in a diff going into 2.3.22.
>
> Chris Noe
> (stiker@northlink.com)
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