Re: Partial WebAssembly backend

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Pip,

> I'd appreciate any questions, comments or advice, and in particular
> I'd like to ask whether it is possible in theory to include this
> backend in the standard GNU binutils distribution; some work would be
> required on my end to do that, and I'm not sure it's worth the effort
> if there is no chance of inclusion at the end of the process.
 
We would be delighted to have WebAssembly support in the binutils.

As others have already said this will require that a suitable FSF 
copyright assignment is in place to cover *all* of the contributed
code, but that is the only major obstacle.

There are some other points that will help make the integration of the
WebAssembly sources into the FSF binutils easier:

  * Please follow the GNU Coding Standards.

    (I do not see this as being a big issue.  I glanced at some of the
    code on github and the formatting looks fine to me).

  * Please include some GAS and LD testsuite tests to make sure that
    the assembler and linker are working, and continue to work as time
    goes on.

    Also - it really helps to make sure that the testsuites do not show
    any failures for the WebAssembly target.  Or if there are failures,
    then patches to mark those tests as "expected failure" and suitable
    accompanying explanation would be really appreciated.

  * Documentation!  Any assembler or linker features or command line
    options specific to WebAssembly really should be documented in the 
    appropriate locations.

  * A maintainer or two.
    (I think that you have already volunteered for this, so thanks very 
    much).

That's it.  And welcome on board.

Cheers
  Nick