Re: quality of IA-64 bits in 2.11

["David O'Brien" <obrien at FreeBSD dot org>]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 09:50:43AM +0930, Alan Modra wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 11:17:11AM -0700, David O'Brien wrote:
> > Are there known [semi-serious]
> > bugs in the 2.11 branch that have fixed in the HEAD but not merged into
> > the 2.11 branch?
> 
> Yes, and not just ia64 specific.
> 
> I suspect that most people using ia64 binutils either use sources.redhat.com
> CVS trunk, or one of H.J. Lu's binutils releases (effectively a CVS
> snapshot with a few of HJ's patches).  HJ's releases provide some
> insulation from CVS trunk instability, but will have all the latest fixes.

Upon re-reading this, I would like to bring up the issue of the culture
and habit of the need for merging fixes from the trunk to the release
branch.

The non-Linux Binutils using community cannot wait a year to get serious
bugs fixed since they often aren't merged from HEAD.
It would be nice to increase the awareness that when someone commits a
serious bug fix, they try to commit a merge of it also.  Some may bring
up the issue of not "rocking" the release branch, but by your own
admission there aren't that many people using the released Binutils due
to Linux not using it, and many also use a CVS snapshot.  Speaking for
the FreeBSD community, we would not mind the minor risk of a little bit
more dynamic branch for the added benefits.

-- 
-- David  (obrien@FreeBSD.org)