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Re: questions about adding target to Binutils source
- From: Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>
- To: "free.jesse" <free dot jesse at yahoo dot com>
- Cc: binutils at sourceware dot org
- Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:23:04 +0000
- Subject: Re: questions about adding target to Binutils source
- References: <20060207153051.96640.qmail@web37001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Hi Jesse,
1. What's the benefit to add a new target to Binutils
source?
The benefits are hard to quantify but they include such things as:
* Allowing a wider audience than you might be able to otherwise be
able to reach to have access to free tools for that particular target.
This can encourage people to use that target which might result in
sales, commissions or work for you.
* Kudos for having created the port, and peer review of your work.
* Contributing to the overall quality of the binutils project, and by
extension free software in general.
Note - contributing a target to binutils does involve a cost. In this
case it is giving up the copyright on the files that you contribute and
agreeing to sign this copyright over to the FSF. This allows other
people to see and modify the files that you contribute.
2. Is it allowable that modifying non-porting files
such as \gas\write.c?
Yes, but you need to be able to justify such changes. If the change is
not a bug-fix but rather to support some feature required by your
particular target then it is preferable to keep the changes to these
generic files as small as possible. This usually means adding a hook
which will default to the current behaviour but which can be overridden
on a per-target basis.
3. I work on a lower Binutils version(2.14). which cvs
version should i check in the patches to?
The current sources in the mainline of the binutils CVS repository.
(Which are effectively at version 2.16.91).
Does future version support the new target?
Yes and no. Whilst a target is maintained in a working condition it
will be retained in binutils releases. If a target is not maintained
then it is likely that it will become obsolescent over time and
eventually it will be removed from the mainline binutils sources. It
will still be in the CVS archive however so the sources will still be
available should anyone be interested.
> 4. Why should I look for someone to maintain the new
> target? What is the job of the maintainer I should
> look for?
Usually when a new target is contributed to binutils the contributer
volunteers to be a maintainer for that target. See the file
binutils/MAINTAINERS for a list of such people. A maintainer's duty is
to make sure that their target continues to work as the sources change
and new features are added, fix any target-specific bugs discovered by
themselves or reported on the mailing lists, and if they wish, to
improve the target support.
Cheers
Nick