On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 5:55 PM, Nan Xiao <xiaonan830...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I find there are binutils and binutils-2.17 in gnu/usr.bin/ dirctory > of OpenBSD source code. What's the difference between them? When I use > binutils command, such as "ar", it comes from binutils or > binutils-2.17? >
If you examine the output from building OpenBSD you'll see that the only files installed from the gnu/usr.bin/binutils directory (which is binutils version 2.15) are gdb and its documentation. That same build output will show that gas, GNU ld, strings, objdump, readelf, and the other 'binary utilities' are installed from the gnu/usr.bin/binutils-2.17 directory. If someone made gdb (a GPLv2 licensed version) build against binutils-2.17 and submitted a diff to do so in tree and thus eliminate the need for the old 2.15 binutils directory, that would be a moderately useful chunk of work. I saw "moderately" because the old GPLv2 versions of gdb don't understand newer versions of DWARF debugging information generated by clang and new gcc's, so the in-tree gdb is rapidly declining in utility already. Such a project, however, may be a good project for understanding tool chain, ELF, and build issue. Not an easy task, but even if the attempt fails whoever tries will almost certainly learn in proportion to their tenacity in the attempt. On the other hand, you really need to have access to most of the archs on which OpenBSD builds in order to test the change. An examination of the cvs logs for the gdb bits may be a first step to seeing what didn't work the last time someone (probably miod) tried to do that. Philip Guenther
