Re: [Etherboot-developers] GAS 2.95 for compiling etherboot 4.7.24

[Ken Y. <ke...@nl...>]

>Where can I download an upgrade for gas 2.95 alone?  I would assume you
>should also update ld, but do you have to upgrade the entire binutils?
>The GNU site (& mirrors) only distribute the full-blown binutils packages,
>and it is not clear which binutils version contains gas 2.95 (binutils-2.9.1
>?).

If you are using Linux, then rpm -qlp binutils-blah should show you the
files inside a RPM package, rpm -qip will show you the build notes. dpkg
should have a similar option. And FreeBSD will have their own scheme for
sure. Here's a tip. If you don't want to install the whole RPM, you
usually only have to extract the gas binary from such a package, with
something like:

	rpm2cpio binutils-blah | cpio -idmv /path/to/as/binary

But why not upgrade the whole package while you are at it?

>Also, a suggestion - if such a requirement exists, it would be helpful to
>mention it on the etherboot development site (maybe even provide a link to a
>site to obtain gas 2.95, or indicate "binutils vX.X.X or greater").  The
>only mention I found was buried in the change log, and that was seemed
>limited to 'recomended upgrade'.

It is or will be in the user manual, a statement that gas 2.95 is
required. It's also in the file INSTALL. I'm not sure of the
relationship between gas versions and binutil versions. I believe, but
I'm not sure, that binutils 2.x.y contains gas 2.x.y. BTW, the binutils
numbering scheme is confusing. It only make sense when you realise it
should really be 2.9.5 and that 2.10.0 is more recent.

If I point users to the GNU archive, it may not be the best place to
obtain updates if they are using a packaged Linux or FreeBSD distro. In
short, I'd rather users exercise a bit of judgement.