Re: Make MicroBlaze support DWARF EH (old Xilinx patch, needed for glibc build)

[Michael Eager <eager at eagerm dot com>]

On 01/02/2017 03:45 PM, Joseph Myers wrote:
> This patch, taken from
> <https://git.busybox.net/buildroot/tree/package/gcc/5.4.0/840-microblaze-enable-dwarf-eh-support.patch>
> and with a few formatting cleanups and an update for the removal of
> gen_rtx_raw_REG, enables DWARF EH support for MicroBlaze.
>
> This is needed for building glibc with a compiler that includes shared
> libgcc; right now all glibc builds for MicroBlaze are failing with my
> bot for lack of this support.  (It's dubious if we should have glibc
> ports at all where required support is missing in FSF GCC.)
>
> Tested building glibc with build-many-glibcs.py.  I have *not* done
> any other testing or any execution testing for MicroBlaze.  OK to
> commit?

I have two concerns;

1.  Lack of testing on MicroBlaze.  Although the patch presumably works
    in the Buildroot environment, that's not the same source base.

    I may be able to build and test this patch, but it will be a couple
    weeks before I can get to it.

2.  Ownership and copyright.  This is clearly not your authorship.
    Submission of a patch explicitly indicates that you are assigning
    your copyright interest in the patch to the FSF.  I don't believe
    that you have copyright to this patch and can't assign it to FSF.

    On multiple occasions, I have asked Xilinx to submit patches such
    as this one directly to the GCC/Binutils projects (assuming that
    they have a current FSF Copyright Assignment), or to give me
    explicit permission to do so on their behalf, as was the case when
    I originally submitted the MicroBlaze port to these projects.  For
    whatever reason, neither has occurred.

The first issue is procedural/technical and easily resolved.  The
second issue involves Copyright Law.  IANAL, but my understanding is
that a third party cannot take a patch from a non-FSF/GNU repository
and apply it to an FSF/GNU repository without the authors' agreement
and assignment of copyright. (If Buildroot were an FSF/GNU project,
then copyright would have already been assigned to FSF, presumably,
and accepting the patch into GCC would not involve any transfer of
ownership.)

Does anyone have any authority on this copyright issue?


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Michael Eager	 eager@eagercon.com
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