LPC2020NotesBinutils

Notes taken at the Binutils BoF

Attendees: 92

Topic: Future of Gold

no longer maintained by Google
still popular?
Ben Woodwards noted that the National Labs are disappointed it is going away. Looking at LLD
Nathan Sidwell noted that Facebook is in the same boat
questions over whether LLD has the needed functionality
Peter Zijlstra note that gold isblacklisted by kernel
- issues with linker script incompatibility
- could unblacklist if the bugs were fixed
not enough people active to maintain it
problem is parallel linking
- lots of cores today, but relatively slow
- can we add parallelism to GNU ld
- can elfutils add a linker
  - used to have one for x86 but rotted
do we need another linker project
- Ian Lance-Taylor's blog series on gold noted that ld architecture was inside out
Nick Desaulniers noted Google has switched to LLD

Topic: autogenerate ChangeLogs

GCC does this automatically, but you still have to write a ChangeLog in the commit message and checks you have all the right content
Nick Alcock noted the discipline that ChangeLog imposed was important, annoyance is in the administration
Nick Clifton noted that probably would need to coordinate with GDB
- Jakub Jelinek noted you can make an exception for certain directories

Topic: Closer ties with LLD

run each other's testsuite
feature and command line compatibility
Catherine Moore noted value of compatibility
Jakub Jelinek noted LLD is compatible, but ignores some options silently
Frank Ch Eigler noted that going overboard with compatibiltiy could stagnate both projects
shared mailing list?
- supported, particularly for kernel
- agreement to make it happen

Other: Integration of CGEN in binutils

Frank Ch Eigler, only issue is copyright assignment. Some of the code predates the RedHat copyright assignment.
It's currently licensed GPLv3+, multiple (C) holders
Action: Nick will ask the FSF

Other: Jose E Marchesi noted problem of duplicate gnulib tree within binutils-gdb