Subject: Re: CVS [email-masked]: linux

From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 16:34:35 +0100

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 03:53:03AM +0000, [email-masked] wrote:

> Modified files:
> 	arch/mips64/kernel: Tag: linux_2_4 scall_o32.S 
> 
> Log message:
> 	Gas no longer supports redefining macros.

Bulletproofing 2.4 against newer tools is something that only makes limited
sense, especially wrt. to gcc 3.4 and newer.  Chances for any such changes
to be accepted upstream are slim - and the kernel has traditionally been
easily affected by overoptimization, so I recommend against gcc 3.4.  The
recommended compiler for 2.4 is still gcc 2.95.3 but except gcc 3.0 upto
gcc 3.3 is reasonable and can be considered well tested.

  Ralf

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 09:41:17 -0600 (CST)

> gcc 3.3 is reasonable and can be considered well tested.
gcc 3.2 has problems with certain optimizations as well. 3.2 should be
used with caution.

-Steve

---

From: "Maciej W. Rozycki" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 16:06:51 +0000 (GMT)

> gcc 3.3 is reasonable and can be considered well tested.

 I do agree in general, but given that the construct I've used has been 
supported by gas since 1995, there is no point in keeping our code broken.  
And binutils actually quite rarely trigger problems with Linux, while 
they've got improved significantly with the last few releases; unlike with 
GCC it's normally a good idea to use the latest version of binutils.

  Maciej

---

From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:34:41 +0100

> GCC it's normally a good idea to use the latest version of binutils.

I wasn't objecting to your patch; it's just that I expect some users to
upgrade to a recent binutils and gcc at the same time and that has good
chances to end up in a nice firework ;-)

  Ralf