Re: IBM S/370 and binutils

[Alan Modra <alan at SPRI dot Levels dot UniSA dot Edu dot Au>]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, David and Jannette Uczen wrote:

> I built binutils-2.9.5.0.14 with target=i370-elf, assembled an empty .s file
> to get an ELF binary. When I used readelf, it said the machine type was
> 0xf00f (unkown).
> 
> The source I got is at ftp://ftp.valinux.com/pub/support/hjl/binutils, to
> which I was directed by Linas Vepstas (http://www.linas.org) who is working
> on a port of Linux to S/370.
> 
> Is this not official? Thanks.

This is H.J. Lu's official release of binutils including the official
Linas Vepstas' IBM370 patches, which don't happen to yet be in the
official GNU binutils sources.  :-)

I can understand the confusion from someone exposed to free software
mainly through linux, as most (all?) linux distributions use H.J. Lu's
binutils.  Thus H.J.'s binutils are 'official' to most linux users.  H.J.
has supported linux with very rapid response to bugs and new feature
requests, while the Cygnus/FSF binutils releases have lagged somewhat.
(CVS development sources are available to everyone though).  Part of the
reason for the lag is that the Cygnus/FSF binutils releases need to 
support practically every architecture on the planet, while H.J. focuses
on architectures that run linux.  Also the FSF is rather strict about such
things as copyright assignment.

Ian, BTW, is the official grand-poobah binutils maintainer.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Lance Taylor <ian@zembu.com>
> >
> >As far as I know, the GNU binutils do not use that value.  The
> >official sources may be found at
> >    http://sourceware.cygnus.com/binutils
> >
> >There may be patches out there which use it.  If I get those patches,
> >I will bear your comments in mind.