Re: Port to binutils without assembler

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Galit,

> I'm a member of  a  team at National Semiconductor, which develops
> and supports a development toolset for National Semiconductor's
> CompactRISC CPUs. The compiler, linker and debugger are a gnu based
> port (currently for CR16C).
>
> We are planning to begin the process of submitting the port -
> initially to binutils - and we have a preliminary question:
> can we submit to binutils w/o the assembler ?

This is actually quite a complex question.  One the hand, the FSF is
very reluctant to accept any contributions which will make a user
reliant on proprietary software.  Their goal is to free software from
ownership and instead put it in the public domain.  So although a
binutils linker for the CR16C might be nice, on its own it is not
enough to create a free set of tools for the architecture.

On the other hand, by accepting and making available a free linker,
the binutils project might encourage CompactRISC CPU users to develop
and release a port of GAS as well.  Thereby achieving the goal of a
completely free set of binary utilities for the architecture.

> This is because the assembler is currently not ported to gnu.

Does this mean that you do have plans to port GAS to the CompactRISC
architecture ?  If so, do you also plan to contribute this port
if/when it is complete ?

> We would be willing to assign the assembler's (proprietary) source
> code to the FSF under GPL, if this were to help.

It would certainly help.  With a free assembler, even if it is not
GAS, a programmer would be able to obtain a completely free set of
binary tools for the CR16C, which matches the FSF goals in this area.


So - in conclusion - yes the binutils project would be prepared to
accept a CR16C linker contribution, provided that:

  a. The appropriate FSF copyright assignments were made
  
& b. A free assembler was also available.  (This does not have to be
     GAS, although that would be nice).

Cheers
        Nick Clifton
        Binutils Head Maintainer