Re: x86 fpu

[Stan Shebs <shebs at cygnus dot com>]

   Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:11:22 -0400 (EDT)
   From: Kevin_Hendricks <khendricks@admin.ivey.uwo.ca>

   For example, before Kevin Buettner officially joined gdb, the powerpc camp was 
   out on its own. Many months ago (a year?) we tried to get gdb to support PPC in 
   gdb 4.17 by contributing a patch which was rejected since its author (Kevin 
   Buettner) had not recently signed a copyright assignment (although he had in the 
   past).  We requested the proper forms but nothing ever came from it.

Actually, all that did happen a while back - it ended up requiring
some negotiation between Metrowerks' president and RMS (amusing to
think about), since Kevin B was working for MW at the time.  I think
we're all glad that MW, which might someday come to regard GDB as a
competitor on LinuxPPC, does not have a legal way to interfere with
its development...

I must confess I'm not up on the technical state of LinuxPPC patches
however; I remember Kevin B wanting to make some further changes
before incorporating.  Kevin?

   Meanwhile H.J. Lu's gdb included ppc support and even includes linuxthreads 
   support (which finally made it possible for me to debug native_threads JDK's as 
   part of the Blackdown effort). If I had waited for "official" support, all 
   development would have ground to a halt long ago.

   Basically, H.J. Lu's tools have simply been a big help.   
   His tools have filled a need that the GDB effort should have been filling.  If 
   they had, there would have been no need for a splinter in the first place (as I 
   think Stan pointed out).

It's never going to be possible for FSF GDB to have the latest version
of every code bit that is under development.  If nothing else, most of
the Linux folks take a rather cavalier attitude towards copyright
ownership, and FSF policy does not allow us to do that for GDB.
(complaints to rms@gnu.org)  However, we should always be trying to
stay as current as possible.


								Stan