83 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
83 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
This is a beta release of a completely rewritten binutils distribution.
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The linker (ld) has been moved into a separate directory,
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which should be ../ld. Linker-specific notes are in ../ld/README.
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These programs have been tested on various architectures.
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Most recently tested are sun3 and sun4s running sunos4,
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as well as Sony News running newsos3.
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However, since this is a beta release taken directly from an
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evolving source tree, there might be some problems. In particular,
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the programs have not been ported to as many machines as the
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old binutils. There are also features of the old versions
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that are missing on the new programs. We would appreciate
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patches to make things run on other machines; especially welcome
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are fixes for what used to work on the old programs!
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(See ./TODO, as well a ../bfd/TODO and ../ld/TODO.)
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Recent changes are in ./NEWS.
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Unpacking and Installation -- quick overview
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==========================
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In this release, the binary utilities, the linker, the generic GNU include
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files, the BFD ("binary file description") library, gprof, and getopt all
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have directories of their own underneath the binutils-2.1 directory.
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The idea is that a variety of GNU tools can
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share a common copy of these things. Configuration scripts and
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makefiles exist to cruise up and down this directory tree and
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automatically build all the pieces in the right order.
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When you unpack the binutils-2.1.tar.Z file, you'll get a directory called
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something like `binutils-2.1', which contains:
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DOC.configure README config/ configure* ld/
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Makefile bfd/ config.status* configure.in libiberty/
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Makefile.in binutils/ config.sub include/ texinfo/
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To build binutils, you can just do:
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cd binutils-2.1
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./configure [ --with-minimal-bfd=yes ]
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make
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make install # copies the programs files into /usr/local/bin by default.
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The --with-minimal-bfd-yes flag is a temporary kludge. Using it makes
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the executables smaller, at the price of only being able to handle
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the default binary file format. A more flexible mechanism is planned.
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This will configure and build all the libraries as well as binutils
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and the linker.
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The binutils can be used in a cross-development environment.
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The file DOC.configure contains more information.
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Porting
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=======
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Binutils-2.1 supports many different architectures, but there
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are many more not supported, including some that were supported
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by earlier versions. We are hoping for volunteers to
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improve this situation.
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The major effort in porting binutils to a new host and/or target
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architecture involves the BFD library. There is some documentation
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in ../bfd/doc. The file ../gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo (distributed
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with gdb-4.x) may also be of help.
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If your system uses some variant of old-style a.out-format,
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you can start with a copy of bfd/newsos3.c, and edit it to fit.
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(You may also need to tweak bfd/aout-target.h.)
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Alternatively, you could use the host-aout.c target. This is a
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special kludge that only works for native (non-cross) configurations.
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Reporting bugs
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==============
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If you can't track down a bug and send suggestions/patches
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for fixes, you should probably *not* be using this release.
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We have little time to spend tracking down whatever random bugs you
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may run into (except for configurations that Cygnus supports for
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its customers). The general place to send bug reports or patches
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is to bug-gnu-utils@ai.mit.edu; you can also send them directly to
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bothner@cygnus.com or sac@cygnus.com.
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