[Aboriginal] binutils tarballs...

[Rob Landley]

On 09/26/2012 09:32:02 PM, idunham at lavabit.com wrote:
> Hello,
> Binutils release-style tarballs can _almost_ be built using
> 
> make -f src-release binutils.tar.bz2 MAKEINFO=makeinfo #or true
> 
> There will be a binutils-2.17.50.tar.bz2 file, but I forget whether it
> lands in $PWD or ../
> 
> However, there is still one catch:
> one file (something/*.texinfo, IIRC) isn't built.
> You'd need to rename it or manually invoke makeinfo, then make again.

Is the binutils tarball aboriginal-hg is currently using working for  
you?

> Also, you may want to check that all the needed files are included
> (diff/sort -u the list of files in 2.17 & 2.17a for a general idea).   
> This
> is allegedly the reason that the original tarballs got removed.

Nah, the extra files they added (which are under gplv3) were never  
needed to build anything. (That's why binutils 2.17 could ship without  
them). What they added were the "preferred form for editing". A bit  
like shipping the makefiles without shipping the autotools files.

Since I prefer hacking the makefiles _anyway_, I'm pretty happy  
ignoring a source format I never needed, never wanted, and don't care  
about. "Preferred" is a judgement call here, if I need to hack up  
something some other tool generated, I'm pretty ok with this. They  
shipped it for years without _noticing_, and then couldn't track down  
versions under the original license, so it can't be all _that_  
preferred now can it?

Rob