GNU binutils 2.17.50 retirement planning

[Ed Maste]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2018 at 10:52, Ed Maste <emaste at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> The most significant issue is
> sys/crypto/skein/amd64/skein_block_asm.s, and it makes extensive use
> of GNU macro extensions. I have looked at nasm and yasm but believe
> the macro extension support in those is less developed than in Clang's
> IAS.
>
> There are a number of files in stand/ tagged with CLANG_NO_IAS, in
> gptzfsboot, cdboot, zfsboot, boot2, and pxeldr. These could likely be
> removed now (they were added because Clang IAS did not support .codeNN
> long ago), but they need to be tested first because the generated
> output is slightly different.

In addition to those, on amd64 there are two other sets of .s files
currently assembled by GNU as:

* i386 boot components (stand/i386/{btx,kgzldr,libi386,mbr,pmbr})
* amd64 linuxulator (sys/amd64/linux{,32})

On i386 there are some others:

* kernel (sys/i386/i386)
* i386 linuxulator (sys/i386/linux)
* dtrace tests (cddl/contrib/opensolaris/cmd/dtrace/test/tst/i386)
* vm86 test tool (tools/test/vm86)

(Other architectures not yet investigated.)