HEADS UP: Merge of binutils 2.17

[Dimitry Andric]

Hi all,

For some time, I have been working on importing a newer version of
binutils into -current.  This updates our quite ancient 2.15 version to
the last version available under GPLv2, 2.17.50.  (Special thanks to
Nathan Whitehorn for his valuable feedback.)

As far as I know, all issues building and running the base system with
this version of binutils have been solved, so I am planning to merge it
into -current in approximately one week (e.g. Friday, 2011-01-14).

If you want to test, please checkout the project branch:

   svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/projects/binutils-2.17

or apply the following diff to r217118 or later (warning: very large
diff, might need handholding to apply successfully, and use -E while
patching):

   http://www.andric.com/freebsd/binutils/binutils-2.17-r217118-1.diff.xz

Then build world and kernel from the resulting source tree, and install
them.  There should be no directly visible changes, except for the newer
version number reported by as(1), ld(1) and so on:

   2.17.50 [FreeBSD] 2007-07-03

Please report any problems with either the base system, or ports that
come up as a result of this binutils update.