[syslinux] Syslinux 6.04-pre1

[Ady]

> On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 6:00 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> > On 03/08/2016 02:53 PM, Gene Cumm wrote:
> >>
> >> Poma, in my opinion, this behavior means it's your/Fedora's responsibility
> >> to propose a change that distinguishes between broken and working NASM
> >> 2.11.06 or revert the commit in your/Fedora's build.
> >>
> >
> > Yes, it is highly problematic to have especially build tools with
> > version numbers that don't match upstream having different capabilities.
> >
> > It is further problematic that other bug fixes isn't pulled in.  2.11.06
> > is missing quite a few.  As NASM maintainer, I would be happy to work
> > with distributors to see what needs to be done to have a proper
> > maintenance branch.
> 
> NASM 2.11.06 was released 2014-10-17 while NASM 2.11.07 was released
> 2014-12-09 with the commit in question on 2014-11-29.  Syslinux 6.03
> was released 2014-10-06 and this issue was reported by 2014-11-19.
> With such a small timeframe between NASM releases and the long time
> before 6.04-pre1, the first pre-release since 6.03, I expected distros
> to actually move up to a working build instead of distributing the
> broken NASM like you used, not have to explicitly inform users their
> build environment is broken.
> 
> -- 
> -Gene
 
IIRC, the version / tagging was also somewhat less-than-perfect for 
NASM 2.11.07, and 2.11.08 was released just a couple of months after 
it. The later, 2.11.08, has been the latest stable version for more 
than a year now.

I would tend to think that these time-frames might be giving some 
degree of indication of the version that should be suggested, instead 
of NASM 2.11.06.

Since the release of 6.03, many commits in Syslinux's development have 
been related to the building environment, and the amount of items / 
changes that common final users would care about (aka would actually 
affect them) are not _that_ many (unfortunately).

I have a list of changes for the NEWS file since 6.03, including those 
that common final users won't care about (nor are supposed to). When 
the time comes, I'll be posting my list - and Peter might decide then 
to use it as a patch for NEWS, or might not - but I intend to skip the 
items that are not relevant for final users.

At this time, there are at least 4 (popular) distros that had (been 
forced) to deal with the gcc5+ issues for building Syslinux 6.03 (but 
not just these popular ones). Would you / anyone be surprised if the 
4th distro did not know about these gcc5+ issues? That they do have a 
relevant package maintainer? That they did not contact Syslinux 
upstream? That they did not know that other distros already have 
applied specific commits / patches so to successfully deal with this 
matter?

IMHO, the gcc5+ issues with Syslinux (or Syslinux's problems with gcc5+ 
if you'd rather put it this way) are probably an adequate topic for the 
new "Building" wiki page. Such information could be posted there, even 
when the current Syslinux git MASTER, and 6.04-pre1, are supposed to 
have these things solved.

In the future, if someone using some distro (with Syslinux 6.03) comes 
here asking to put this type of info in some document, I would point 
such user to the "Building" wiki page. I would tend to think that 
adding such (now partially irrelevant) information in the official 
documentation is going to add more noise than to contribute much.

Developers (and/or package maintainers) are welcome to contribute to 
the "Building" wiki page, and/or to the Syslinux wiki in general.

Regards,
Ady.


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