So... I decided to tackle the reason why we were slacking on bsd for binutils. Basically, 2.18 isn't keyworded because we cannot build the kernel with it. The reason is that it needs to link SYSV object which 2.18 does not recognize; snapshots of binutils are fixed in that regard: Changes from binutils 2.18.50.0.2: [...] 2. Support link in Linux object files on FreeBSD. PR 4424. [...] The error is the same as on: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5179 The original bug report is at: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4424 The discussion: http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-10/msg00215.html And the final patch: http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-10/msg00262.html I've backported it and that would allow us to rekeyword 2.18 if it could be merged, I'll attach the patch in a minute.
Created attachment 153975 [details, diff] backported patch If that is acceptable to merge in 2.18, please add ~x86-fbsd keyword to it while adding the patch or poke me for doing it. I'll test/get somebody to test sparc-fbsd later.
Patch applied cleanly and yielded a working linker for me. I emerged and ran emacs to test it. It's cool that all you have to do is drop the patch file in /etc/portage/patches/i686-gentoo-freebsd6.2/sys-devel/binutils-2.18 and it will be automagically applied when you emerge binutils.
patch added to binutils-2.18-r2
