This is a beta release of a completely rewritten binutils distribution.
The linker (ld) has been moved into a separate directory,
which should be ../ld.  Linker-specific notes are in ../ld/README.

These programs have been tested on various architectures.
Most recently tested are sun3 and sun4s running sunos4,
as well as Sony News running newsos3.
However, since this is a beta release taken directly from an
evolving source tree, there might be some problems.  In particular,
the programs have not been ported to as many machines as the
old binutils.  There are also features of the old versions
that are missing on the new programs.  We would appreciate
patches to make things run on other machines; especially welcome
are fixes for what used to work on the old programs!
(See ./TODO, as well a ../bfd/TODO and ../ld/TODO.)

Recent changes are in ./NEWS.

Unpacking and Installation -- quick overview
==========================

In this release, the binary utilities, the linker, the generic GNU include
files, the BFD ("binary file description") library, gprof, and getopt all
have directories of their own underneath the binutils-2.1 directory.
The idea is that a variety of GNU tools can
share a common copy of these things.  Configuration scripts and
makefiles exist to cruise up and down this directory tree and
automatically build all the pieces in the right order.

When you unpack the binutils-2.1.tar.Z file, you'll get a directory called
something like `binutils-2.1', which contains:

	DOC.configure  README         config/        configure*     ld/
	Makefile       bfd/           config.status* configure.in   libiberty/
	Makefile.in    binutils/      config.sub     include/       texinfo/

To build binutils, you can just do:

	cd binutils-2.1
	./configure [ --with-minimal-bfd=yes ]
	make
	make install # copies the programs files into /usr/local/bin by default.

The --with-minimal-bfd-yes flag is a temporary kludge.  Using it makes
the executables smaller, at the price of only being able to handle
the default binary file format.  A more flexible mechanism is planned.

This will configure and build all the libraries as well as binutils
and the linker.

The binutils can be used in a cross-development environment.
The file DOC.configure contains more information.

Porting
=======
Binutils-2.1 supports many different architectures, but there
are many more not supported, including some that were supported
by earlier versions.  We are hoping for volunteers to
improve this situation.

The major effort in porting binutils to a new host and/or target
architecture involves the BFD library.  There is some documentation
in ../bfd/doc.  The file ../gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo (distributed
with gdb-4.x) may also be of help.

If your system uses some variant of old-style a.out-format,
you can start with a copy of bfd/newsos3.c, and edit it to fit.
(You may also need to tweak bfd/aout-target.h.)
Alternatively, you could use the host-aout.c target.  This is a
special kludge that only works for native (non-cross) configurations.

Reporting bugs
==============
If you can't track down a bug and send suggestions/patches
for fixes, you should probably *not* be using this release.
We have little time to spend tracking down whatever random bugs you
may run into (except for configurations that Cygnus supports for
its customers).  The general place to send bug reports or patches
is to bug-gnu-utils@ai.mit.edu; you can also send them directly to
bothner@cygnus.com or sac@cygnus.com.


