linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/4] Make gcc-8.1 and binutils-2.30 the minimum version

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <20250407164151.GB2536@sol.localdomain>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2025 09:41:51 -0700
From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...nel.org>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...nel.org>
Cc: linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@...nel.org>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Brian Gerst <brgerst@...il.com>,
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
	Marc Zyngier <maz@...nel.org>, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
	Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@...nel.org>,
	Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>,
	Nicolas Schier <nicolas@...sle.eu>, Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.com>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Uros Bizjak <ubizjak@...il.com>, Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
	linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-raid@...r.kernel.org, x86@...nel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/4] Make gcc-8.1 and binutils-2.30 the minimum version

On Mon, Apr 07, 2025 at 11:41:12AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
> 
> x86 already requires gcc-8.1 since linux-6.15-rc1, which led me to
> actually go through all  version checks and make this is the minimum
> for all architectures.
> 
> Most of the actual resulting changes are actually for raising the
> binutils version, which eliminates version checks on x86 and arm64.
> 
> Arnd Bergmann (4):
>   kbuild: require gcc-8 and binutils-2.30
>   raid6: skip avx512 checks
>   x86: remove checks for binutils-2.30 and earlier
>   arm64: drop binutils version checks

This is intended to supersede the patches from Uros that removed checks for
binutils < 2.25, right?  See:

* https://lore.kernel.org/linux-crypto/20250404074135.520812-1-ubizjak@gmail.com/
* https://lore.kernel.org/linux-crypto/20250404074135.520812-2-ubizjak@gmail.com
* https://lore.kernel.org/linux-crypto/20250404074135.520812-3-ubizjak@gmail.com/

If we can indeed bump up the requirement to 2.30, that would be great.

Just a note though: I recently added VAES and VPCLMULQDQ instructions to
BoringSSL, which increased the binutils requirement of building BoringSSL to
2.30, and this caused issues in a downstream project; e.g. see
https://github.com/briansmith/ring/issues/2463.  Specifically people complained
about being unable to build on Amazon Linux 2 and CentOS/RHEL/Oracle Linux 7.

So I just thought I'd mention that, based on past experience with this sort of
thing, those are the specific cases where it seems people are most likely to be
trying to use binutils < 2.30.

But if those distros are not going to be supported any longer (without
installing newer tools on them), or even are already unsupported due to the gcc
requirement, bumping up the binutils requirement to 2.30 sounds good to me.

- Eric