The problem is not with the kernel compile itself, but with the 2.12
"dssall" binutils test. Basically, recent binutils treats e500 as
effectively a separate architecture that happens to share *most* of
the opcodes with regular PowerPC. Any opcode which is not understood
by the e500 chip is either convert to an equivalent opcode which is
understood (IE: lwsync => sync), or failed with an error. This means
that the kernel compile aborts early telling me to upgrade to a newer
version of binutils.
$ echo dssall | powerpc-linux-as -many -me500
$ powerpc-linux-objdump -d a.out | grep 0:
0: 7e 00 06 6c dssall
$ powerpc-linux-as --version | head -1
GNU assembler (GNU Binutils) 2.21.51.20110309
What version of binutils does not work? (I also checked with
-me500x2, -me500mc, -mspe, and various combinations. lwsync
is indeed converted to a regular sync (well, "msync") for e500
and e500x2).
Segher