Re: [PATCHES] gnu: linux-libre: Full retpoline support on x86 [spectre mitigation]

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

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On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 10:09:41PM -0800, Chris Marusich wrote:
> Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:
> 
> > Here are two patches that:
> >
> > * Add gcc-7.3.0-RC-20180117, which includes support for retpoline.
> > * Use gcc-7.3 to build linux-libre on x86 systems.
> 
> Awesome!  Thank you for this.
> 
> > My question is: should we push these patches to 'master' now, or should
> > we wait until gcc-7.3 is released (possibly as soon as January 24)?
> 
> Since GuixSD makes it easy to roll back the entire system if it turns
> out there's a problem with the new kernel, I think we should just do it.

Agreed, the risk seems low. The only issue is that we (and anyone not
using substitutes) will have to build GCC 7 and linux-libre twice in a
short period of time, which could be annoying.

However, I don't have experience with GCC release candidates; I assume
they are of high quality.

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