Merge tag 'kbuild-thinar-v4.13' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/masahiroy/linux-kbuild

Pull Kbuild thin archives updates from Masahiro Yamada:
 "Thin archives migration by Nicholas Piggin.

  THIN_ARCHIVES has been available for a while as an optional feature
  only for PowerPC architecture, but we do not need two different
  intermediate-artifact schemes.

  Using thin archives instead of conventional incremental linking has
  various advantages:

   - save disk space for builds

   - speed-up building a little

   - fix some link issues (for example, allyesconfig on ARM) due to more
     flexibility for the final linking

   - work better with dead code elimination we are planning

  As discussed before, this migration has been done unconditionally so
  that any problems caused by this will show up with "git bisect".

  With testing with 0-day and linux-next, some architectures actually
  showed up problems, but they were trivial and all fixed now"

* tag 'kbuild-thinar-v4.13' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/masahiroy/linux-kbuild:
  tile: remove unneeded extra-y in Makefile
  kbuild: thin archives make default for all archs
  x86/um: thin archives build fix
  tile: thin archives fix linking
  ia64: thin archives fix linking
  sh: thin archives fix linking
  kbuild: handle libs-y archives separately from built-in.o archives
  kbuild: thin archives use P option to ar
  kbuild: thin archives final link close --whole-archives option
  ia64: remove unneeded extra-y in Makefile.gate
  tile: fix dependency and .*.cmd inclusion for incremental build
  sparc64: Use indirect calls in hamming weight stubs

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/process/changes.rst b/Documentation/process/changes.rst
index 3aed751e0cb5..adbb50ae5246 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/changes.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/changes.rst
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ you probably needn't concern yourself with isdn4k-utils.
 ====================== ===============  ========================================
 GNU C                  3.2              gcc --version
 GNU make               3.81             make --version
-binutils               2.12             ld -v
+binutils               2.20             ld -v
 util-linux             2.10o            fdformat --version
 module-init-tools      0.9.10           depmod -V
 e2fsprogs              1.41.4           e2fsck -V
@@ -75,10 +75,9 @@ You will need GNU make 3.81 or later to build the kernel.
 Binutils
 --------
 
-Linux on IA-32 has recently switched from using ``as86`` to using ``gas`` for
-assembling the 16-bit boot code, removing the need for ``as86`` to compile
-your kernel.  This change does, however, mean that you need a recent
-release of binutils.
+The build system has, as of 4.13, switched to using thin archives (`ar T`)
+rather than incremental linking (`ld -r`) for built-in.o intermediate steps.
+This requires binutils 2.20 or newer.
 
 Perl
 ----