On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 12:22 PM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote: > GCC maintainers should therefore also consider the needs and interests > of the maintainers of other projects, in particular with the power that > GCC has to destroy complete ports.
We understand the importance of GCC and we do not deprecate a target without good reason. But you need to remember that we are a volunteer project, and do not have infinite amounts of time available to support dying targets. Someone has to support a target, and if no one steps forward then we have to deprecate it. > In Debian, we just had to kill of the PowerPCSPE port because GCC decided > to get rid of the backend despite Andrew Jenner working on fixing up the > backend. Eric Botcazou said that he didn't think the backend had to be > removed as it was separate from the other PowerPC backends. But that comment > was ignored and the backend removed and the Debian port killed off leaving > multiple users in frustration not being able to update their machines > anymore. If someone steps forward to support a target, it can be readded. But you aren't going to get much sympathy for the PowerPC SPE port. This was a problem for a long time. Freescale stopped supporting it long ago. IBM was forced to support it because it was part of the PowerPC port. IBM did the work to separate it, and then after a long period of no one touching it we had to deprecate it. But if someone is serious about fixing it, then it can be re-added. Ports have been re-added after deprecation in the past. There just needs to be someone willing to do the necessary work. > RISC-V hardware is expensive, too, and very hard to come by. The same > applies to VAX and PDP-11. So, I don't think this is a valid argument. There is a big difference. There are multiple companies supporting RISC-V development, including gnu toolchain development. There are no companies supporting VAX and PDP-11 toolchain development. And there are no companies supporting IA-64 toolchain development. Jim
