On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 10:07 PM, David Brown <david.br...@hesbynett.no> wrote: > On 12/12/12 20:54, Robert Dewar wrote: >> >> On 12/12/2012 2:52 PM, Steven Bosscher wrote: >> >>> And as usual: If you use an almost 30 years old architecture, why >>> would you need the latest-and-greatest compiler technology? >>> Seriously... >> >> >> Well the embedded folk often end up with precisely this dichotomy :-) > > > True enough. > > >> But if no sign of 386 embedded chips, then reasonable to deprecate >> I agree. > > > I believe it has been a very long time since any manufacturers made a pure > 386 chip. While I've never used x86 devices in any of my embedded systems, > I believe there are two main classes of x86 embedded systems - those that > use DOS (these still exist!), and those that aim to be a small PC with more > modern x86 OS's. For the DOS systems, gcc does not matter, because it is > not used - compilers like OpenWatcom are far more common (ref. the FreeDOS > website). And for people looking for "embedded PC's", the processor is > always going to be a lot more modern than the 386 - otherwise they are not > going to be able to run any current OS. > > The only people I can think of that still actively compile for 386 as the > lowest common denominator are the BSD folks. Some of them still like to > compile with compatibility for 386 chips. But I have no idea if they need > 386 support in future gcc versions.
They are stuck with pre-GPLv3 GCC compilers anyway. ISTR we changed the default i?86 triple from i386 to i586 for 4.6, so we are already half-way through the deprecation. I'd say simply go ahead. Note that i386-freebsd is still listed as primary architecture though, so something has to be done about that first. Steering Commitee please? (I'd say drop *-freebsd from the list of primary/secondary archs entirely given that they are not at all happy with GPLv3 and not using still maintained compilers) Richard.
