On 4/18/24 7:53 AM, Thomas Huth wrote:
On 18/04/2024 05.27, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
Tomorrow I plan to push patches to mark the nios2 target as obsolete
in GCC 14.
Background: Intel has EOL'ed the Nios II processor IP and is now
directing their FPGA customers to a RISC-V platform instead.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/781327/intel-is-discontinuing-ip-ordering-codes-listed-in-pdn2312-for-nios-ii-ip.html
The Nios II hardware on loan from Intel that we were using for testing
at Mentor Graphics/Siemens was returned around the first of the year.
For some time we had been using QEMU to test the nios2-elf target, but
we never had a QEMU test harness set up that would boot the Linux
kernel, and user-mode QEMU on this target is too buggy/unmaintained to
use for primary testing. So the current situation is that none of the
listed maintainers for any of the GNU toolchain components have access
to a fully working test configuration any more, we have all moved on
to new jobs and different projects, Intel has also moved on to a
different platform, and our former contacts on Intel's Nios II team
have moved on as well. It seems like it's time to pull the plug.
Therefore I'd like to mark Nios II as obsolete in GCC 14 now, and
remove support from all toolchain components after the release is
made. I'm not sure there is an established process for
obsoleting/removing support in other components; besides binutils,
GDB, and GLIBC, there's QEMU, newlib/libgloss, and the Linux kernel.
But, we need to get the ball rolling somewhere.
Thanks for the heads-up, Sandra! FWIW: QEMU already marked the nios2
target as deprecated, too, and plans to remove it in version 9.1 (in
autumn this year).
Thank you and sorry for being inactive for so long around nios2.