On 6/27/10, Gerald Pfeifer <ger...@pfeifer.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 May 2010, Richard Kenner wrote:
> > I think that's a critical distinction. I can't see removing a port just
> > because it's not used much (or at all) because it might be valuable for
> > historical reason or to show examples for how to do things.
>
> I'd say a port with
> zero known users should actually be removed.
FPA is very widely used. From day 0 until 2006 it was the only FP
model emulated by the Linux kernel and so in required by all operating
systems created up to that date.
Actively-maintained software distributions and recent ports of Linux
tend to use a different ABI ("EABI") whose default FP model is
user-space softfloat and does not require FPA code generation
(thankfully!), however there are many exiting software distributions
in current use that only support emulated hard FPA instructions. For
ARM boards without mainline Linux support whose manufacturers' kernel
ports predates 2.6.16, it is mandatory, as is also is for users who
just want to compile code for a given existing system that happens not
to be running a recent kernel and userspace.
M
