On 13/12/2012 11:11, Richard Biener wrote:
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.
Is there much to be gained from keeping 486 support - or alternatively,
is there much to be gained by dropping it at the same time? If 586 has
been the standard configuration for the last two releases of gcc, and
686 has been the standard for most 32-bit x86 Linux distributions for a
number of years, perhaps it is worth deprecating 486 (and maybe even
586) at the same time. After all, "deprecating" targets does not mean
that they are dead - users can always use older versions of gcc, and can
argue against the deprecation if it is affecting them.
David
