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Re: Recent removal of a.out and COFF support for sparc
On 08/08/2018 06:03 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>
>> On Aug 8, 2018, at 5:35 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>>
>> On 08/08/2018 11:27 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>> ...
>>> Nor are there plans to trim the target set of gcc down to "current mainstream targets", whatever that might mean.
>>
>> Well, yes, I just linked one of those gcc targets - the e500 target - earlier
>> today. The m68k target in gcc is also constantly under threat because of the
>> planned cc0 removal. Both the e500 and the m68k targets in gcc are actively
>> used. The m68k target is still very popular despite its age.
>
> As others have said, you need a maintainer for a target. I don't know what the story is for the two platforms you mentioned. Maintaining an older not so technically demanding platform is not all that hard. I took on the pdp11 target some years ago because I wanted to make sure it stayed alive, and it still is. For that matter, I recently did the CC0 conversion for it. It's not that big a job, and probably easier for the m68k.
Actually m68k is almost certainly tougher than pdp11, both in terms of
size for the mechanical parts and in terms of complexity. We've got a
machine description that is 3x larger, multiple condition codes and a
whole lot of effort already spent to do redundant tst/cmp elimination on
the m68k. Replicating it in the non-cc0 world will be nontrivial.
I'm hoping my son will wrap up the h8 stuff and move on to the m68k.
Regardless of m68k state I want to declare all cc0 ports deprecated in
gcc-9. A stretch goal is to declare all non-LRA targets as deprecated.
Note this is personal opinion and is not an official statement of policy
or intent by the GCC project.
jeff