Time to obsolete arm-symbian?

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 8/18/20 12:56 PM, Alan Modra wrote:
>> We are constantly building packages in Debian on ia64 with the latest versions
>> of gcc and binutils and I'm not aware of any such segfaults.
>>
>> Here is a full build log for a native build of binutils on ia64:
>>
>>> https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=binutils&arch=ia64&ver=2.35-2&stamp=1597338170&raw=0
>>
>> And here a full build log for a native build of a current gcc snapshot:
>>
>>> https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=gcc-snapshot&arch=ia64&ver=1%3A20200809-1&stamp=1597095427&raw=0
> 
> And note this on the ld testsuite:
> 
> # of unexpected failures	34
> 
> That is rather a lot of failures, a sign of a target that isn't being
> actively maintained.  Yes, we have quite a lot of targets like that in
> binutils, and I'm not too concerned when a target fails new tests due
> to some feature that isn't supported.  Segfaults on the other hand are
> a rather worse indicator of target health.

Sure, I'm not arguing that. It still works well enough for us though.
>> If binutils and/or gcc would actually be broken on ia64, wouldn't these builds fail?
>>
>> And, FWIW, the moment you kill off an architecture in binutils and/or gcc, you are
>> forcefully killing the Debian port without even asking downstream whether they're
>> okay with that.
> 
> No one has taken anything away from you.  On the contrary, my marking
> of ia64 obsolete is likely to get ia64 some much needed maintenance.

The problem is that this deprecation was made without any public announcement,
nested within a discussion thread that was unrelated to ia64 and with only
very short notice.

I don't think that's acceptable for a key project like binutils.

Thanks,
Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913