Policy for removing target support

[Rainer Orth]

Hi Jan,

>> let me address this from a different angle first:
>> 
>> I've just now tried to build current trunk on Solaris 8 (both sparc and
>> x86): compilation immediately fails
>> 
>> bfd/doc/chew.c: In function 'collapse_whitespace':
>> bfd/doc/chew.c:943:7: error: array subscript has type 'char' [-Werror=char-subscripts]
>> bfd/doc/chew.c: In function 'print':
>> bfd/doc/chew.c:1473:60: error: expected ')' before 'PRIdPTR'
>> bfd/doc/chew.c:1473:60: error: spurious trailing '%' in format [-Werror=format]
>> 
>> While <sys/int_fmtio.h> has several other PRId* macros, that one is
>> missing.  That file has used this since 2.41, but apparently no one
>> noticed.
>
> So there are really two aspects here: One is whether we can still build
> _on_ those old versions, and another is whether we should still support
> building _for_ those old versions. The "can build on" aspect can, in
> principle, be solved by using a newer compiler on those systems. Hence
> at the very least I think both aspects want dealing with separately.

true, but I still wonder what's the point between 10 and 14 years after
the fact?  I can fully understand conservatism in this respect, as is
evident by me supporting old OS versions in GCC for quite some time, but
at some point you have to make a cut.  I still maintain that untested
code is useless if not harmful by suggesting support that doesn't
actually work.

>> Btw., I've also noticed another candidate for removal: in a few places
>> powerpc*-*-solaris2* is still mentioned.  However, only Solaris 2.5.1
>> back in 1996 supported the platform and support was already removed in
>> Solaris 2.6 in 1997.  I never had hardware to even try it, its hardware
>> requirements making it difficult for anyone to use.  At least the target
>> triple is mentioned in a few places only: bfd/config.bfd, configure.ac,
>> and ld/configure.ac.  There may be other PowerPC-specific code to be
>> removed, though.
>
> Yes, I too was wondering about these when going through yesterday. I
> think we want to immediately deprecate them, and then drop them a
> release or two later. And yes, e.g. gas/config/tc-ppc.c has quite a
> few mentions of Solaris, which could then all go away.

In that particular case (an extreme niche within a niche) I wouldn't
even bother with deprecating but remove right ahead.  Should even a
single user still exist, they can easily use binutils 2.45 if they
absolutely need it.

I wonder what Nick and Alan think about this.

	Rainer

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Rainer Orth, Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University