Policy for removing target support

[Jan Beulich]

On 11.09.2025 12:59, Rainer Orth wrote:
>>>> As to the "building for", my earlier question still didn't get a clear
>>>> answer (or maybe what seemed clear to you didn't end up clear for me): As
>>>> indicated, I'm having trouble matching the version numbers (e.g. 10) with
>>>> what we have in the two configure scripts in question. Which in turn
>>>> makes it impossible for me to understand what parts you think can be
>>>> dropped there.
>>>
>>> Right now, I'd be dropping primarily the bfd/config.bfd and
>>> ld/configure.tgt snippets pertaining to pre-Solaris 10 versions.
>>
>> I understand that; what I don't understand is which of the entries this
>> covers. We don't have anything named e.g. "solaris9" in binutils.
> 
> that's because config.guess has kept the Solaris 2.x nomenclature even
> after Sun changed the naming from Solaris 2.7 to Solaris 7 immediately
> before the release.  The Solaris name was used for the OS as a whole,
> while the core OS is still called SunOS 5.7.  Since the configure triple
> is derived from uname -s (SunOS) and -r (5.7), you still arrive at
> *-*-solaris2.7.  Much of this is handled by wildcards in config.bfd and
> configure.ld so not immediately visible in those scripts.  My overview
> of new cases upthread intends to make this more explicit.

Right, just that you didn't map the versions to our numbering scheme,
thus leaving things unclear to anyone not familiar with the odd mapping
that you describe above.

> I know this can be confusing, but that's the way things are.
> 
> If the obsoletion/removal would go through, everything except
> *-*-solaris2.1[01]* would go and *-*-solaris2.[0-9]* be rejected
> in config.bfd.

That's what I was fearing. People (like me) may have got used to simply
saying "solaris2" in target specifiers. Sure, I (and others) can adjust
their scripts and habits, but would that be for any gain? IOW would any
actual code simplification result afterwards? Or in yet different words,
have I perhaps failed to properly test the Solaris ports by saying just
"2"?

Jan