Policy for removing target support

[Rainer Orth]

Hi Jan,

>>> 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 see: I'd assumed this was relatively common knowledge since it has
been this way for a decade and a half.

>> 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"?

In general, solaris2* is ok in all but config.bfd and configure.tgt.  I
doubt we have many cases where things differ, so you should be fine
without change.

The primary benefit of obsoletion/removal would be to make the supported
versions explicit.  As I said, I haven't yet checked in detail if/which
parts of code with anything < Solaris 10 removed from the test matrix
could go.

	Rainer

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Rainer Orth, Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University