Re: [PATCH] Fix PR target/16304: AIX 4.x forward reference proble

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

John David Anglin wrote:
> > > 	GCC releases often require newer versions of Binutils, GDB, or
> > > Glibc.  Without it, GCC may not build or be fully operational.  A
> > > GNU/Linux distributor may not support a system without the default system
> > > toolchain, requiring a complete system upgrade and new license for
> > > support.  This does not seem different than the AIX situation to me.
> >
> > I agree.
>
>
> The one difference is that AIX is not free software.

I'm not sure how that's relevant.

From the FSF's point of view (which is not the same as my personal 
opinion) AIX's non-freeness immediately makes it less important.

> For some reason, I spent the past couple of days trying to work
> through various bugs on the vax.  I believe that I now have a set
> of patches that will allow a full bootstrap except for the Ada
> runtime on the 3.3 and 3.4 branches.  Thus, it's possible to keep
> old systems going if there's a will.

Defintely true.  And I agree with your point that there's a balance 
between the cost of any particular port and the benefits it provides. 
In the particular case of AIX 4.3, I really don't know enough to comment 
about that.

--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark@codesourcery.com
(916) 791-8304