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Re: patch/proposal: obsolete configurations in 3.1
- From: Alan Lehotsky <apl at alum dot mit dot edu>
- To: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- Cc: Kevin Handy <kth at srv dot net>, Andi Kleen <ak at suse dot de>,Zack Weinberg <zack at codesourcery dot com>, "gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 11:02:38 -0400
- Subject: Re: patch/proposal: obsolete configurations in 3.1
- References: <3CBA0045.5090401@srv.net><24520000.1018880545@gandalf.codesourcery.com>
I'd like to take a middle position in this argument.
It seems to me that as long as a port has active maintainers that it
is eminently reasonable to include it in the FSF GCC distribution.
If it doesn't have a maintainer or an active community of users, then
we should feel no compunction about dropping it from the distribution.
In the case of the PDP-10 port, there are some real benefits that
will accrue from having GCC support. The PDP-10 port will find (and
hopefully fix) places where assumptions conserning
- byte size (8 bits - DEC-10 supports bytes from 1..36 bits long!)
- uniform pointers (DEC-10 has 3 different pointer formats)
It also gives us another example port to look at when trying to
figure out how to accomplish things for a new port with some strange
architectural features.
-- Al
At 7:22 AM -0700 4/15/02, Mark Mitchell wrote:
>>>pdp10-*
>>>
>>I wouldn't advise dropping the PDP10, since it is making a resurgance due
>>to the emulators that have become available. I believe this target is
>>actually fairly new.
>
>I'm going to take a position here that I'll likely get flamed for, but
>so be it. The mere existence of hardware or an emulator for same does
>not mean that GCC should support that target. Neither does the existence
>of a set of users for that target. Instead, I believe that there should
>be active development of new code for something approximating production
>use by a relatively large number of people. (People can always maintain
>their own GCC port to any chip they like, but I don't think the FSF
>should do so.)
>Obviously, this is a grey area, but I can't imagine the PDP-10, even
>in emulation, being used for new development. (I do know that people
>are running real applications on these emulators, but my understanding
>was that many of these were old accounting applications for which the
>source was no longer available.)
>
>--
>Mark Mitchell mark@codesourcery.com
>CodeSourcery, LLC http://www.codesourcery.com
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