Re: Proposed targets to obsolete for 3.5, first pass

[Matt Thomas <matt at 3am-software dot com>]

At 08:39 AM 6/20/2004, Steven Bosscher wrote:
> vax-*
>   The most recent post of someone interested in the VAX was in April
>   last year[4], and it looked more like a joke than a serious interest
>   in the port (but you really should have look at the pictures of the
>   guy's "micro"-VAX box: http://williambader.com/museum/vax/vax.html).
>   Everone knows VAX is old.  Nobody has been manufacturing VAXes
>   since 1992.  There is no known free simulator, it is does not have
>   any ELF targets, it has a cc0 backend, and the most recent test
>   results I could find are more than two years old[5].
>   For GCC 3.4, vax-*-* was already obsoleted.  I'm not sure why vax-*
>   should stay, and I couldn't figure it out from earlier discussions.
>
>   [4] http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2003-03/msg00721.html
>   [5] http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-testresults/2002-09/msg00774.html

As someone pointed out, there is a free VAX emulator, simh.  Both
NetBSD and Linux are ELF targets and simh does boot NetBSD/vax.
Note that testsuite submission was by me.  I can actually build and
run a NetBSD/vax ELF userland (non-shared) using GCC 3.3.x.

On and off, I've been working on improving the GCC VAX support but
time limitations have limited my efforts.

I've love to rewrite the backend but it's currently beyond my current
abilities in gcc.  I have changes to the backend in my tree but
problems with the compiler (pre-changes) limits my ability to test
them.

The VAX is not dead and there's no reason to turn off life-support
equipment.

[One of the two existing GCC/vax maintainers.]

--
Matt Thomas                     email: matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry              www: http://3am-software.com/bio/matt/
Cupertino, CA              disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message.