Re: GCC 4.3 target deprecation proposals

["Joseph S. Myers" <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

Following my proposal for target architecture deprecations in 4.3
<http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2008-01/msg00335.html>, I now propose the
following list of individual targets to deprecate, based on the same
methodology previously described.  The patch to remove c4x and
deprecate the previously discussed target architectures crx, iq2000,
mt, stormy16 will be submitted shortly; the patch for the remaining
deprecations (only touching config.gcc and the release notes) will be
submitted later after any discussion.

* c4x to be removed before 4.3, as previously mentioned.

* Stray ns32k stanzas left in config.gcc after config/ns32k was
  removed to be removed.  Likewise, stray h8300-*-rtemscoff* and
  sh-*-rtemscoff* stanzas since *-*-rtemscoff* is marked as
  unsupported earlier in the file.

The following to be deprecated in 4.3 and removed in 4.4 (some time
after 4.3.0 is released) in the absence of activity to revive them
(which means at least testing from time to time and reporting they
work or sending and chasing up patches to fix them):

* crx, iq2000, mt, stormy16 (all configurations), as previously
  mentioned.

* strongarm*-*-*, ep9312*-*-*, xscale*-*-* (the alternative CPU names
  in target triplets for certain ARM targets).  There has been no
  activity recently using these aliases, and such aliases acted on by
  config.gcc are more problematic than those substituted by config.sub
  (for example, testcases need to include them in their target triplet
  lists).  If someone wishes to revive these targets, I think they
  should move to them being aliases processed by config.sub, with
  config.gcc checking the noncanonical name and selecting --with-cpu
  etc. options on that basis.

* parisc*-*-*, alias for hppa*-*-*.  Also apparently an unused alias
  handled by config.gcc that should move to config.sub if desired.

* m680[012]0-*-* aliases for m68k-*-*.  I see no activity using these
  aliases and they appear fully equivalent to --with-cpu options that
  already exist; anyone wishing the continue to use them can move them
  to config.sub and make config.gcc treat them as --with-cpu based on
  the noncanonical name.

* *-*-beos*

* *-*-kaos*

* *-*-linux*aout*

* *-*-linux*libc1*

* *-*-solaris2.[0-6], *-*-solaris2.[0-6].*, as proposed by Eric
  Botcazou.

* *-*-sysv*

* *-*-windiss*

* alpha*-*-unicosmk*

* hppa1.1-*-pro*

* hppa1.1-*-osf*

* hppa1.1-*-bsd*

* i[34567]86-sequent-ptx4*

* i[34567]86-*-nto-qnx*

* i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*

* i[34567]86-*-uwin*

* powerpc-*-chorusos*

* vax-*-bsd*

* vax-*-sysv*

* vax-*-ultrix*

There are many more targets I haven't listed, with a lack of test
results and varying amounts of evidence of use or testing of patches.
OSes needing more coverage in posted results include GNU HURD,
uClinux, OpenBSD, NetBSD (most platforms), *-*-kfreebsd*-gnu,
*-*-knetbsd*-gnu (BSD kernel with GNU libc), RTEMS, VxWorks, VMS,
DJGPP, Interix, WinCE, NetWare, LynxOS and s390x-ibm-tpf*; some people
may wish to propose deprecations of some of these if they feel they
are no longer being used with GCC.  There is good coverage for
bare-metal ELF targets, but none for bare-metal a.out and COFF targets
(perhaps we should consider deprecating all of those, on the
presumption that bare-metal use has moved to ELF and objcopy is likely
to be used in any case to produce a raw binary image; -pe targets are
not being tested either); and good coverage for GNU/Linux on many
platforms.  Darwin and Solaris are being tested on relevant platforms;
HP-UX is only being tested on hppa, not IA64.

One question of interest is whether some targets supporting both GNU
and non-GNU assembler can have use of non-GNU assembler deprecated.
If this could be done for alpha*-dec-osf[45]*, we could remove
mips-tdump and mips-tfile.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com