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Deprecating ARM FPA support (was: ARM Neon Tests Failing on non-Neon Target)
- From: Martin Guy <martinwguy at gmail dot com>
- To: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- Cc: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha at arm dot com>, "Joseph S. Myers" <joseph at codesourcery dot com>, Joel Sherrill <joel dot sherrill at oarcorp dot com>, "gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 05:11:29 +0100
- Subject: Deprecating ARM FPA support (was: ARM Neon Tests Failing on non-Neon Target)
On 5/11/10, Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> Richard Earnshaw wrote:
>
> > Speaking of which, we should probably formally deprecate the old arm-elf
> > derived targets in 4.6 so that we can remove them in 4.7.
>
> > Similarly, we should deprecate support for the FPA on ARM.
>
> I agree.
No one seems to have succeeded in getting arm-elf to work for some
years, so removing them seems to be no loss.
However, although no one currently sells FPA hardware, it is widely
supported as the only floating point model emulated by the Linux
kernel, and people have to use it when compiling stuff to run on OABI
systems, which include boards currently on the market based on ARMv4
(no t) such as the Balloon Board 2.0 as well as boards with more
recent CPUs where the manufacturer only supplies a LInux port for a
kernel version that predates EABI support such as the Armadillo range.
Dropping FPA support from GCC effectively makes the OABI unusable, and
often we are forced to use that by the environment supplied to us. Are
there significant advantages to removing FPA support, other than
reducing the size of the ARM backend?
M