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Re: Discussion: Removal of mips half-pic
- From: Michael Meissner <meissner at spectacle-pond dot org>
- To: Eric Christopher <echristo at redhat dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 12:08:13 -0500
- Subject: Re: Discussion: Removal of mips half-pic
- References: <1007455899.26911.8.camel@ghostwheel.cygnus.com>
On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 12:51:36AM -0800, Eric Christopher wrote:
> Hi all,
> I thought I'd throw this out here since as far as I can tell it isn't
> used anymore, but other comments are welcome. I'm thinking of removing
> the half-pic support from the mips backend. I can't think of a current
> use for it and don't believe it's been used in years. Are there any
> suggestions for a timeline, or can anyone think of a reason to keep it
> around?
The only time it was used was in OSF/1.0 (from OSF, not from DEC), which used
the OSF/rose object format (roughly 1990 time frame). OSF/1.1 used the
standard ELF tools (and no longer supported the MIPS anyway). I asked on the
OSF alums mailing list, and could find no extant users of the MIPS half-pic
stuff (which was sort half-baked anyway, and required you to pass -l options at
compile time for the libraries you intended to use). I think there may have 1
or 2 people with 386/486's with the x86 half-pic stuff, but they weren't
getting new compilers. I would drop support for the osfrose object file format
at the same time (from mips, x86, and ns32k). I've been meaning to do it for
years.
--
Michael Meissner, Red Hat, Inc. (GCC group)
PMB 198, 174 Littleton Road #3, Westford, Massachusetts 01886, USA
Work: meissner@redhat.com phone: +1 978-486-9304
Non-work: meissner@spectacle-pond.org fax: +1 978-692-4482