Deprecating/Removing Targets

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

Recently, there was discussion here about the next set of targets to
deprecate.  Here is the list that Zack posted (with i?86-*-win32 added
as per Christopher Faylor) and (i?86-*-vsta* removed as per Mark
Ferrell).

There was concern about whether to remove the targets from the
mainline until/unless they had been deprecated in an official release.

I think that the first few targets here (ARC, i960, m88k, ROMP) can be
safely removed at this point.  The reason is that these are ports
which never worked, or which have been broken for ages.  These ports
are very dead.  Fortunately, it is removing entire chips that also
makes the performance improvements Zack wants to make easier; some of
these changes are of the "touch-every-back-end" variety, and fewer
back ends makes that simpler.

The other targets (variants on existing chips, like mips*-*-ecoff*) I
think that we should deprecate in 3.3, and then remove after it has
been released.  Removing these targets will simply involving removing
headers and Makefile fragments -- things which don't get in the way as
much for other cleanups/improvements.

At the same time, these are areas where Richard Earnshaw's comments
about the difficulty of resurrecting things are less applicable --
these little header file fragments don't get changed nearly as much,
and they're much smaller.  It's resurrecting an entire port after the
world has changed that's harder.

So, my plan -- unless I hear otherwise -- is to:

(1) Post this list to gcc-anounce.

(2) Wait a week.

(3) Remove these targets:

	arc-*-*
        i960-*-*
        m88k-*-*
        romp-*-*

    from the mainline.

(4) A decorous period after the 3.3 release, remove the remaining
    targets, assuming no objections/maintainers appear.

I've cross-posted this to the SC, since that body may want to have
input on this procedure as well.

The complete list of targets follows.

--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark at codesourcery dot com


	arc-*-*
        i960-*-*
        m88k-*-*
        romp-*-*

        alpha*-*-interix*
        alpha*-*-linux*libc1*
        alpha*-*-linux*ecoff*

        arm*-*-aout*
        arm*-*-conix*
        arm*-*-oabi
        strongarm-*-coff*

        hppa1.0-*-osf*
        hppa1.0-*-bsd*
        hppa1.[01]-*-hpux[789]*
        hppa*-*-hiux*
        hppa*-*-lites*
        hppa*-*-mpeix*

        i?86-ncr-*
        i?86-sequent-*
        i?86-moss-*
        i?86-*-netware
        i?86-*-freebsd2*
        i?86-*-netbsd*aout*
        i?86-*-linux*aout*
        i?86-*-moss*
        i?86-*-sysv3*
        i?86-*-interix # not interix3
        i?86-*-win32

        m68000-hp-bsd*
        m68000-hp-hpux*
        m68000-sun-sunos*
        m68000-att-sysv*
        m68k-atari-sysv*
        m68k-motorola-sysv*
        m68k-ncr-sysv*
        m68k-plexus-sysv*
        m68k-tti-*
        m68k-crds-unos*
        m68k-cbm-sysv*
        m68k-ccur-rtu*
        m68k-hp-bsd*
        m68k-hp-hpux*
        m68k-sun-mach*
        m68k-sun-sunos*
        m68k-*-linux*aout*
        m68k-*-linux*libc1
        m68k-*-psos*

        mips*-*-ecoff*
        mips-sni-sysv4
        mips64orion-*-rtems*

        powerpc*-*-sysv*  # generic only; consider -elf instead
        powerpc*-*-linux*libc1
        rs6000-ibm-aix[123]*
        rs6000-bull-bosx
        rs6000-*-mach*

        sparc-*-aout*
        sparc-*-netbsd*aout*
        sparc-*-bsd*
        sparc-*-chorusos*
        sparc-*-linux*aout*
        sparc-*-linux*libc1*
        sparc-*-lynxos*
        sparc-hal-solaris2*
        sparc-*-sunos[34]*
        sparclet-*-aout*
        sparclite-*-coff*
        sparclite-*-aout*
        sparc86x-*-aout*

        v850-*-rtems*

        vax-*-bsd*
        vax-*-sysv*
        vax-*-netbsd*aout*
        vax-*-vms*