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Re: Deprecating ARM FPA support (was: ARM Neon Tests Failing on non-Neon Target)
- From: Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>
- To: Martin Guy <martinwguy at gmail 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 13:27:03 -0700
- Subject: Re: Deprecating ARM FPA support (was: ARM Neon Tests Failing on non-Neon Target)
- References: <AANLkTimkz9SCy1XXHOsduUsboMv-yi4DYFxkCljPdCqO@mail.gmail.com>
Martin Guy wrote:
> 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?
I think that maintainability of the ARM backend is indeed the major
benefit to dropping it. I'm surprised that people are still doing new
designs based on ARMv4 (not ARMv4T) systems, but if they are then I
suppose that's an argument for leaving the FPA bits hanging around. On
the other hand, it's not an argument for not *deprecating* them. We may
as well deprecate them now, and then we can remove them later. The
actual removal won't happen until at least 4.7, which is probably
another couple of years away.
Thanks,
--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713