Re: Deprecate i386 for GCC 4.8?

[Richard Biener <richard dot guenther at gmail dot com>]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 10:07 PM, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
> On 12/12/12 20:54, Robert Dewar wrote:
>>
>> On 12/12/2012 2:52 PM, Steven Bosscher wrote:
>>
>>> And as usual: If you use an almost 30 years old architecture, why
>>> would you need the latest-and-greatest compiler technology?
>>> Seriously...
>>
>>
>> Well the embedded folk often end up with precisely this dichotomy :-)
>
>
> True enough.
>
>
>> But if no sign of 386 embedded chips, then reasonable to deprecate
>> I agree.
>
>
> I believe it has been a very long time since any manufacturers made a pure
> 386 chip.  While I've never used x86 devices in any of my embedded systems,
> I believe there are two main classes of x86 embedded systems - those that
> use DOS (these still exist!), and those that aim to be a small PC with more
> modern x86 OS's.  For the DOS systems, gcc does not matter, because it is
> not used - compilers like OpenWatcom are far more common (ref. the FreeDOS
> website).  And for people looking for "embedded PC's", the processor is
> always going to be a lot more modern than the 386 - otherwise they are not
> going to be able to run any current OS.
>
> The only people I can think of that still actively compile for 386 as the
> lowest common denominator are the BSD folks.  Some of them still like to
> compile with compatibility for 386 chips.  But I have no idea if they need
> 386 support in future gcc versions.

They are stuck with pre-GPLv3 GCC compilers anyway.

ISTR we changed the default i?86 triple from i386 to i586 for 4.6, so we
are already half-way through the deprecation.  I'd say simply go ahead.

Note that i386-freebsd is still listed as primary architecture though, so
something has to be done about that first.  Steering Commitee please?
(I'd say drop *-freebsd from the list of primary/secondary archs entirely
given that they are not at all happy with GPLv3 and not using still maintained
compilers)

Richard.