Remaining host configuration fragments

[Stan Shebs]

Mark Mitchell wrote:
> 
> In contrast with some other folks, I would even be willing to say
> something like this: "Even though we know there are people out there
> who still use Irix 5, we are dropping support for it in GCC 3.1.
> You can still use GCC 3.0 (or earlier) there, of course."
> 
> In some cases, we are still trying to support systems with GCC that
> the operating system vendors stopped supporting years ago.  To me,
> this is not an optimal use of scarce resources.

Heh, we at least ought to offer to take users' money before
declaring that the resources are scarce.

Or to make it sound less crass :-), one of the purposes of
announcing the obsolescence of a configuration is to give
users a chance to consider whether they care enough to come up
with time or money or both to keep a configuration alive.  Even
something as silly-sounding as retrocomputing could be a useful
hook to get somebody involved with GCC, who may then expand to
working on more than just the one oddball config.

The purpose of announcing widely, and as part of a release, is
because GCC releases go much further into the world than messages
on a single mailing list.  An obsolescence announcement in a
release is a wakeup call to people that may have been using a
config without being aware of its impending doom; if the config
is simply gone from a release, then it looks like we're just making
arbitrary decisions without talking to users, which discourages our
potential contributors before they even get a chance to speak up.

Stan