Re: [committed] doc: Remove HSAIL from Language Standards

[Martin Jambor <mjambor@suse.cz>]

Hi Gerald,

On Tue, Dec 29 2020, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Dec 2020, Martin Jambor wrote:
>>> commit 7e999bd84f47205dc44b0f2dc90b53b3c888ca48
>>> Author: Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com>
>>> Date:   Mon Dec 28 21:41:55 2020 +0100
>>>
>>>     doc: Remove HSAIL from Language Standards
>>>     
>>>     Support for HSAIL has been deprecated with GCC 10 and their web server
>>>     has been down for weeks.
>
> Please note the above.

HSAIL front-end has not been deprecated, at least as far as I know.
Look at the last paragraph in
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2020-April/000330.html

I trust you that HSA Foundation's web server was down for weeks but it
is not down now, http://www.hsafoundation.com/standards/ loads for me
fine and "HSA Programmer Reference Manual Specification 1.01" available
from that page describes the HSAIL that the FE implements.

>
>> The HSAIL/BRIG consuming front-end has not been removed, as opposed to
>> the HSAIL/BRIG emitting back-end which was, and is still part of the
>> compiler, so this should not have been applied, I'm afraid.
>
> This section in the documentation is about language standards and
> reference to those standards.  hsafoundation.com literally has been
> dead for a while, and there is not (evident) other location where
> the standard appears vailable.
>
> Also, wasn't the latest version 1.0.3 whereas our doc snippet still
> referred to 1.0.1.

The last one is 1.2 but our FE only supports 1.0.1.  I have forgotten
the differences between the two and am too lazy to go dig for them now
but the reference to the standard version was correct.

>
>> Given the state of HSAIL, the front-end is probably not very useful
>> either and so we may remove it in near term too, but it seems to still
>> mostly work and causes no trouble, so at least for now it stayed.
>> 
>> Can you please revert this?
>
> A simple revert does not appear appropriate, but if you have a strong
> preference and see a benefit for our users, we surely can put something 
> back in again.  
>
> In that case, should the version updated to 1.0.3?  Apart from that 
> and the defunct web site, what are other changes compared to the status 
> pre commit 7e999bd84f47205dc44b0f2dc90b53b3c888ca48 ?
>
> Can you propose some text / changes taking into account the deprecation
> and related developments?  Can be rough, and I'll take care of the patch.

Given that hsafoundation.com works and the version of the standard
referenced in the removed text was correct, I still think that simply
reverting the patch is the simplest and correct thing to do.

Given that nobody bothered to update the FE to HSAIL 1.2 (which is 2.5
years old) and it is unlikely to have many users, maybe it is time to
deprecate the FE in GCC 11 (I guess it is not a promise to remove it in
12), but that is a different question.

Thanks,

Martin