Deprecation of powerpc*-*-*spe*

Deprecation of powerpc*-*-*spe*

[Jakub Jelinek]

As has been discussed in the
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-02/msg00041.html
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2017-05/msg01227.html
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2018-04/msg00810.html
threads and in
https://gcc.gnu.org/PR81084
the powerpc*-*-*spe* support which has been split into a separate backend
hasn't been given enough maintainance and so is deprecated in GCC 8.

It can still be built with --enable-obsolete.  If the maintainers don't
manage to remove the dead parts of the port and start actually maintaining
it early in the GCC 9 stage1 development, the port will be removed.

Re: Deprecation of powerpc*-*-*spe*

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Jakub!

> As has been discussed in the
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-02/msg00041.html
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2017-05/msg01227.html
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2018-04/msg00810.html
> threads and in
> https://gcc.gnu.org/PR81084
> the powerpc*-*-*spe* support which has been split into a separate backend
> hasn't been given enough maintainance and so is deprecated in GCC 8.

I'm surprised that these topics are hardly ever discussed with downstream
projects like Debian. I am maintaining powerpcspe in Debian and the port
is very stable for us.

There are people running the port on embedded PowerPC e500 systems like
A-EON Tabor A1222 or the powerpc-based Turris router so killing off
gcc support would mean that these people can no longer run an updated
version of Debian on their machines.

I also don't know why the port is considered to be broken. I haven't run
the testsuite for binutils or gcc recently, true, but gcc-8 works just
fine on powerpcspe and is actually the only current compiler we have since
the powerpcspe support in LLVM is incomplete.

Here's the build log of gcc-8 (20180402) built natively on PowerPC e500
just two weeks ago:

> https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=gcc-8&arch=powerpcspe&ver=8-20180402-1&stamp=1522856967&raw=0

Is there anything in the powerpcspe port that is currently making life for
the users or developers of other code harder?

Thanks,
Adrian

-- 
  .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
   `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913