[PATCH] rtems: Remove unused configuration files.

[Chris Johns]

On 19/1/18 5:12 pm, Sebastian Huber wrote:
> The RSB policy with respect to configuration files is not clear to me. I thought
> these are read-only files that will be never removed?

That policy was established when the RSB was building a number of releases from
a single code base. The branching moved us away from that and now the need is a
distance memory. After the branching I did not want to change too much at once.

The RSB is now stable. Adding the ability to detect orphans means we can see
which files are not referenced and by inspection which are not top level and so
can be removed. Looking at the 4.10 branch I felt having a config file to build
a gcc-7 compiler is misleading.

> If you want to keep only
> the files used by the build sets, then why do they have file names with a
> version included?

There is no need any more. Further to this looking back I wonder about the
usefulness. What evolved is a better use of the scripting language to enable and
disable features in a single set of files. I did not see this when the RSB was
started but looking back now it makes perfect sense.

> 
> Are branches in the RSB really practical? Each time something changes you have
> to back port it throughout the branches. When you build the tools you have to
> specify the version. So, what is the benefit of the branches?
> 

I do not think the alternative is good either, a single RSB that can build any
branch. This exposes us to changes for one branch leaking into other branches. A
single change for an updated newlib requiring we regression build all support
branches. Also it opens up a release for a version being used to build another
version.

The Python core is stable and there are good API between each of the modules. I
do not think there has been any language changes so scripts are compatible. I
suspect you could copy the `source-builder/sb` to any branch and it would work.

I think the fact we will make a 4.10 branch release and we can build tools on
modern hosts including MacOS and Windows is a big improvement. I do not think we
could build Windows tools like this when 4.10 was first released.

I am open to any ideas that improve how we use and manage the RSB.

Chris