ANN: toolchains for redhat-el4-rtems4.9 to be discontinued

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2008-05-08 at 13:58 -0500, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> Kate Feng wrote:
> > Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >   
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> RHEL4 rsp. CentOS4 does not provide sufficient recent tools (here gm4)
> >> to be able to use for future rtems development.
> >>
> >> I requested an RFE for RH to upgrade gm4
> >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=443958
> >> but so far, no reaction from RH.
> >>
> >> Shouldn't they upgrade in near future, there are 3 potential escapes:
> >>
> >> a) RTEMS to ship a package to replace RH's gm4
> >> This would render the purpose of RHEL void and would upset many
> >> sysadmins be we would replay a vendor supplied packages
> >>
> >> b) RTEMS to ship a customized gm4 to be installed into /opt/rtems-4.9,
> >> in parallel to the original gm4.
> >>
> >> This is tedious packaging-wise and error-prone to use.
> >> Something I'd rather avoid.
> >>
> >> c) Us to abandon support for RHEL4
> >>
> >>     
> > Does this apply to the RHEL3 and RHEL5 ?
> >
> >   
> RHEL3 does not have tools for RTEMS 4.9.
Yep, we never had packages for RHEL3 and will unlikely ever have any.

I would not not want to exclude there once will be a point in not too
distant future, we will have to discontinue supporting RHEL4/CentOS4 for
RTEMS < 4.9 for similar reasons.

> I will guess that since he
> didn't mention RHEL5, it has a sufficiently new gm4.

Correct, but ...


>From a wider angle, this incident raises a lot of questions concerning
applicability/usability of such centralistically maintained, non-free
LTS (Long Term Support) distros for development purposes, esp. for "fast
moving"/"bleeding edge" open source projects such as RTEMS.

IMNSHO, the inevitably "stagnating"/"ultra-conservative" nature of LTS
distros collides with the demands of "fast moving" development :(

Ralf