RFC: Dropping i386/soft-float and 386ex BSPs

[Joel Sherrill]

On 03/01/2011 10:16 AM, Rehab Massoud wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I believe that some of the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs & the 
> i386/soft-float multilib are still used for educational purposes 
> and/or for some simulators.
On the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs... If they are used, no one has spoken up 
about
using them or complained about them possibly disappearing.  They are in 
4.10.0.
If someone wants them back on the CVS head for 4.11, then they need to
speak up.  FWIW I don't think a bug report or improvement has been made to
these BSPs in YEARS.  So my guess is that those two BSPs don't have users
or they are in maintenance mode with an old RTEMS version.

Till's answer that there is still a CPU core out there without FP 
support was
sufficient to keep the multilib around.  So an old PC with an i386DX w/o 
FPU
is still supported.
> I'd vote for not removing them, and if anyway they will be removed it 
> would be nice to leave a remark somewhere to the latest version that 
> have them as a reference for who may be looking for them.
>
The BSP's page in the Wiki is supposed to capture this information.
> --Rehab
>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Ralf Corsepius 
> <ralf.corsepius at rtems.org <mailto:ralf.corsepius at rtems.org>> wrote:
>
>     On 02/15/2011 03:34 PM, Joel Sherrill wrote:
>
>         Hi,
>
>         I am wondering if the time has come to drop support for
>         x86 w/o HW FPU (e.g. multilibs with software floating
>         point. I do not know of any CPUs currently available
>         which match this profile. If there are any x86
>         w/o HW FPU available, please correct me.
>
>         Periodically gcc breaks for this because no one else even
>         builds this variation except RTEMS. This alone is not
>         justification but it is a serious hint this configuration is
>         WAY past its prime.
>
>          From a practical viewpoint, this would likely involve:
>
>         + dropping the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs
>         + dropping i386/soft-float multilib variant
>         + maybe dropping i486/soft-float
>         + probably moving minimum CPU assumption to 486
>         in GCC for i386-rtems gcc.
>
>         Any thoughts? Anyone care about i386DX w/o FPU,
>         i386ex, and 486sx?
>
>
>     It's been 2 weeks since you asked ...
>
>     ... Till responded he believes the i386 may have a user-base,
>
>     ... I would expect these multilibs make sense for testing purposes
>     and could be required by some emulators.
>
>     ... nobody replied to the proposal to remove "i386ex" and
>     "ts386ex"-BSPs.
>
>
>     From this, I conclude,
>     - it's not clear whether these multilib have a user-base.
>
>     - the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs don't seem to have an active user-base.
>
>     Proposal: Let's remove the i386ex and tx386ex BSP _NOW_.
>
>     Should somebody start yelling in near future, we could resort to
>     restoring them in CVS, should somebody start yelling next month,
>     he simply "has lost".
>
>     Ralf
>
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>
>


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Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research&  Development
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