Dogma, was: Re: Rtems 4.9: Error: Requires: libgmp.so.3()(64bit)

[rwas]

Chris Johns wrote:
>  Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>
 >
>
> >
> >> There may be future 4.9 releases.
> > This would seem unreasonable to me. Just announce it "discontinued
> > and dead", be done with it, and concentrate on the new versions.
>
>  This is a view I do not support and I do not see the RTEMS Project
>  supporting either. I know Joel does not support this view.

I agree with Chris on this, at least in part.

For my argument, I think it's about *archival* vs *maintenance*.
I'm using 4.9.3.. I could use 4.9.6, or I could spend time trying to 
sort out
how to port to the new 4.10 conventions (assuming I had time and 
budget), but with positive changes
comes bad ones too. The 4.9.3 release works just fine for me. Why mess 
with a good thing?
If I had to, I'd freeze the development platform os, and just use the 
old pre-built tools. This assumes
they have not been *deleted*!

If the core RTEMS team does not have time to mess with (ie., source, and 
tool maintenance) 4.9, so be it. But to
declare it unusable and zealously destroy any trace of it for the sake 
of what appears to be
some overbearing, philosophical dogma, imposed on the RTEMS community 
whether
they like it or not, seems contrary to reason.

Maybe I missed it, but I don't see the rest of the community talking 
like this, just Ralf.
With due respect to Ralf, we sure appreciate his hard work on RTEMS. 
That said, I don't
  want my project held hostage by this kind of radical decision making 
process either.

In closing, I see only two reasons for deleting old pre-built tools, and 
possibly old version source.
Lack of disk space, or the imposition of philosophy on the community. 
The disk space issue is easily
remedied.

Robert W.