Waldek Hebisch wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
I'm still testing with 3.2.3 too, but I also thought about dropping it recently. Since the external preprocessor was the last obstacle in adopting 3.3 and 3.4, I think we can drop 3.2.x officially (i.e., remove the 3.2.x diffs in the next release). Objections anyone? (If 3.3 turns out problematic, I wouldn't mind dropping it also.)
I check that snapshot build with all supported backends (including 2.8.1, 2.95.3 and 3.2.3). However gcc-20060325 when build with one of those backend prints a depreciation message and waits for a newline. My plan is to keep the message for the next few snapshots and then really limit support.
I agree.
Of course, this will be final then, as dropping support, especially for gcc-2.x, means not only removing the diffs from the distribution, but also removing conditionals all over the place in the GPC source, and reintroducing them later will be quite unfeasible. So anyone objecting to dopping these versions shall speak up now or remain silent forever. ;-)
BTW, in a recent (Feb) thread about dropping gcc-2 (subject: "RTS and thread safety"), the only objection came from John L. Ries:
: Actually, I'm still running GCC 2.95 on several of my older UNIX boxes : because my efforts to compile newer versions there have failed. Not that : I need a new GPC on any of them, but it goes to show 2.95 is still in : active use in at least a few places. : : That said, I think you can safely drop support for GCC versions prior to : 2.95.
I doesn't make much sense to drop 2.8.1 and not 2.95, so I'll guess you (John) will have to face trying to build with gcc-3.4.x again (if you want current GPC versions on them). When there are problems, please report them here, so we can hopefully solve them. But you'll have at least a few months from now ...
BTW. I think the we should drop not only support for 3.2.3 but also for 2.8.1 and 2.95.3. There are some reasons to keep support for 2.8.1 and 2.95.3 longer than support for 3.2.3, but OTOH 2.8.1 and 2.95.3 require more work to support than 3.2.3. Also, IIRC in the last two years we did not have any bug reports involving recent frontends and 2.x backend. Since most reported bugs were reproducible with such combination, I think that nobody reading gpc mailing list is using modern gpc with old backends.
Well, actually I am ;-), but I'm going to change it. (The main problem is that the build system has changed quite a bit between gcc-2 and gcc-3, especially in Cross-Compiler, Cross-Build and Canadian-Cross situations, which I have a few, so I might have to rewrite some of my build/install scripts quite a bit, but I expect no serious problems in the end.)
Frank