On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 10:49:19AM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > > >I work for a company that makes significant use of gcc to target vax. > >The people involved are users, not developers, of gcc. Does any part > >of the deprecation requirements take into account user base, or just > >developer base? > > Neither, actually. It's tester base that counts the most.
Yes. The problem is that often users of ancient hardware will also be users of very old versions of the software; if they don't help test the latest code (the gcc trunk), then there's no way to tell whether the latest code actually works. Code that is not tested is almost always broken code. Remember that Joseph's message that started this thread said that one criterion would be that no test results have been reported to gcc-testresults for a year. If you start contributing test results for a port, then it might (no promises) be removed from any deprecation lists (unless the report says you can't even build the compiler and no one can be found to help fix it). So if you're a vax user, you can help keep the vax port alive by helping to test it, reporting bugs, and testing proposed fixes. That's no guarantee, by the way, as volunteers are still needed to implement the fixes. Your company might want to consider contributing either staff time or money to pay a consultant to help with maintaining the vax port if it's important to you.
