Re: Does anyone care about gcc 3.x support for *x86* anymore?

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Wed May 19 2010 - 03:14:27 EST



(reposted with Andrew and Linus Cc:-ed too)

* H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> [Reposting as a separate thread]
>
> Recently, we have seen an increasing number of problems
> with gcc 3.4 on x86; mostly due to poor constant
> propagation producing not just bad code but failing to
> properly eliminate what should be dead code.
>
> I'm wondering if there is any remaining real use of gcc
> 3.4 on x86 for compiling current kernels (as opposed to
> residual use for compiling applications on old
> enterprise distros.) I'm specifically not referring to
> other architectures here -- most of these issues have
> been in relation to low-level arch-specific code, and as
> such only affects the x86 architectures. Other
> architectures may very well have a much stronger need
> for continued support of an older toolchain.
>
> If there isn't a reason to preserve support, I would
> like to consider discontinue support for using gcc 3 to
> compile x86 kernels. If there is a valid use case, it
> would be good to know what it is.
>
> -hpa
>
> --
> H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
> I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.
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