how long to keep support for gcc on x86?

[John-Mark Gurney]

Adrian Chadd wrote this message on Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 19:30 -0800:
> IMHO gcc shuld be available until all of the platforms that we
> currently ship FreeBSD on gets clang support.

Though, we have a very ancient version of gcc, a modern version would
support the AES-NI intrinsicts that I am thinking of using...  It's
more of a question of how long do we need to keep support for gcc
4.2.1, not another modern gcc/other compiler...

> This includes MIPS (which is there, but I don't think the default MIPS
> build uses clang at the moment) and ia64, which Marcel has been
> dutifully working on.
> 
> Please also note that people can and will compile FreeBSD on a
> non-default-system compiler ; so deprecating gcc (either support or
> framework) should be considered carefully.

Considering that the icc stuff was recently removed, unless the compiler
has good gcc/clang emulation, I can't see how far another compiler would
get compiling our code...

> On 12 January 2013 17:42, Steve Kargl <sgk at troutmask.apl.washington.edu> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 03:31:47PM -0800, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> >> So, now that -current x86 is defaulting to clang, how much longer do we
> >> need to support gcc on platforms that default to clang?
> >
> > IMHO, gcc should be available until after 10.0 is branched.
> >
> >> I'm asking because clang support AES-NI, but gcc does not...
> >
> > The last and only time I had for testing clang's handling
> > of floating point revealed that clang had a few bugs and
> > performance issues.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."