how long to keep support for gcc on x86?

[Ian Lepore]

On Sun, 2013-01-13 at 19:56 -0800, Peter Wemm wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 6:51 PM, Ian Lepore
> <freebsd at damnhippie.dyndns.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2013-01-13 at 16:58 -0800, Peter Wemm wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Adrian Chadd <adrian at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >> > ... ?
> >> >
> >> > As an embedded platform, I'd expect that people will want to support
> >> > any feature which dramatically boosts performance whilst reducing CPU.
> >> >
> >> > Also, if Intel decide to keep trying to push low power x86 for mobile
> >> > applications, rather than ARM, x86 may just make a resurgence in
> >> > places you once thought were servers.
> >> >
> >> > 32 bit x86 isn't legacy and won't be for a long time to come.
> >>
> >> Our buildworld environment and embedded $everything isn't well known
> >> for being embedded friendly.  I'd wager that if somebody was trying to
> >> use an i386 kernel in an embedded device where every last thing
> >> counted, they'd be using an external toolchain targeted for their
> >> platform and some very selective cross-building.  Compiler of
> >> $your_choice would be on the table if you were doing external
> >> compiling, and.. the default in-tree compiler does support AES-NI on
> >> both i386 and amd64, and the logical other choice (gcc-4.6+ and
> >> binutils) also does.
> >
> > Ummm.  Search for "industrial single board computer."  They're not rare.
> > Lots of us build products around them.  Some of us use FreeBSD to do so,
> > with the stock toolchain.  I sure hope support for 32 bit x86 isn't
> > fading away any time soon.
> 
> I had a quick look.  Yes, there were quite a few devices, but I didn't
> find any 32bit-only that had AES-NI.

Ah, I guess I misunderstood the point.

Talk of removing gcc support just because clang is available is still a
bit scary to me.  I anticipate using gcc for quite a while, waiting for
the rest of the world to shake out the obscure clang bugs (I'll be doing
my part to shake out bugs elsewhere in the system).

I'm not a huge gcc fan so much as it being "the devil I know."  It's
hard enough bringing up new software on new hardware; if you have to
start suspecting unknown bugs in your toolchain as well it becomes an
intractable problem.

-- Ian