RFC: Dropping i386/soft-float and 386ex BSPs

[ralf.corsepius at rtems.org (Ralf Corsepius)]

On 02/15/2011 03:34 PM, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am wondering if the time has come to drop support for
> x86 w/o HW FPU (e.g. multilibs with software floating
> point. I do not know of any CPUs currently available
> which match this profile. If there are any x86
> w/o HW FPU available, please correct me.
>
> Periodically gcc breaks for this because no one else even
> builds this variation except RTEMS. This alone is not
> justification but it is a serious hint this configuration is
> WAY past its prime.
>
>  From a practical viewpoint, this would likely involve:
>
> + dropping the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs
> + dropping i386/soft-float multilib variant
> + maybe dropping i486/soft-float
> + probably moving minimum CPU assumption to 486
> in GCC for i386-rtems gcc.
>
> Any thoughts? Anyone care about i386DX w/o FPU,
> i386ex, and 486sx?

It's been 2 weeks since you asked ...

... Till responded he believes the i386 may have a user-base,

... I would expect these multilibs make sense for testing purposes and 
could be required by some emulators.

... nobody replied to the proposal to remove "i386ex" and "ts386ex"-BSPs.


 From this, I conclude,
- it's not clear whether these multilib have a user-base.

- the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs don't seem to have an active user-base.

Proposal: Let's remove the i386ex and tx386ex BSP _NOW_.

Should somebody start yelling in near future, we could resort to 
restoring them in CVS, should somebody start yelling next month, he 
simply "has lost".

Ralf