Jim Wilson repeated a much earlier announcement [story] that "in the GCC 3.4 release (still some time in the future), the GCC developers are obsoleting a number of old unmaintained targets. Obsoleting these old systems allows the development team to focus its limited resources to support those systems that are used by more people." He points out that in the 3.4 release these obsoleted targets will still be available if using the '--enable-obsolete' compilation option, but that they will then be completely removed in a future release.

Read on for the complete list of architectures scheduled to become obsolete by GCC. If any of these targets are important to you, a contact address is provided in Jim's email. He also notes, "traditionally, GCC has been more receptive to requests that a particular target not be removed if a volunteer is available to maintain that target, so if you're interested in volunteering you should state that explicitly."

From: Jim Wilson [email blocked]
To:  gcc-announce
Subject: Obsoleting unmaintained targets
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 15:18:52 -0800

In the GCC 3.4 release (still some time in the future), the GCC 
developers are obsoleting a number of old unmaintained targets. 
Obsoleting these old systems allows the development team to focus its 
limited resources to support those systems that are used by more people.

These targets can still be configured by using the --enable-obsolete 
option.  If no one steps forward to maintain these targets, they will be 
deleted in a future gcc release.

Below, please find the complete list, in the form of GNU target 
triplets.  This has been extensively revised from the list that was 
originally posted in March.

If you feel strongly that support for one of these targets should not be 
removed, please contact us by email to gcc@gcc.gnu.org.  Traditionally, 
GCC has been more receptive to requests that a particular target not be 
removed if a volunteer is available to maintain that target, so if 
you're interested in volunteering you should state that explicitly. 
Also, "there are 1000 of us using this machine heavily all day long and 
we were planning to upgrade to GCC 3.4" is probably more likely to sway 
the development team than "I think there is still one of those in my 
closet." :-)

All targets for these architectures have been obsoleted:
	d30v-*
	dsp16xx-*
	i370-*
	i960-*

Individual targets that have been obsoleted:
	i?86-moss-msdos
	i?86-*-moss*
	i?86-ncr-sysv4*
	i?86-*-netware
	i?86-*-freebsd2*
	i?86-*-freebsd*aout*
	i?86-*-linux*aout*
	i?86-*-linux*libc1*
	# This does not affect Interix3 support which remains.
	i?86-*-interix
	i?86-*-mach*
	i?86-*-udk*
	i?86-*-sysv[123]*
	i386-*-vsta

	m68k-hp-hpux*
	m68000-hp-hpux*
	m68k-*-sysv4*

	# This is only the a.out netbsd targets, the elf netbsd targets
	# remain.
	m68k*-*-netbsd*

	# This is only the default target, which is no longer useful.
	# The *BSD, Ultrix, and Sysv targets remain.
	vax-*-*
-- 
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.SpecifixInc.com