Re: Removing architectures without upstream gcc support

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 5:28 PM, James Hogan <jhogan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Arnd,
>
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 04:45:06PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> * Meta was ImgTec's own architecture and they upstreamed the kernel
>>   port just before they acquired MIPS. Apparently Meta was abandoned
>>   shortly afterwards and disappeared from imgtec's website in 2014.
>>   The maintainer is still fixing bugs in the port, but I could not find
>>   any toolchain more recent than
>>   https://github.com/img-meta/metag-buildroot/tree/metag-core/toolchain/gcc/4.2.4
>>   Not sure about this one, I'd be interested in more background
>>   from James Hogan, who probably has an opinion and might have
>>   newer toolchain sources.
>
> Interesting timing! Have you seen this (which I'll send for 4.17, and
> leave 4.16 broken)?
>
> https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=151925667323732&w=2

No, I missed that. Could have saved me some of the research I did
when coming up with the list ;-)

> The Meta port is essentially unused and for a while I have only looked
> at it when something went wrong. PURE's Linux based digital radios I
> believe were never updated to 3.10. The fact that the GCC port wasn't
> upstreamed before the MIPS acquisition meant it was always a ticking
> time bomb (though binutils was upstreamed).
>
> Sad really, given that at least 9 years of effort went into the port
> before permission was finally given to upstream it, and within a week or
> so of the first patchset the intention to acquire MIPS was announced.

Indeed.

      Arnd