Re: Debian drops support for sparc
On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 11:48 AM, Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org> wrote:
>> But I think the focus should probably be on the sheer redness of the sparc
>> columns at:
>> https://release.debian.org/jessie/arch_qualify.html (current release)
>
> >From the link above:
> "
> sparc
>
> Upstream Support
>
> According to the gcc maintainer 32bit code generation as we use it is no longer supported upstream and we should aim for a switch to 64bit userland anytime soon.
> "
>
> Is it correct that 32bit gcc is no longer maintained?
> I have seen nothing on gcc mailaing list about this.
>
I've challenged this assertion, too. I don't see any evidence of it
being true. 32-bit userland makes sense for most RISC architectures
because the increased code/memory size for switching to 64-bit apps is
not justified in most cases. x86 is the weird case that 64-bit code
can run faster due to more registers, an efficient calling convention,
and %rip relative addressing. Even Solaris 10+ (which only supports
64-bit sparc kernels) has a 32-bit userland for this reason. I think
that, of all people, the gcc sparc maintainers, understand this.
I can only guess what "32bit code generation as we use it" means, but
I doubt that it means "32-bit code targeting sparcv9 ISA".
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