Re: [gentoo-mips] Reducing the number of the MIPS supported stages

[Markos Chandras]

On 05/06/2014 01:09 AM, Joshua Kinard wrote:
> On 05/05/2014 19:36, Matt Turner wrote:
>> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Joshua Kinard <kumba@g.o> wrote:
>>> I cannot speak for anything outside of the standard/original MIPS ISAs, but
>>> I thought we killed off mips1 long ago.  When did that come back?  Almost
>>> anything out there should be able to handle mips2 at a bare minimum (only
>>> R2000 and R3000-based systems, like certain DECStations, would need mips1).
>>>  mips2 is also the branch point for the mips32r* ISAs, so if any of the
>>> original, 32-bit ISAs should be kept, that would be mips2.  mips1 can go.
>>
>> We've had this discussion before. If you're going to have >mips2
>> stages, then there's zero reason to have mips2 stages since mips2
>> effectively doesn't exist.
>
> It's been a while, but I thought we only kept a mips2 stage1 around for
> those that wanted a baseline to build their own stage2 or stage3's from.
> You can do this with a mips1 as well, but mips2 is, more or less, the
> baseline from which all other possible ISAs and stages can be built from, as
> long as you don't care about R2k or R3k CPUs.  stage3's can be the higher
> mips32r* ISAs.
>
> I personally don't see a point in having mips1 or mips2 stage3's, only a
> stage1 to use as a bootstrap for new machines or ISAs.
>

(picking up a random thread)

Ok thanks for the replies.

Ok I think it's safe to proceed with the following:
- Stop mips1 builds (we don't have mips2)
- Reduce the frequency to once-a-year for mips3 and mips4. Updating
these stages every year with catalyst will be a lot of fun ;)

@kumba: You mentioned too many times that I wanted to "drop" support for
mips3 and mips4. I never said that (I am sort-of tired keep repeating
that). All I said (again) was to reduce the frequency or stop building
them at all. Users can still get an existing mips3/mips4 stage3 and
update themselves

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras