Re: RFC: Deprecate the ARM simulator

On 23/09/2024 14:31, Nick Clifton via Gdb wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
>    I would like to deprecate or even delete the ARM simulator.
> 
>    Although I am listed as the maintainer for the sim, I have not
>    made any improvements to it for years and it is completely
>    unable to handle modern ARM cores.  The only updates to the
>    sources in the last few years have been to fix compilation
>    issues, and basically it has bit-rotted away.
> 
>    It is not entirely clear to me how a sim target should be
>    deprecated.  I am attaching a patch that shows one possible
>    method - adding code to the sim/configure.ac file to indicate
>    that the target is deprecated.  An alternative would be to
>    add the sim target to the noconfigdirs list that is constructed
>    in the top level configure.ac file.  Although I think that
>    that list is for components that do not support the target at
>    all, rather than components where the target is deprecated.
> 
>    Anyway, thoughts, comments, suggestions ?
> 
> Cheers
>    Nick

I've no objections to this just being removed entirely; the code is ancient.

+case $target in
+ arm*-*-* | \
+ null)
+    if test "x$enable_obsolete" != xyes; then
+      echo "*** Configuration $targ is obsolete." >&2
+      echo "*** Specify --enable-obsolete to build it anyway." >&2
+      echo "*** Support will be REMOVED in the next major release of 
GDB," >&2
+      echo "*** unless a maintainer comes forward." >&2
+      exit 1
+    fi;;
+esac
+

Won't this break builds for arm users unless they now explicitly specify 
--disable-sim?  That's a bit aggressive, IMO, and might cause problems 
for multi-target builds that want some sims, if available.  We don't 
want to make life harder for those just trying to build gdb.

R.