Re: Removing old and broken and/or insecure packages

[Dave <dave%email2.asnetinc.net@localhost>]

David Holland wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 01:05:33PM +0000, Dave wrote:

> > > In that case, please spend some time to make it actually buildable with
> > > modern GCC...

> > Even if I had the time to devote to making it buildable on
> > today's GCC, there's no way that a community of two can possibly keep
> > the thing maintained when tomorrow's GCC comes out.
>
>That's not true. Old gcc fails to compile mostly because various
>peripheral pieces of it (like "obstacks") were written using gcc
>extensions, which were then removed in a rather summary fashion.

New versions of gcc are written without any GCC extensions at all (i.e.,
without using anything that might be deprecated Any Day Now (TM))?
If you're telling me that this can really be a one-time effort that keeps
H83xx alive going into the future indefinitely, then I can justify the
time and/or bounty money (if I run out of time) to do whatever it takes
to make it work right.

>I have at least one old OS tree that still uses (and needs) gcc 2.7,
>and it crossbuilds fine with gcc 4.1. I remember patching it at least
>once and grumbling, but it wasn't any more than an annoyance, and it's
>certainly not taken much effort over the years to keep it going.
>
>I can try to extract the patches from that tree, but it'd probably be
>faster to redo them.

If you have a couple of minutes to point me at the relevant documentation,
I'll see what I can do as soon as my Easter selling season is over (i.e.,
when everything calms down here, so I can afford to get another system
earmarked for Lego programming, and to invest the time in making it
all work).  Please keep in mind that I have virtually zero experience
in GCC internals (other than fixing tiny things here and there, mostly
by following changelogs), so if I sound like a bumbling moron, it's only
because I am one.

Thanks,
 - Dave