Re: RFC: Deprecate the ARM simulator

[Simon Marchi via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org>]

On 9/23/24 9:31 AM, 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

Thanks for being proactive with this.  Is `--enable-obsolete` something
that already exists?

When we deprecate / remove ports in GDB, we currently don't do anything
like this, if I recall correctly we just announce on the mailing list
that it will be removed in the next major version, and then later remove
it.  But I think that having it disabled by default and enabled with a
switch like `--enable-obsolete` is a good idea.  People downstream who
use that feature are not likely to follow the gdb or binutils mailing
lists, so this will make them notice, and it's still relatively easy for
them to get the feature back in that release.

Simon