Re: Technical criteria for retaining symbol readers

[Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com>]

Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org> writes:
> > jimb> I'd also like to have some kind of requirement for testability.
> > I would, too.  My preference would be that we look at gdb-testers@
> > and if there are no test results for feature X for the past N years,
> > that counts against keeping feature X.  gcc uses that as one factor
> > in deciding whether to obsolete stuff.
> 
> That's been suggested in the past.  It was pointed out that some
> systems can't run the testsuite (DJGPP) so on its own it wasn't
> reasonable (neither is assuming that the presence of test results
> stops an architecture being removed :-).

DJGPP (go32-nat.c) doesn't use deprecated interfaces, so it's not a
maintenance burden in core GDB work.  If a target or host has been
kept up to date as interfaces have been deprecated, I'm not sure we
should consider removing it --- obviously somebody cares about it, and
cares in the way that matters.  An absence of test results, plus the
use of deprecated interfaces that most other targets have moved
beyond, seems like sufficient reason to ditch something.

As far as the symtab stuff goes, we don't (yet) have deprecated
interfaces to the symtab core, so that criterion doesn't help us
there.  Looking through the interfaces actually in use and beginning a
deprecation process is called for there.