From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Cree Subject: Re: firefox-esr 52.6.0 available for alpha Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 21:33:26 +1300 Message-ID: <20180228083326.hh6yj2io4srbt34x@tower> References: <20180228064354.GA28665@gherkin.frus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20180228064354.GA28665@gherkin.frus.com> Resent-Message-ID: <85sT-xejPyO.A.txF.G6mlaB@bendel> List-Id: List-URL: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: List-Archive: https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20180228083326.hh6yj2io4srbt34x@tower Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Bob Tracy Cc: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org, linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 12:43:54AM -0600, Bob Tracy wrote: > At some point in the near future, it will no longer be possible to build > Firefox on an Alpha unless someone takes up the gauntlet and puts > together a working Rust compiler. Rust uses the LLVM backend. There was once an experimental Alpha backend to LLVM. I am currently attempting to forward port it to more recent LLVM to see if it might be useful. It only supported EV6 and better CPUs which is a higher CPU standard than in Debian Alpha. I might get it back to EV56 (when BWX was introduced) and be able to make sub-architectures to optionally switch in MVI and CIX. But I have no intention of supporting anything without the BWX. And I doubt it will ever produce code the quality of gcc. I do have a patch that would switch the Debian gcc to produce code, by default, with BWX. I haven't ever got around to sending it to the gcc maintainer to switch over Debian Alpha to only support Alphas with BWX. But if I did that then if we ever got LLVM going again on Alpha there would be no baseline incompatibility. Cheers Michael.