Hi all,

> In that case, I'm coming round to the idea of deprecating ILP32.
> I think it was already common ground that the GNU/Linux support is dead.
> watchOS would use Mach objects rather than ELF.  As you say, it isn't
> clear how much of the current ILP32 support would be relevant for it.
> And there is no specific evidence that anyone is using the baremetal
> support.  Deprecating ILP32 is probably the only way of finding out
> whether there are baremetal users.

Yes, even just knowing there are actual users would be useful!

> (Note that I don't think the argument about libatomic & long really
> shifts the balance, since baremetal doesn't use libatomic, and I assume
> watchOS wouldn't either.  PR118142 has been closed as WONTFIX, which I
> agree is the right resolution whatever happens with the deprecation
> decision.)

Libatomic is just one example of new code that hasn't been designed for or
tested on ILP32. The underlying point is that software quickly rots if you don't
actively maintain it. When I tried building SPECINT, I got several assembler
errors like: "whilewr p15.b,w25,w28". That's likely easy to fix (like PR117711),
but someone has to take on this maintenance. And that just hasn't happened
for years...

Cheers,
Wilco

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