> I do not understand the motivation to deprecate support for a device > that is useful and used in the field, and like Karl said, is cheap > and can be cobbled together and works on a lot of (older) machines > out of the box.
The "heavy" use of parallel port adapters was new to me. I still think it's a niche but that's fine as long as the code can be tested without much effort. > Is there some code reorg of openOCD that is impeded by the parallel > port support ? I worked on the build system of OpenOCD to (hopefully) do some general overhaul at some time. For this I had to test all drivers, features etc. on multiple platforms. Then I stumbled upon the parport driver and had no clue how to build OpenOCD on Windows with this driver enabled, there is no documentation. Then I thought "probably nobody out there uses the parport driver anyway". This assumption seems wrong - at least for Linux/Unix. Still, we have no documentation how to use parport on Windows and it is unclear if it even works with the current code. So if nobody shows up and provides some documentation I would still vote to *deprecate* the parport support for Windows. This means potential users have one release cycle to show up and provide some documentation / patches whatever. Keeping outdated / unmaintained code in OpenOCD makes working on the codebase more difficult. I think that is understandable and the reason why we already dropped some code in the past. I hope this makes my motivation for the changes a little clearer. Best regards, Marc On Thu, 2024-06-20 at 14:12 +0200, bruno schwander wrote: > I do not understand the motivation to deprecate support for a device > that is useful and used in the field, and like Karl said, is cheap > and can be cobbled together and works on a lot of (older) machines > out of the box. > Is there some code reorg of openOCD that is impeded by the parallel > port support ? > Is there some other driver that requires big changes that are stopped > by the parallel port support ? > > If the motivation to drop support is just "because it's old" then > please don't drop support. It's not dead code as long as people are > using it, and even if there were no users (which not true, there > are), if it works, why kill it ? > > Bruno > > On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 8:12 AM Marc Schink <d...@zapb.de> wrote: > > > To be host I'm suprised that there are still parallel port users > > > out > > > there. Although the main reason is probably more nostalgia than > > > anything else ;) > > > > > > No, nostalgia, it is simple and useful. > > > And it is also useful for LinuxCNC. > > > > I'm only talking about OpenOCD here ;) Can you give me some > > information > > about your setup? What kind of target do you use and what type of > > parallel port? USB adapter, on-board, etc. > > > > > Sorry, no MS-Windows here, but I found this, hopefully it is > > > helpful: > > > https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/parports/operating-a-parallel-port > > > > > > > I'm not going to read Windows docs about how to develop paralllel > > port > > drivers... in my opinion we should drop support for both ;D Okay, > > maybe > > some Windows user will show up. > > > > Best regards, > > Marc > > > > On Thu, 2024-06-20 at 04:42 +0200, k...@aspodata.se wrote: > > > Marc Schink: > > > > To be host I'm suprised that there are still parallel port > > > > users > > > > out > > > > there. Although the main reason is probably more nostalgia than > > > > anything else ;) > > > > > > No, nostalgia, it is simple and useful. > > > And it is also useful for LinuxCNC. > > > > > > > Anyway, my main problem with the parallel port is Windows. I'm > > > > not > > > > able > > > > to build a regression test setup for Windows. There is no > > > > documentation > > > > on how to set up OpenOCD with a parallel port driver on > > > > Windows. Do > > > > any > > > > of you use the parport driver on Windows? If not and no one > > > > shows > > > > up > > > > with a proper documentation / how-to, I would suggest to > > > > deprecate > > > > the > > > > driver for Windows (and drop it later). > > > > > > Sorry, no MS-Windows here, but I found this, hopefully it is > > > helpful: > > > https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/parports/operating-a-parallel-port > > > > > > Regards, > > > /Karl Hammar > > > > > > > > > > > > >
