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It seems LLVM is holding back Rust than helping it

• qalmakka 6y ago
  That not true. These architectures are not supported by LLVM only because it was started in the 2000s and they were borderline insignificant even back then. The GCC backend for most of those architectures only exists because GCC is much older, so it made no sense to throw it into the rubbish bin while there were still people around to maintain it. We got a RISC-V and WASM backend into LLVM very quickly because people gave a f*ck about these. Stuff like IA64 or Alpha have been dead for so long I'm surprised there's still support in the kernel for those.
  • qalmakka 6y ago
    Fun fact: GCC will drop IA64 in a few years. The Linux kernel has been shedding away support for IA64 in the last few releases. I don't see Gentoo complaining about these though.
    • cbmuser 6y ago
      > The Linux kernel has been shedding away support for IA64 in the last few releases. It just has no maintainer at the moment. But that has been true for other architectures such as SuperH which have gained new maintainers in the meantime.
  • cbmuser 6y ago
    > Stuff like IA64 or Alpha have been dead for so long I'm surprised there's still support in the kernel for those. Alpha is still well maintained in the kernel and in Debian (and Gentoo) which is why it's still being around. The same is true for HPPA, M68k and SuperH. IA64 has been a little dormant but we're trying to keep it alive although its chances are worse than for other architectures.
    • tptacek 6y ago
      It is not reasonable to demand that every important project donate work to maintain peoples basement museums of defunct architectures.