[LLVMdev] Removal of IA-64 target

[Chris Lattner]

On Jul 17, 2009, at 9:53 AM, Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
>>
>> At this point, I think we should remove the Itanium backend from
>> mainline.  I would be thrilled if you would take it and fix it up and
>> get it working out of tree.  If you get it working on significant
>> programs (regardless of the performance of those programs) we'd
>> definitely accept it back in tree at that point.  Does this seem
>> reasonable to you?
>
> It's virtually impossible to be unreasonable when it's being
> discussed like this.
>
> I few administrative questions come to mind. I'll ask them
> here, but feel free to have me take it offline:
>
> 1.  Were you thinking about a LLVM (sub-)project for this, or
>     do you want me to take it off-site?

Off site would be preferable.  You can hack on it in your local tree  
for example.  I'm mostly concerned about reducing the maintenance  
burden of it on the main llvm project.

> 2.  If off-site: would a LLVM/ia64 project on SF.net be acceptable
>     or do you prefer something less public (protecting the LLVM
>     "brand" comes to mind)?

I'm not worried about protecting the brand :).  SF.net is a fine place  
to host it if you're interested in making your work public.   
Alternatively, you could just have a public git repo somewhere or  
something if git floats your boat :).

> I'll watch the commit logs and when I see ia64 being axed, I'll pick
> the latest release (2.5 right now, but maybe 2.6) and use that as
> the basis for the work.

It would probably be best to start from mainline as we are now.  There  
have been some significant API changes from 2.5 to HEAD, and starting  
from current ToT would mean that you wouldn't have to handle the merge.

Thanks Marcel,

-Chris