Re: XBOX/i386 and xlint removal

On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 6:52 AM, Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel_at_gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
> I created two reviews to axe two features which I personally find of
> little use in modern FreeBSD.
>
> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13015 xlint
> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13016 XBOX/i386
>
> Reviews contain the explanations.  For xlint it is just an overdue, IMO.
> While for XBOX I do not have much opposition against supporting the
> obsoleted platforms, but the way the port was done pollutes the sources
> with too much #ifdefs.  Since people often do not want to care about i386
> together with amd64, additional hurdle only makes the things worse.
>
> Feel free to add yourself as reviewer.  I intend to commit the patches
> in a week, unless strong objections expressed by the time.
>

Thanks for the heads up.

Both of these items are ripe for removal. XBOX was doable back in the day
when one could still obtain the necessary hacking hardware to allow FreeBSD
to run on it. Today, that's become unobtainium for the most part. I looked
to get an XBOX running a couple of years ago, and at that time it was hard
to get the right stuff. Today, all hacking xbox stuff online is about the
newer xbox 360 or xbox one, which would be interesting projects too, but
have nothing to do with this code. In 2005, when I originally committed the
code, it was a simple thing to find. By 2010 it was hard and by 2015 it was
almost impossible. I had a XBOX that I got rid of a couple of years ago
because I couldn't find the modding kit that would allow it to run FreeBSD
easily. One can buy modded XBOXes on ebay still for ~$150-$200, but those
machines are marketed as retro gaming consoles...

The XBOX code itself isn't horrible. It shows some flaws in our ability to
do memory detection and prevent access to hardware that a problem. Some
cleanup in the area would theoretically be useful, but it would have been
useful a decade ago. Not so much today. The cruft is minor, but for a
platform that's even less useful to support than pc98 and that also is gone.

xlint hasn't been useful since before clang went into the tree. While I
have a small twinge of nostalgia for it, it's only a small twinge and it
too is past its freshness date.

Warner