Re: Should we excise the remnants of borland cc support?

Hi,

At the moment there's some rememnants of support for borland CC. I don't
believe it's likely that any of it still works. I can't remember ever
seing a buildfarm animal running it either - not surprising it's ~15
years since the last release.
Since there's both msvc and mingw support for windows builds - borlands
only platform - I see little point in continuing to support it.

The reason I'm wondering is that the atomics patch cargo cults forward
some stuff specific to borland and I'd rather not do that. And I'd
rather be explicit about stopping to do so than slyly doing it.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

--
Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

On 09/20/2014 09:24 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
>
> At the moment there's some rememnants of support for borland CC. I don't
> believe it's likely that any of it still works. I can't remember ever
> seing a buildfarm animal running it either - not surprising it's ~15
> years since the last release.
> Since there's both msvc and mingw support for windows builds - borlands
> only platform - I see little point in continuing to support it.
>
> The reason I'm wondering is that the atomics patch cargo cults forward
> some stuff specific to borland and I'd rather not do that. And I'd
> rather be explicit about stopping to do so than slyly doing it.
>

I thought the Borland stuff was there only so we could build client
libraries for use with things like Delphi.

It might be worth casting the net a little wider to find out if it still
has any users.

cheers

andrew

On September 20, 2014 4:03:43 PM CEST, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
>
>On 09/20/2014 09:24 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> At the moment there's some rememnants of support for borland CC. I
>don't
>> believe it's likely that any of it still works. I can't remember ever
>> seing a buildfarm animal running it either - not surprising it's ~15
>> years since the last release.
>> Since there's both msvc and mingw support for windows builds -
>borlands
>> only platform - I see little point in continuing to support it.
>>
>> The reason I'm wondering is that the atomics patch cargo cults
>forward
>> some stuff specific to borland and I'd rather not do that. And I'd
>> rather be explicit about stopping to do so than slyly doing it.
>>
>
>I thought the Borland stuff was there only so we could build client
>libraries for use with things like Delphi.

That really still relies on a 15 year old compiler?

The stuff I was thinking of - barriers and spinlocks among others - is backend only anyway?

Andres

--
Please excuse brevity and formatting - I am writing this on my mobile phone.

Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

On 09/20/2014 06:24 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> At the moment there's some rememnants of support for borland CC. I don't
> believe it's likely that any of it still works. I can't remember ever
> seing a buildfarm animal running it either - not surprising it's ~15
> years since the last release.
> Since there's both msvc and mingw support for windows builds - borlands
> only platform - I see little point in continuing to support it.

+1

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On 2014-09-20 10:03:43 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>
> On 09/20/2014 09:24 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >At the moment there's some rememnants of support for borland CC. I don't
> >believe it's likely that any of it still works. I can't remember ever
> >seing a buildfarm animal running it either - not surprising it's ~15
> >years since the last release.
> >Since there's both msvc and mingw support for windows builds - borlands
> >only platform - I see little point in continuing to support it.
> >
> >The reason I'm wondering is that the atomics patch cargo cults forward
> >some stuff specific to borland and I'd rather not do that. And I'd
> >rather be explicit about stopping to do so than slyly doing it.
> >
>
> I thought the Borland stuff was there only so we could build client
> libraries for use with things like Delphi.
>
> It might be worth casting the net a little wider to find out if it still has
> any users.

FWIW I got offlist reports of two not subscribed people that they simply
use the normal libpq dll from delphi. Copying it from pgadmin or the pg
installer.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

--
Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> On 2014-09-20 10:03:43 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>> I thought the Borland stuff was there only so we could build client
>> libraries for use with things like Delphi.

> FWIW I got offlist reports of two not subscribed people that they simply
> use the normal libpq dll from delphi. Copying it from pgadmin or the pg
> installer.

Whether or not it's really needed to preserve the ability to build libpq
with borland, I'm just about certain that it's never worked to build the
backend with borland (thus explaining the lack of buildfarm members).
So it should be safe enough to strip support appearing in backend-only
header files.

regards, tom lane

On Sep 23, 2014 2:51 AM, "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> > On 2014-09-20 10:03:43 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >> I thought the Borland stuff was there only so we could build client
> >> libraries for use with things like Delphi.
>
> > FWIW I got offlist reports of two not subscribed people that they simply
> > use the normal libpq dll from delphi. Copying it from pgadmin or the pg
> > installer.
>
> Whether or not it's really needed to preserve the ability to build libpq
> with borland, I'm just about certain that it's never worked to build the
> backend with borland (thus explaining the lack of buildfarm members).
> So it should be safe enough to strip support appearing in backend-only
> header files.
>

The backend has never built with borland.

I'm pretty sure I suggested we drop borland support completely a few years
ago but people felt it wasnt costing enough to warrant a drop at the time.
Things may have changed now, but even without that we can definitely drop
the backend side of things.

/Magnus