[webkit-dev] Removing support for the RVCT compiler

[Simon Hausmann]

On Sunday, December 11, 2011 02:55:40 AM ext Andreas Kling wrote:
> Hola WebKittens!
> 
> Are there any objections to removing support for the RVCT compiler (ARM
> RealView) in WebKit? As far as I know, the only user has been the Symbian
> port which is no longer present on WebKit trunk.

I believe some other folks (Brew? Blackberry?) have been compiling WebKit with 
RVCT. Generally speaking I think it's a pretty decent compiler provided a 
recent version is used. There are versions available for Linux for example, so 
it's not a Symbian specific compiler at all.

The Qt builds were largely based on RVCT 2.2, which had its fair share of 
issues (not as bad as WINSCW though). I believe the majority of compiler 
workarounds in WebKit related to RVCT are because of this ancient version.

I think any RVCT related compiler workarounds could probably be removed, 
because there's a very high chance that they're due to 2.2. But I think if 
COMPILER(RVCT) is kept, then I can imagine that it would require very little 
maintenance to keep supporting it.

(Interestingly enough grep in WebCore doesn't show anything RVCT related, only 
JavaScriptCore seems to have some serious workarounds for it)

Simon