[m-users.] deleting the Erlang backend (Peter Wang)

[Peter Wang]

On Tue, 20 Oct 2020 19:49:10 -0700 M McDonough <foolkingcrown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:01:46 +1100 "Peter Wang" <novalazy at gmail.com>:
> > The Erlang backend has been deprecated as of the Mercury 20.01 release.
> > If anyone happens to be using the Erlang backend, please let us know
> > before we commit to deleting it for good.
> 
> I used it on NetBSD on a Raspberry Pie for a while, about two years
> ago. It was noticeably more efficient than using the C grades on my
> Raspberry Pi 1B interestingly, although it's possible that's in part
> because the only low-level C grade that worked with that system was
> jump or none. As a side note, I've generally found that, on BSD
> systems outside x86/amd64 still using gcc, jump and none are the only
> low-level C grades that work.

Low-level C grades that require the gcc global registers extension
won't work with clang, as clang doesn't implement that extension.

They are also known not to work on ARM (Raspberry Pi) with gcc.
I don't remember if that's a limitation that could be lifted.
I suspect nobody has bothered to look into it because, so far,
there hasn't been much reason to.

Peter