NEWS: IRIX is still supported; only SGI depmode no longer is

This change is for the master branch (see the similar commit
'v1.13.1b-3-g97f04a5' on the maint branch).

The only IRIX-specific support that is actually removed in master (and
thus in the next major Automake version) is the depcomp support for the
SGI compiler.  That means that automatic dependency tracking will no
longer work with that compiler, but "normal" compilation should still
work, at least until the compiler is supported by Autoconf.

So there is no point in alarming our users by stating in the NEWS file
that "support for IRIX and the SGI compilers has been removed"; after
all, while we don't test on nor particularly care about IRIX anymore,
that doesn't mean we are deliberately breaking it, and the likelihood
of an intended breakage there is very low.

See:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2013-01/msg00164.html>
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2013-01/msg00165.html>

* NEWS: Adjust.  Improve explanation of our rationale for dropping
support for the SGI compilers.

Suggested-by: Peter Rosin <peda@lysator.liu.se>
Signed-off-by: Stefano Lattarini <stefano.lattarini@gmail.com>

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index c96266b014e456f1898afa80bfadc6b7e83b518f..de85f9481f56cd8e5553a4faabc65ab1a0ca9743 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -35,11 +35,13 @@ New in 1.14:
 
 * Removed support for obsolete platforms:
 
-  - Support for the SGI C/C++ compilers has been removed: these compilers
-    are only meant to run on IRIX, and that system has seen its last
-    release in 2006, and is expected to lose support from SGI in December
-    2013; see <http://www.sgi.com/services/support/irix_mips_support.html>
-    for more information.
+  - Support for automatic dependency tracking with the SGI C/C++ compilers
+    on IRIX has been removed.  The SGI depmode had been reported broken
+    "in the wild" already, and we don't think investing time in debugging
+    and fixing it would have been worthwhile, especially considering that
+    SGI has last updated those compilers in 2006, and is expected to retire
+    support for them in December 2013:
+    <http://www.sgi.com/services/support/irix_mips_support.html>
 
   - Support for DJGPP on MS-DOS and/or Windows 95/98/ME has been removed.
     Note that both Cygwin and MSYS/MinGW on modern Windows versions will