IRIX and Software

I noticed yesterday that Irix and VMS are listed as 'Obsolete' operating systems and as such has been dropped from Emacs. Can someone confirm that my understanding of this is correct, given the highlighted lines in the MACHINES file shown below?

The narrowing diversity of support from various open source projects worries me.

And I especially object to the use of the word 'Obsolete' to describe a few of these operating systems

From http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/MACHINES

Support for the following obsolete platforms was removed in Emacs 23.1
(the names in parentheses state the files in src/ that were removed):

Apollo SR10.x (unexapollo.c)
Convex (unexconvex.c and m/convex.c)
Xenix (unexenix.c and s/xenix.h)
Iris (unexmips.c m/iris4d.h m/irist.h s/iris3-5.h s/iris3-6.h)
Gould (m/gould*)
Siemens machines running Sinix (unexsni.c)
Harris CXUX (s/cxux*)
ESIX, a variant of v.5.3 for the 386 (s/esix*)
Interactive (ISC) Unix (s/isc*)
Sony News (s/newsos*)
RTU 3.0, ucb universe (s/rtu.h)
UniSoft's UniPlus 5.2 (s/uniplus.h)
UMAX (s/umax.h)
AT&T UNIX PC model 7300 (m/7300.h)
Acorn
Alliant (m/alliant*)
Amdahl (m/amdahl*)
Altos 3068 Unix System V Release 2 (m/altos.h)
Apollo (m/apollo.h)
AT&T 3b (m/att3b.h)
Aviion (m/aviion*)
Berkeley 4.1 (m/bsd4.1.h)
Berkeley 4.2 (m/bsd4.2.h)
Berkeley 4.3 (m/bsd4.3.h)
Celerity (m/celerity.h)
clipper (m/clipper.h)
convergent S series (m/cnvrgnt.h)
cydra (m/cydra5.h)
Motorola System V/88 machines (m/delta88k.h)
Bull DPX/2 range (m/dpx2.h)
Dual machines using unisoft port (m/dual.h)
Elxsi machine (running enix) (m/elxsi.h)
Fujitsu F301 machine (m/f301.h)
i860 (m/i860.h)
ibm ps/2 aix386 (m/ibmps2-aix.h)
ISI 68000's (m/is*)
Masscomp 5000 series running RTU, ucb universe (m/masscomp.h)
Megatest 68000's (m/mega68.h)
Whitechapel Computer Works MG1 (ns16000 based) (m/mg1.h)
Harris Night Hawk Series 1200 and Series 3000 (m/nh3000.h m/nh4000.h)
ns16000 (m/ns16000.h)
National Semiconductor 32000, running Genix (m/ns32000.h)
TI Nu machines using system V (m/nu.h)
HLH Orion (m/orion.h m/orion105.h)
Paragon i860 (m/paragon.h)
PFU A-series (m/pfa50.h)
Plexus running System V.2 (m/plexus.h)
pyramid. (m/pyramid.h)
Bull SPS-7 (m/sps7.h)
Hitachi SR2001/SR2201 (m/sr2k.h)
Stride (m/stride.h)
Sun 1 (m/sun1.h)
Sun 2 (m/sun2.h)
SEQUENT SYMMETRY (m/symmetry.h)
Tadpole 68k machines (m/tad68k.h)
tahoe (m/tahoe.h)
targon31 (m/targon31.h)
Tektronix* (m/tek4300.h m/tekxd88.h)
NCR Tower 32 running System V.2 (m/tower32.h)
NCR Tower 32 running System V.3 (m/tower32v3.h)
U-station (Nihon Unisys, SS5E; Sumitomo Denkoh, U-Station E30) (m/ustation.h)
Wicat (m/wicat.h)
Honeywell XPS100 running UNIX System V.2 (m/xps100.h)
Data General's DG/UX (s/dgux*)
Irix before version 6
osf1 (s/osf*)
SunOS4 (s/sunos*)
RISCiX (s/riscix*)
SCO 3.2v4 (s/sco4.h)
SCO 3.2v5 (s/sco5.h)
Sun's 386-based RoadRunner (m/sun386.h)
Sun3 machines (m/sun3*)
Integrated Solutions 386 machine (m/is386.h)
Integrated Solutions `Optimum V' -- m68k-isi-bsd4.2 or -bsd4.3
Harris Power PC (powerpc-harris-powerunix)
Hewlett-Packard 9000 series 200 or 300 on some platforms -- m68k-hp-bsd or
m68k-hp-hpux; note m68k-*-netbsd* still works
IBM PS/2 -- i386-ibm-aix1.1 or i386-ibm-aix1.2
GEC 63 -- local-gec63-usg5.2
Tandem Integrity S2 -- mips-tandem-sysv
System V rel 0 -- usg5.0
System V rel 2 -- usg5.2
System V rel 2.2 -- usg5.2.2
System V rel 3 -- usg5.3
Ultrix -- bsd4.3
VMS (s/vms.h)

it's obsoleting IRIX before version 6, so what? angry about not being able to run bleeding edge software on your old Indigo R3k?

I'm impressed/depressed by how many machines on that list I either worked on professionally, or owned personally over time.

My HP 9000/350 is sad to see m68k-hp-hpux dropped. Actually, no, it's laughing maniacally because VI FOREVER.

#scnr

Maybe this is a stupid question but since they are listing the header files that are going away, can't you just add them back and compile on your system? I build Emacs from source all the time on Solaris in Solaris's path hell, and if it builds there it will build anywhere..

Emacs ? People still use that thing ?

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what else has changed that interacts with those dropped header files. Unfortunately, it is common (IME) for things to be dropped because they cannot (easily) be made compatible with code changes elsewhere in the application.

YES, I DO. Is there any more flexible editor around? No. Don't even try to advocate vi. If you know a bit of LISP, you can do probably anything you want with it. Anyway, on my SGI boxes I peruse Emacs all the time [even an older version] and I'll continue so until my boxes or I die [whatever comes first ]...

I can't possibly imagine coding without emacs.
On irix I also use jasspa, which is really fast, even on old SGIs; I highly recommend it.

Now if only someone could port emacs 22.3 to nekoware... (neko has 22.1).

OK, so I read the listing wrong. At least Irix 6 is still in there then.
I haven't used emacs a great deal over the past few years but that's more because I became a Java developer and needed specific tools, oh, and finding jEdit did all I needed in terms of regular expression replacements and the like, and supports Unicode and all the variety of file formats that entails.
Mark.

Cool, I should check jedit.
Does the latest work fine with IRIX's lagacy java?

Don't worry, once Oracle open sources Java we'll port the latest version back over to Irix... Bwaah haa ha haa ha!!!

I would be a bit surprised if "IRIX 6" really means "IRIX 6". It more likely means IRIX 6.2 or later (IRIX 6.0.1 and 6.1 were based on IRIX 5.2/5.3).

VMS being labeled "obsolete" surprised me, but then I remembered that it has EDIT/TPU and so doesn't need EMACS. "Obsolete" must be their way of saying that the grapes must be sour.

Often support for these platforms is dropped because the developers have no access to such systems, and there is often little indication that anyone uses them. For example, I think the Ruby developers are unaware if Ruby even compiles on AIX, because they never hear about it. Most of the developers just use Linux, and even MS Windows is left to others to port. If someone were to volunteer to verify that emacs works on these older platforms, the developers would probably keep the code for them in the source tree.

Actually, it's really amazing to me that emacs was popular on so many platforms. Most of these operating systems are very old and definitely obsolete, though. I wonder how many people will be upset that they can't use the latest emacs on 4.1 BSD?

You can't?? Those bastards!