GCC 15 Un-Deprecates Itanium IA-64 Linux Support

The GCC 14 compiler marked Itanium IA-64 support as obsolete with plans to remove that Intel architecture in GCC 15. But for now at least the Itanium Linux compiler support has seen some reprieve with it being un-deprecated.

GCC 15 had planned to remove Itanium IA-64 support to close the book on that Intel architecture. That GCC move followed the Linux kernel removing Itanium support last year and more distributions ending Itanium support although many did so years ago. But open-source developer René Rebe stepped up and wants to maintain Itanium's IA-64 support in the GNU Compiler Collection.

In un-deprecating the Itanium Linux targets in the GCC compiler, he noted:

"The following un-deprecates ia64*-*-linux for GCC 15. Since we plan to support this for some years to come."

We'll see how long this lasts or for anyone still running Itanium if they really stick to upgrading their compilers or stay with their legacy software versions.

After un-deprecating the IA-64 Linux targets was also a commit for enabling LRA support on IA-64. That had been sought after previously and we'll see moving forward if the Itanium support is simply maintained or will also see new improvements stepping into the future.