[IMPALA-12069] Remove BUILD_HISTORICAL mode from native-toolchain

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: Impala 4.3.0
• Fix Version/s: Impala 4.3.0
• Component/s: Infrastructure
• Epic Color: ghx-label-3
• Assignee: Joe McDonnell
• Reporter: Joe McDonnell
• Created: 17/Apr/23 17:15
• Updated: 20/Apr/23 16:09
• Resolved: 20/Apr/23 16:09

Description

The native-toolchain keeps build code for all of the old versions of packages in the repository under a BUILD_HISTORICAL option. BUILD_HISTORICAL can't possibly function, because most old versions are not buildable with GCC 10 (or even GCC 7). To my knowledge, no one has used it for any reason in the past several years.

It complicates the repository, because build scripts must handle old versions alongside new versions. Patches for old versions of components never get deleted. This makes no sense, because all of the logic is available in the git history.

This tracks removing BUILD_HISTORICAL and cleaning up the repository to remove old build scripts, old patches, etc.