Let's remove mips, mipsel, s390, ... (Was: [Fwd: Re: GTK+2.0 2.6.2-3 and buildds running out of space])

[Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>]

Clint Byrum <cbyrum <at> spamaps.org> writes:
> Now, can someone please tell me how messages like the one below, and
> others, aren't indicative that debian should drop s390, mipsel, and
> maybe hppa from the list of architectures? How about we release for
> i386, sparc, and powerpc, and let the others release on their own
> schedule? This business of supporting 11 architectures and making sure
> they're all 100% right before releasing is just about the worst idea
> ever.

Couldn't agree more.  

Our chances of actually releasing one day could only increase if we dropped 
arches such as mipsel, s390, m68k, ... and concentrated on those that actually 
mattered: i386, powerpc, amd64 -- and I'll gladly add a few more.  But a total of
eleven is insane.

But then it doesn't matter anymore. These days, Debian is "infrastructure". 
We no longer make releases. We provide the basis from which others make releases
-- Ubuntu, Prodigy, Knoppix, Custom debian dists etc pp.

Still, the hours we maste on fixing, building, maintaining, ... code on unused
platforms is hysterical waste of resources. Resources we don't really have. It
would be better to concentrate on a core of packages, and platforms, and then
get on with it.  One day it will break the infrastructure provision, at which 
point someone will fork our high-priority core packages.

Dirk