FWIW -- I consider sparc useful, pity if its support ends completely
First of all -- thanks everyone who previously helped to maintain SPARC
Debian. IMHO your work was very useful!
FWIW -- I have got acquainted with sparc originally solely due to
the need to troubleshoot FTBFS of some packages I maintain on this
"alien" to me platform... But probably in a somewhat a masochistic way I
got to like sparc -- at times those FTBFS due to e.g. failing unittests
I exercise at build time pointed to real problems with the code, which
otherwise would have waited possibly for years to be encountered by
users consciously, while may be still getting some (incorrect) output
without causing the entire program/pipeline to blow.
For that I started to maintain now 2 sparc boxes as a part of the test
build farm where I provide CI for some popular projects I maintain --
and found it being extremely useful. Developers can easily find access
to x86 boxes for testing but not to such boxes of less commodity.
I have not been using those two sparc boxes for anything else besides
CI, BUT I got to like them -- despite their respectful age they remain
quite performant making me consider employing similar retirees to
serve as regular 'servers' for occasional local needs.
With Debian dropping support for sparc unfortunately I would need to
stop providing similar "unique" testing opportunity for those projects,
which would not be the end of the world, but kinda a pity since sparcs
seems to be quite nice and which helped to gain more "geeky gratitude"
for Debian being somewhat unique in its spread of support.
P.S. I wondered now if somehow we could attract students taking some
'advanced computer architecture' courses at the universities... usually
core 'computer architecture' courses are too abstract to promote
participating in hands-on experiences such as fixing specific
architecture-specific issues in compilers... but may be at more advanced
levels Debian's breadth might intrigue some scholars, and hopefully
bring at least some fresh blood to Debian. (was more of thinking out
loud than anything practically useful I guess).
--
Yaroslav O. Halchenko, Ph.D.
http://neuro.debian.net http://www.pymvpa.org http://www.fail2ban.org
Senior Research Associate, Psychological and Brain Sciences Dept.
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834 Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik
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