Re: debootstrapping m68k-coldfire
On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 09:17:54PM -0500, Michael Casadevall wrote:
> I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a moment; from the release
> manager perspective, does it pay to release two ports, one for (there
> perspective) a dead architecture like m68k (popcon lists 10 users, and I
Buildd.net lists >100 users. Many of them have described for which task they
are using their machines. Each Release Manager is encouraged to request
access to the DB in order to be able to verify that there are more than
those users that are listed on popcon.d.o.
> know three of them are my machines), and another for an embedded
4 others are vivaldi, spice, arrakis and akire.
> architecture. As it stands, the RMs are hestinate to have an embedded
> architecture released; the only reason armeb was blessed as an offical
> port was because NSLU2 users using armeb enabled popcon which provided
> the justifcation; the armeb port has appartantly bitten the dust since
> the issues with the NSLU2 network card in little endian mode were
> resolved.
Oh well, so I can remove armeb from buildd.net...
> I suspose the question needs to be asked; what are people doing with
> their old m68ks. Most people around here are using them for (obviously
> enough) buildds to attack the unstable queue.
And even for this task it's hard to justify the electricity bill, because
the port gets slower and slower over time. Build time has increased IMHO
significantly and the number of packages grew by 100% since when I joined in
March/April 2000.
> As for saving the port; well, effectively at the moment, we're already
> dead.
True. Sadly, but true. With Vancouver it became clear that this will happen.
> No (offical) testing, and I really doubt we're going to see a
> lenny-m68k branch on the mirrors. The question becomes is resurrecting a.
> worth it (IMHO, yes, Debian shold support as many architectures as
> possible),
Should support, but won't do so. In fact IT world became rather monocultural
when it comes down to architectures. MIPS is dead (except for embedded
systems), arm is embedded only, PowerPC is mostly dead with the exception of
some old PPCs and mainframes, and so on... Even i386 is about to fade away
in favour of amd64.
Monocultures are bad by definition. But there's nothing we could do about
that.
> b. fessiable (we were catching up on the unstable queue
> until my ISP died, so again, I'd say yes), c. allowed by the RM (eh,
> I'll be honest, I'm not sure if they'd let us re-release; they already
> appear to consider us dead).
... which leads me to the question I already asked a year ago: Should m68k
drop the Debian distribution?
(http://blog.windfluechter.net/index.php?/archives/48-Should-m68k-drop-the-Debian-distribution.html)
Or ask differently: will m68k be better off without Debian and with it's own
distribution? With our own release cycles? Without all the infrastructural
problems of Debian?
I can offer mirror space and other infrastructural help if needed...
--
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