Re: AMD64 for sarge [Re: <rant> Package: ftpmasters, Severity: serious, ...]

[Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader <leader@debian.org>]

* Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> [2004-07-06 20:58]:
> you still haven't spoken a word about the absence of reaction of the
> FTP masters regarding the inclusion of AMD64.

There are 3 issues which have to be clarified and taken care of before
AMD64 can move into the archive:

  - A general port inclusion policy: there are a number of pending ports
    (s390x, powerp64 and various BSD ports), and therefore it is
    important to have a clear policy saying which criteria a new port
    has to fulfil.

  - The mirror situation: the archive has grown quite substantially
    and some mirrors have problems keeping up with our increasing disk
    space requirements.  The plan is to have only a common set of
    architectures mirrored by default, and mirrors can opt-in to carry
    additional architectures.  The tools for this exist now; what is
    left is creating a policy about this and switching the mirrors to
    the new system.

  - Some technical AMD64 questions: ftpmaster had some specific
    questions about the AMD64 port they want to see answered.  Also,
    an LSB person recently expressed some technical concerns (see [1]).

As to the timeframe of these 3 points being addressed, I'm not sure.
I have recently seen a draft policy about port inclusion which, in my
opinion, looks pretty good.  What is left is for ftpmaster (plus some
other concerned parties, such as the security team) to agree on that
policy and write a rationale for each point. (From what I can tell,
the AMD64 port should not have a problem with most of the points in
the port inclusion policy.)  I'm not sure about the status of the
other 2 points, but I hope that something will be posted soon.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-amd64/2004/07/msg00039.html
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
leader@debian.org