Re: Let's remove mips, mipsel, s390 ... [or have strict arch: control? ]µ

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 11:08:14AM -0500, Rudy Godoy wrote:
> On 22/02/2005 at 10:11 Wouter Verhelst wrote...
> <snip> 
> > I agree that we should not continue to provide software for outdated
> > hardware platforms just for the sake of it; but as it is, there are
> > still people interested in m68k (some hobbyists, some embedded
> > developers, some who just use their old trusty hardware as their home
> > firewall, etc) and, I'm sure, other currently less-used hardware, so as
> > long as a port doesn't continually stall the release (which none
> > currently does; there are occasionally problems, but that happens in
> > every major undertaking), I see no reason to drop any port.
> 
> Regarding this issue I was thinking about it since I've faced in a
> situation where a package[0] I maintain does have "high" hardware
> requirements, which led me to think if it is really wise to have it
> with "arch: any" since probably in some arches it would not ever be
> installed/used, or even if case it will run really slow or even crash
> and the user will not enjoy the software as was intended by upstream,
[...]
> I don't know much about buildd infrastructure[1], if such thing was
> proposed or commented before (didn't check archives),

It has been brought up before a few times on the m68k mailinglists (and
perhaps others too, but I don't follow those). The answer is pretty
complex. In short: don't remove an architecture from your Architecture:
line unless it
* crashes,
* is something that requires so much CPU time that using it on hardware
  of which a >100Mhz variant does not exist /will/ make the system trash
  and be generally unusable until you hit the reset button,
or
* does not compile

I once wrote the long story in my blog; you can find it at
<http://www.livejournal.com/users/wouterverhelst/2742.html> (it being a
rant in reply to people shouting 'we should drop foo from Debian/m68k!',
it doesn't entirely fit into this thread, but apart from that, it
explains it).

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