Re: armel after Stretch
Roger Shimizu wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 12:53 AM, Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> wrote:
>>
>> There are kernel helpers available to provide some atomic support, but
>> they'll be very slow compared to real hardware support at this level.
>
>Are those kernel helper already reached Debian?
>Or there's still some work here?
As Ben said - they're in the kernel already. But various packages
*may* still need port work to use them.
>> It's a similar thing, but further up the curve - that's all. We added
>> armhf (as the equivalent of i686, maybe) a while back, targeting
>> ARMv7. The much older CPU designs based on ARMv4 and ARMv5 are getting
>> harder to support than the i586 here. The world has moved on,
>> basically.
>
>Just like the world already moves on to amd64, but Debian still
>support i386 and i686,
Not so much - we don't support *actual* i386 machines any more, nor
i486 nor most i586.
>I think the community need armel and armhf, for quite a long time if
>it's feasible.
>
>> You're the first armel developer to offer to dive in here, so that's a
>> good start!
>
>Thanks, but my knowledge don't cover the lower part such as building toolchains,
>still need someone with more experience.
OK.
>> * *If* we wanted to try the partial architecture thing, that will
>> need some effort to make it work. That's not well-defined right
>> now, as it's only a vague concept at best (sorry!)
>
>Maybe we can avoid to do partial arch?
As it's still very much a vague concept that'd be easier, yes. :-)
>> * There are going to be some packages that just won't work,
>> particularly JIT compilers and other code generators that assume
>> ARM == ARMv7. Fixing those up might raneg between feasible and
>> ~impossible depending on the size of the codebase...
>
>If something breaks, I guess it breaks now already.
>We need to fix before Stretch.
>If the issue is fixed, I think there's no need to remove armel
>immediately after releasing Stretch.
That will be up to the release team, basically. I'm not going to be
actively pushing for the removal of armel personally, but as we've
seen recently (with the removal of powerpc for stretch) what matters
is having multiple active porters working on fixing things steadily
throughout the release cycle. So long as we (you!) can demonstrate
that, armel can survive.
It's not wonderful for users that things go EOL over time, but it
happens. We're also giving people plenty of warning that this might be
coming, so interested people can step up and provide that support to
keep things going.
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
< sladen> I actually stayed in a hotel and arrived to find a post-it
note stuck to the mini-bar saying "Paul: This fridge and
fittings are the correct way around and do not need altering"
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