Re: Releasability of the HPPA port
Le 7 août 2010 à 06:43, Philipp Kern a écrit :
> Carlos,
>
> On 08/06/2010 10:48 AM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>>> I think we do agree that it will be included into stable for the last time.
>>>
>> Under which metrics or evaluation process is this decision being made?
>>
>
> basically the criteria listed on [0] (which is again not entirely up-to-date, though). I think for hppa it would be mainly architecture availability, keeping the buildds running for yet another stable release until EOL (which would for squeeze probably be now+0,5y+2y+1y=now+3,5y), buildds being redundant hardware-wise, builds not failing for the security in non-obvious manners[1], having some upstream support, etc.
>
> More than one porter is also important so that we are not left alone if the only person working on it needs to shift his/her priorities (c.f. bus factor).
>
> Kind regards,
> Philipp Kern
>
> [0] http://release.debian.org/squeeze/arch_qualify.html
I don't know if that chart is entirely up to date, but here are a few points I'd like to comment on:
availability: if that's "public availability", a quick google search tells me that there are plenty machines available. There are even specialized professional resellers of second hand parisc hardware (they sometimes post to our mailing lists to buy and sell hardware, ykwim ;-).
porters: it's unfortunate but true that we don't have many debian porters working on the port (and I take my share of the blame, having significantly reduced my own involvement). Yet, I'd like to draw attention to the fact that we do have "porters", i.e. individuals who care for the port and work to help fix bugs. Given Debian is (mostly) the only viable linux binary distribution running on parisc hardware[0], most (if not all) these individuals use Debian and thus contribute to its quality. Also, we have a couple hardware test rings available to developers both in and outside of Debian, for which we are usually keen on giving easy access (see [1]). I don't know how that fares in this evaluation chart...
upstream support: I believe a quick look at the kernel mailing list and linux git changelog shows activity on the port; i.e. it's not dead (yet). Toolchain is also being actively maintained as recent commit also demonstrate.
I don't get the buildd-redundancy / buildd-fast-sec items, so I can't comment.
Finally, a silly question: looking at the bottom line of this chart, it seems that Debian is "at risk" of becoming a x86/64(+ia64?)-only release[2]. Is it actually the case? I don't mean to start a heated discussion here, but if I "missed the memo", maybe others did too. The point is, if that's what Debian is moving towards, then the current discussion is pretty moot, isn't it?
HTH
T-Bone
[0] with the obvious implications should hppa be removed from Debian...
[1] http://www.parisc-linux.org/cluster.html
[2] powerpc has exactly the same readings as ia64 and yet it's "at risk" while ia64 isn't. Is that a typo?
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