Re: Retiring ia64
Hi Frank!
On Thu, 2023-09-14 at 10:42 +0200, Frank Scheiner wrote:
> > I don't think that LTO really works on ia64. The toolchain has been bitrotting on
> > this architecture for a while now and it's slated to be dropped from the kernel
> > for v6.7.
>
> That's certainly new news after returning from vacation, so a few
> questions come to my mind:
>
> * When was this decided and who decided it?
That was suggested by me in the thread that was started by Ard where we were discussing
the future of the port which you were also participating in. See the message of Ard's
pull request message [1]. My suggestion was to drop ia64 after the next LTS release of
the kernel as a compromise for all parties involved.
> > We're certainly going to remove ia64 from Debian Ports within the next two months.
>
> * Same here, specifically who is "We"?
See above.
> * And if that is already decided, why investing time in fixing ia64
> problems in GRUB? Seems to be a perfect waste of time if "We"'re going
> to remove it anyhow "within the next two months"...
The idea was to have ia64 supported in the upcoming 6.6 LTS kernel so that users interested
in the port will be able to use it for a foreseeable future in distributions such as Gentoo
while the upstream developers of the kernel, toolchain and glibc will be able to remove it
for future releases.
Fixing ia64 support in GRUB is necessary to make sure that the 2.12 release will still properly
work on the architecture. What happens with ia64 support after GRUB 2.12 has not been decided
yet.
I'm not a big fan of dropping architectures either, but the truth is that ia64 is rather complex
from a software perspective and causes a lot of headache for upstream developers. Combined with
the fact that neither the kernel nor the toolchain nor glibc have any people maintaining the
port.
Again, this wasn't a lighthearted decision and I understand if some people disagree with this step,
however we have to be considerate with the rest of the community and especially people maintaining
these relevant upstream projects.
As retro port maintainers, we still have many other great architectures such as Alpha, SPARC, PA-RISC
and MC68000 to take care of and I think we should focus on these as not only do these have more users
but also there are people still taking care of the upstream support in the kernel, toolchain and glibc
in most cases.
Adrian
> [1] https://marc.info/?l=linux-arch&m=169446754424344&w=1
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
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