Re: Roll call for porters of architectures in sid and testing (Status update)

Hi all.

The 1st October is rapidly approaching, so I thought I'd better put a more formal place marker down for IMGs support of Debian MIPS. A couple of my guys have asked for some information on what will be involved, but have no reply yet. Whist we sort out the new hires and get my present team onto this, I'll fill out Niels' template to give you a placeholder for the MIPS arches at least:

"""
  Hi,
  
  I am an (the manager/group leader of) active porter(s) for the following architectures and I intend to continue this for the lifetime of the jessie release:

  For mips and mipsel we will, at minimum,
  - test all packages on this architecture (working on this...)
  - fix toolchain issues (I have direct access to the IMG/MIPS gcc compiler team)
  - triage arch-specific bugs
  - fix arch-related bugs
  
  I am not a DD/DM, but we intend to have DD/DM's working for us rsn
  
  Graham Whaley
"""

If there are still some requirements you believe we will be missing (such as running buildd's etc.) then let me know, as I will do everything in my power to solve any issues.

I am about to email the DSA team to discuss the present mips/mipsel hardware situation so we can fix that as well.

 Graham

On 24 September 2013 17:38, Graham Whaley <graham.whaley@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi David.
Good timing. I needed to update everybody on the status.
I now have allocation for two full time permanent hires for Debian MIPS work in my group, and will be placing those job adverts on the imgtec web site as soon as I can (in the next few days), and posting those links to the debian-jobs mailing list.

I also have allocation for MIPS native build hardware. I need to discuss the present situation of the MIPS hardware within Debian, and how we can proceed to improve that situation. I've not identified who within Debian I need to discuss this with - if anybody could point me in the right direction or contact me directly then that would be very appreciated.

In the interim a couple of my team should be contacting the Debian Release Team so we can resource MIPS for jessie whilst we get the new team formed and up to speed.

Graham

On 24 September 2013 15:25, David Kuehling <dvdkhlng@posteo.de> wrote:
[added CC to debian-mips, please don't shoot me for cross-posting]

>>>>> "Graham" == Graham Whaley <graham.whaley@gmail.com> writes:

> I need to update you on the state of Debian support commitment within
> Imagination, particularly in light of the plight of MIPS support for
> jessie.

> Having become aware of this situation, I am working internally to
> accelerate Imaginations existing Debian support group plans. This will
> cover both engineering resource and hardware availability. It will
> take a few days for us to work this through, and as soon as I have
> some news I will post to this list.

Hi Graham,

nice to hear that there is somebody still interested in Debian-mips.
Already started thinking I'd end up with a non-supported software for my
MIPS hardware in the long-run.

[..]

> For those of you who wish to do some mips/mipsel work or testing
> (thanks :-), but are short of hardware, I'll see what I can do there
> as well. Let me know if you are interested

Given the seemingly dormant interest in Debian MIPS I'll see whether I
can allocate more time myself to help with porting and fixing. I'm
already eying Loongson-3A based hardware (heard that Lemote has Mini-ITX
boards available) to replace/augment my Fuloong 6004 system.

For MIPS-enthusiasts: tekmote is currently selling quadcore MIPS64
notebooks for <600 EUR:

http://www.tekmote.nl/epages/61504599.sf/nl_NL/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61504599/Products/CFL-008

IMO without a Debian MIPS64 port, Debian won't be viable for high end
MIPS equipment before soon, and is going to loose a lot of interested
developers.

cheers,

David
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