Re : squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Arthur Loiret <aloiret@debian.org>]

Hi,

2009/2/20, Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>:
> Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post
> in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter
> for squeeze.

I am volunteer to apply as alpha porter. I have several alpha machines
of my own, which makes it easy to debug a failure on alpha.

> I linked to
> <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-alpha@lists.debian.org>
> as a starting point for folks to get involved in trying to help with the
> alpha port if they want to see it continue in squeeze.  Well, only 9 of
> those bugs have been closed in the past year, with 31 other bugs open, not
> to mention the serious problems of the port's viability implied by things
> like the lack of Java support and the general absence of a porter community.

I will have a look to them this week. Talking about upstream support,
Andrew Morton is not giving up the alpha port and always apply patches
very fast. On the gcc side, Uros Bizjak has fixed nearly all major
issues in the alpha port, and the glibc can be built with recent gcc
versions again.

I've also setup an alpha buildd to check all FTBFS (using quinn-diff),
already 138 packages built since yesterday evening :-)

> I've cc:ed everyone who listed themselves as an alpha porter for etch on
> <http://wiki.debian.org/alphaEtchReleaseRecertification>, to make sure
> anyone willing to do the work on alpha for Squeeze has an opportunity to do
> so.  But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next
> couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release
> team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable.

I can provide access to some hardware if anybody else is interested in
contributing to the alpha port.

Thanks,

Arthur.