Re: Status of PowerPC64?
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 11:13:09PM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote:
>> Dear Release managers and assistants,
>
>> what is the current status of the inclusion of a powerpc64 architecture?
>
>> Are there plans to include it in the archive?
>
>> If so, for when is the inclusion planned?
>> Or, what's the current status of the port as perceived by you.
>
>> Is the port official and grown-up enough for Debian to maintain 64bit
>> powerpc machines?
>
> The question of which ports are included in the archive is one for the ftp
> team to decide, not the release team. (Yes, amd64 integration is a
> requirement for the etch release, but that's an architecture that everyone
> agrees should be in the archive -- the release blocker only specifies what
> order certain things need to happen in.)
>
> Informally, I'm pretty sure that there are no plans for inclusion of a full
> powerpc64 port in the Debian archive, since it has the same performance
> problems as sparc64 for applications that don't require the extra address
> space.
I would like to see a proposal or guideline for multiarch only
architectures in the debian archive and in the release. Here are some
thoughts that might help someone to write such a proposal:
First: What is a multiarch only architecture:
- not the prefered architecture for a cpu
e.g. sparc64 is slower than sparc so sparc is prefered
- architecture provides special features to a subset of binaries
e.g. sparc64 provides 64bit address space
uclibc provides a slimmer system for embedded use
- packages can be build on the prefered architecture of the cpu
e.g. gcc -m64 builds sparc64 code on sparc
As a result of that multiarch only architectures should have a very
limited amount of packages as candidates for building. There hould be
a patch to limit the arch:all packages in those archs and to limit
uploads to only that subset of packages. The exact subset should
probably be defined by the ftp-master and the port team together.
Multiarch only architectures don't neccesarily need a buildd
infrastructure. The debian/rules files could build debs for the
multiarch only architectures on the prefered architecture for that
cpu. This only requires a small patch to dpkg-genchanges which is
already in the BTS. If this is the way to go I don't know. But it
would be an option.
Multiarch only architecture don't need an installer. The archive would
only have a subset of packages available anyway and they are to be an
add-on to the prefered architecture for that cpu.
Examples for multiarch only architectures, from the top of my head:
Sparc64, mips64, mips64el, powerpc64, s390x.
Note that neither i386 nor amd64 fall under this as each is the
prefered architecture for some cpus and applications. They do have
multiarch but need a full set of packages for optimal performance.
MfG
Goswin
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