Re: sparc qualification for Wheezy

[Patrick Baggett <baggett.patrick@gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 3:16 PM, Martin Zobel-Helas <zobel@debian.org> wrote:

Hi,

On Wed May 16, 2012 at 13:19:48 +0100, Adam D. Barratt wrote:
> Hi,
>
> With the sound of the ever approaching freeze ringing loudly in our ears,
> we're (somewhat belatedly) looking at finalising the list of release
> architectures for the Wheezy release.
>
> Comments on / additions and corrections to the content of
> http://release.debian.org/wheezy/arch_qualify.html would be appreciated,
> as would any other information you think is relevant to helping us
> determine sparc's status for the release.

with my DSA hat on:

We no longer have an UltraSparc II porterbox, and we are considering
decommissioning our single remaining UltraSparc II buildd machine.

That's probably not the worst idea -- there are faster sparc boxes to build on.

 

Maybe it would be a good idea to officially drop US II support from
wheezy since we won't have hardware to test issues on.

I don't understand the implications here. Wheezy works great on two US-II machines that I know of. Does "dropping support" mean ignoring bug reports if the CPU == US-II? Does it mean rendering the kernel unbootable on US-II machines? Does it mean building code with US-III extensions at all times? Why would this be necessary? I run Debian on a Pentium II since it is a 686-class CPU, but I wouldn't build the universe on it. Does build hardware == only means of support? If so, I'm sure I have an 8-CPU US-II system that can have a home anywhere that it is useful at, and it should be relatively competitive with a dual US-III as far as build speed.

Patrick