Bug#960265: s390x install Debootstrap warning: Failure while configuring base packages. s390-tools depends on perl:any.
On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 12:17:39AM +0200, Vctl Piotr Kolasinski wrote:
>...
> In my opinion the big problem may be w ith access to the real platform
> (currently I have access and possibilities but I don't know how long).
> Of course we have emulators like hercules (which I use from very long
> time) and know qemu s390 port (only with virtio, not tested by me),
> but it is probably not enough in power (as long as yo don't have very
> powerful emulation platform or use cross-compile). Anyway if Debian
> maintainers have access to valid build environment, I think you should
> not remove the architecture.
Hardware is not the problem.
Forcing 1000 volunteers in Debian to support a port that has no porters
and no users is the problem.
Debian has an s390x porterbox that is available to all Debian developers.
For normal package development this is sufficient.
The s390x port has some unique problems.
And with a390x as release architecture package maintainers in Debian are
supposed to fix these problems in their packages if they want their
packages in the next Debian release.
Forcing volunteers to do unpleasant work like porting to s390x is making
it a more attractive choice to stop contributing to Debian.
s390x is the only big endian release architecture.
Big endian hardware has become exotic, and some of the younger
maintainers in Debian might have never seen big endian hardware.
Endian problems are common problems in packages,
and porting software to support big endian can be a real pain.
s390x is the only headless release architecture.
This was a real pain for the Debian GNOME maintainers already before
the last release, without any support from s390x porters on fixing
this issue.[1]
A port like s390x with unique problems is only sustainable when several
people with good knowledge of Debian, s390x hardware and the Linux
kernel have a long-term commitment of swiftly supporting everyone in
Debian with s390x problems.
IMHO it would be best if s390x would become a non-release architecture
in ports.
Architectures in ports are autobuilt like release architectures,
but there is no pressure on the volunteers maintaining packages
in Debian to spend their time on supporting these architectures.
Other architectures like m68k, big endian powerpc, alpha, hppa
and ia64 that also tend to have one dedicated porter each but
not many users left are also in ports.
> Kind Regards
> Piotr (aka nome)
cu
Adrian
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-s390/2018/12/msg00010.html
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