Hi,
Now that we have released, we need to set our goals for the future. As
you probably guessed from the subject, I am strongly in favor of
dropping sparc32 support for lenny. There are multiple reasons for it,
including
* Nearly complete lack of upstream support. David Miller, current
upstream maintainer of sparc64 has expressed his thoughts on the
topic in [0], triggering the discussion about dropping sparc32
support in Aurora Linux. [1]
* Several serious problems, like lack of SMP support and driver
failures (CD-ROMs do not work for some reason).
* Shrinking userbase, flaky hardware.
* Possibility to build the archive with optimization for UltraSparc
processors, leading in some cases to significant performance
improvements.
As much as I hate to see Debian lose the support for another
subarchitecture, I don't think that anything can be done about it,
unless a group of determined and, more importantly, capable people,
willing to maintain, fix and test it, will emerge. There is also a
possibility of separating sparc32 into an unofficial project.
Any thoughts on the matter will be appreciated. My intention is to
come to a rough consensus (if possible), and then present our plan
with regards to sparc32 to release managers.
[0] http://marc.info/?l=linux-sparc&m=117407830512186&w=2
[1] http://lists.auroralinux.org/pipermail/aurora-sparc-user/2007-March/004504.html
Best regards,