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Re: Dropping sparc32 for lenny

Michelle Konzack a écrit :

Hello *,

Am 2007-04-19 09:31:43, schrieb Mark Morgan Lloyd:

Martin wrote:


I was under the impression that there were other SPARC based embedded
chips around.  Is it worth contacting the developers of the Leon about
this?  IIRC one of their selling points was a full, free OS and tool
chain.  I suspect if Debian stops supporting sparc32 then the amount of
work done on keeping it viable will drop andthe bit rot will set in.
Thus I can see some advantage to them commiting some time to keeping it
live.

At that point it might be worth having a Debian subproject specifically for
SPARC kernel 2.4 in the same vein as Debian GNU/Hurd. Discard any GUI that takes
an excessive amount of CPU resources, discard audio, streaming video etc. and
concentrate on a reliable toolchain and kernel.


I am running a SS10 SMP (512 MB of memory) with minimal installation
and fvwm.  I think, for further Debian releases, sparc32 should drop
all memory consuming apps and I fully agree with you.

In general, I use my 2 of my 4 SS10 as buildd.


	I don't aggree. Some new hardware are created today with Leon and some
other sparc v8 processors (in fpga or other technology). If sparc32 port
is dropped, no one usable system will be able to use these systems.

1/ Sparc32 (with sun4m) support was dropped with solaris 10 and solaris
9 is not stable with more than two procs;
2/ NetBSD 3.1 is not stable when it runs on SMP configuration;
3/ NetBSD 4.x is not usable (on SS20 with CG14);
4/ OpenBSD cannot run on any SMP station;
5/ Linux sparc32 is not dropped, some bugs remain in sparc32 SMP kernel,
but is better than all other systems on sparc32.

	I use several SS20 (with raid, CG14, SMP, X, windowmaker...) with only
one trouble: a bug in read_pipe()... And I have worked on another
project that uses Leon. Berkeley University work today on a calculator
that shall use several Leon processors... Sparc32 is not died even Sun
does not sell Sparc32 anymore.

	Thus dropped sparc32 arch will be a big strategic error for Debian.

	Regards,

	JKB
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