Re: Creation of Sparc (32-bit) port.
On Tue, 2007-08-21 at 23:22 +0100, Chris Andrew wrote:
> All,
>
> It seems that people are very keen to see 32 bit support die.
I wouldn't have said that. When it was first announced that a new
maintainer for the 32 bit kernel was needed, or failing that sparc32
support would have to be dropped, there were lots of people who said
they felt sad by the prospect of loosing support. Don't interpret
silence as active hostility, perhaps no one knows.
> Who do
> I have to contact to get a separate 32 bit sparc port set-up? As
> suggested before, we can give the new port 6 months, and see what
> happens? At the moment, 32 bit future is not looking good, at least
> let's go out trying!
Why not just start? As long as the main userland pacakges are still
being built for V8 rather than V9 you can use them so all you need to do
is produce the few sparc32 specific packages (i.e. the kernel). Simply
set up a Debian repository
( http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/repository-howto/repository-howto )
and start creating packages. Then post the URL to the list and get
people to test them out. Once you've got a set of packages that
increase the functionality of the sparc32 port I would have thought that
getting people to test and to help debug would be much easier and once
you have users acquiring a name and space on official Debian servers
shouldn't be difficult. Just go for it.
Cheers,
- Martin
PS FWIW, I haven't used sparc32 in quite a while but I would be sad to
see it go, as I posted when the topic first came up, but as I am not in
a position to contribute any time to maintaining it, I don't feel I can
blame the porters for not wishing to spend their free time doing so.
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