Re: Bug#745938: FWIW -- I consider sparc useful, pity if its support ends completely
On Tue, 29 Apr 2014, Sébastien Bernard wrote:
> >Having people find the sparc port useful or using it is however not
> >enough to maintain it. There needs to be a commitment to fix issues and
> >to respond to inquiries about the current status. However there is
> >currently *nobody* doing this as demonstrated by the lack of replies to
> >the release teams concerns (see all the "bits from the release team"
> >mails on debian-devel-announce@ since the Wheezy release).
> We are fixing issues at this moment.
> I have some problem to know the bugs numbers that are high priority
> and sparc-only,
> however, I have time and a little knowledge to check the problems.
> There are so many ML to read, I may have missed important call, but
> reading all mails from 2 years ago is a bit too much.
> If you need maintainer for sparc, just tell how to become one.
> IMHO, the sparc architecture needs more tests and bug filling than
> knowledgeable people.
just to keep this thread going: what could be the ultimate
prioritized list of issues with sparc to be resolved? I believe we have
no arch tags in Debian BTS to filter easily...?
https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=sparc
might be handy but would take time to drill down the packages to
approach first
from my side -- I am already providing CI for few upstream projects on
SPARC build boxes (under sid and wheezy) so they enter Debian sparc-ready.
> >This needs to change or it is not realistic for Debian to be able to
> >keep this port (and I'm not sure sparc64 is in a much better state as a
> >possible replacement).
> >>P.S. I wondered now if somehow we could attract students taking some
> >>'advanced computer architecture' courses at the universities...
> >I personally would be more interested in an architecture where one can
> >actually purchase current hardware (sparc servers on oracle.com seem to
> >start at ~20k USD). There are quite a lot of those for what I
> >understand: arm*, mips*, ...
> Why not dropping the m68k port too then ?
moreover eBay is full of cheap but nice sparc boxes which corporations
get rid of soon after official support terminates, so by tackling cheap
sparcs Debian might at large support the architecture popular in
industry.
--
Yaroslav O. Halchenko, Ph.D.
http://neuro.debian.net http://www.pymvpa.org http://www.fail2ban.org
Research Scientist, Psychological and Brain Sciences Dept.
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834 Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik
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