On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 08:36:16PM +0000, Wookey wrote: >On 2023-11-11 18:57 +0100, Guillem Jover wrote: >> Hi! >> >> On Fri, 2023-10-27 at 20:17:21 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote: >> > On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 02:29:30PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: >> > > Are either of those ports (armeb/arm64ilp32) actually useful / alive >> > > at this point? >> > >> > Not that I have seen. I didn't think anything other than the IXP ever >> > really used big endian and that's a long time ago. arm64ilp32 seems >> > to serve less purpose than x32 did (and x32 doesn't seem to be doing >> > much either). Certainly looks essentially dead at this point. >> >> While scanning the libc-alpha list recently I read [M] that arm64ilp32 >> was never upstreamed in Linux nor glibc? If so, I think there's little >> point in carrying the arch definitions in dpkg, and I guess that would >> not make the cut if requested now (for reference this was requested in >> bug #824742). Does anyone know whether it was ever used or it is being >> used even if privately/internally somewhere? > >It was being used internally/developmentally for a while (at CISCO) >but, as you observe, only with large kernel and toolchain >patches. Various groups dragged their feet on this to disourage it >becoming a thing we'd all have to maintain for years. I was doing the >debian development at ARM at the time and the bootstrap was never >completed. A few people (largely just CISCO) wanted it quite >badly. Nearly everyone else thought it was not worth the maintenance >effort. No-one has asked about it for quite a few years now (last mail >Oct 2018) so I think we can assume that it is indeed dead and no-one >would notice for years/ever if you removed it from dpkg.
+1 on the story and on dropping it. >> For armeb, I assume it was properly upstreamed at the time, and it was >> actually used, even if it's currently not in use (like arm) I see tons >> of references in Sources files, and thus removing the arch definitions >> for either of these would not be safe right now I think. > >It is obsolete. It probably doesn't work any more having been unused >since the early days of the NSLU2/Sarge (circa 2006/2007). It might >still have been in use till 2011ish?. As you say it should probably be >removed from upstream sources before it is removed from >dpkg. Interesting question on how much effort (if any) (and when) >should be applied to tidying up stuff like this which is simply no >longer in use. If/when 'arm' is removed 'armeb' should certainly go >with it. armeb was mostly before my involvement in any arm stuff, as Wookey says. It did at least have some life as a functioning port, at least. I'd agree on leaving it in place for now, assuming it's not causing any trouble in terms of maintenance / support. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com "You can't barbecue lettuce!" -- Ellie Crane
